Blackest Night: Flash #1 - Review

As Blackest Night roles on and I find myself enjoying it more and more, I have decided to go back and pick up various tie-ins that I missed, including this title Blackest Night: Flash by one of my favorite writers Geoff Johns and artist Scott Kolins.

The book opens with Barry traveling the world at super speed sending his message to all the heroes of the DCU warning them of the threat of the Black Lanterns. I have seen this in various other tie-ins so I liked the way this is tied-in bringing Barry very much to the centre of Blackest Night, almost as much as Hal Jordan, which seems to have been Geoff Johns idea from the start. Next we get a brief Flash history round up which is very handy for new Flash readers like me but I do feel kind of sorry for people who have been reading Flash Rebirth as It basically sums up the Flash in a couple of pages, without having to pay out for a six issue mini series that is not even finished yet. I bought the first couple of Flash Rebirth issues but as a non regular Flash reader, I found the character’s history and explanation of the speed force extremely confusing, but here it is dealt with simply and effectively. Job done.

Barry’s next mission is to speak with his friend, the leader of Gorilla City who Barry believes is one of the most intelligent beings on the planet, and a person who can help the heroes in the war against the Black lanterns. One slight problems though, Barry’s friend died in his absence which Barry is unaware of and the former leader of the great Gorilla City has now been resurrected as a Black Lantern. There are some great scenes drawn by artist Scott Kolins as the two friends battle and Johns writes Barry well as he tries not to give into his emotions, as he knows this feeds the Lanterns power.

In this issue we also meet the new Black Flash, who is the resurrected Zoom/Reverse Flash, and though he is dealt with pretty swiftly by Barry, we know this won’t be the last we see of him.

A second story within this book is that of the current Flash Rogues (led by Captain Cold) who prepare to face the former, newly resurrected Black Lantern Rogues next issue. Johns writes these characters so well and I’m sure that the inevitable showdown between the Rogues next issue with be great entertainment.

All in all this is a well rounded issue with a lot of action packed in that accompanies the main Blackest Night Series nicely. Check it out.

4 out of 5

Green Lantern Corps #43 - Mini Review

Saying that Patrick Gleason drew his ass off on this issue would be an understatement. This issue he did phenomenal work. The scenes with the out of control; Red Lantern Gardner were fantastic, the way he tore through the Black Lantern Corps and his battle with Kryb... well, it needs to be seen to be believed. Awesome, awesome stuff. Spoiler! Tomasi revives Kyle Rayner already but in a way that ties in other characters development from previous issues and it’s handled masterfully. This is another fantastic issue of GL Corps. So far Blackest Night can do know wrong.

4 out of 5

Secret Warriors #10 - Review

After 9 issues of Secret Warriors, I was thinking about giving up on this series. Hickman and young gun artist Stefan Casselli did a good job on the first arc, but with the second arc God of War, God of Fear came a new, less impactful artist and storyline. The story just plodded along for me and with my pull list seemingly getting bigger each week I felt now was the time to cut this book, but then I saw the preview for issue 10.

This issue was a completely stand alone issue in the middle of the arc focusing on the God of War; Ares and his son the God of Fear; Phobos. Where Secret Warriors has failed in the past for me is the cast of Nick Fury’s Secret Warriors team. After 9 issues I would struggle to name any of them, the characteristics and personalities are very forgettable, all except for Phobos, the God of Fear stuck in the body of a 10 year old, and Hickman does wisely focusing on the boy in this issue. The story narrates Phobos’s troubled history with his father and his meeting with the elder Gods to decide, as he was born of a mortal woman, whether or not he is worthy the title of God of Fear.

Secret Warriors #10 is for fans of old mythology stories like those found in Incredible Hercules or the stand alone mythological tales of the recent Immortal Weapons mini series. There are some beautifully drawn fight sequences between the gods with a really fantastic pale colour palate to give it that ‘tale of old’ style. For me the writer and art team have done their job very well and left the story with a nice cliff hanger ending to keep Secret Warriors on my pull list, for the next issue at least.

4 out of 5

Matt's Mini Reviews - Blackest Night gets brighter!

Green Lantern #48

*NOTE – Read this issue before Blackest Night #5*

This series has been at an all time high in my opinion since the start of Blackest Night so I looked forward to more of the same this issue and it was good, but slower and very wordy. There wasn’t the same amount of action as the previous issues had but we do have some good padding out of the lantern characters, Johns has really established these as great new additions to the DCU. After some fighting and bickering amongst themselves the lanterns decide to unite (for now) to battle the common threat of the black lanterns, which leads into Blackest Night. An okay, solid issue but a must pick up if you are following Blackest Night.

3 out of 5

Blackest Night #5

One of the BEST issue of the series so far! Spoilers on!

Nekron is here, with an army of black lanterns battling the Justice League and the rest of the heroes from the DCU along with the newly united lanterns of the emotional spectrum (see GL#48). This issue is all out action laid out beautifully with some truly awesome splash pages. So many amazing things happen in this one issue; Lanterns are united, Guardians die, and (MAJOR SPOILERS!) a certain undead Bruce Wayne becomes a pawn of Black Hand and Nekron and is used to turn the heroes of the DCU that have escaped death and been resurrected (i.e. Superman, Green Arrow etc.) into latest editions of the Black Lanterns! The issue ends with black rings chasing down the only 2 resurrected heroes to escape the black rings so far; Hal Jordan & Barry Allen! What an ending and what an issue!

*Note – To top it all off you get a free Green Lantern ring with this issue (lets face it, this is the ring we all wanted and have been waiting for)- that helps it nail the top spot for book of the week!*

5 out of 5

Matt's Mini Reviews

The Black Knight #1 - One Shot

I love one-shots, epic runs can be great just like a great album by a fantastic band, but some time you get those one hit wonders, those catchy tunes that are just short and sweet. And I love my comics to be that way alot of the time. Throw in some knights of the round table, a magical sword to rival excalibur, action and adventure, and this is a real hit for me. It reminds me of the current Immortal Weapons books, the way beautiful tales of old are told around great little characters. If you like Arthurian Legend, (be warned that the dialogue is written as such, but it suits the style of this comic) with nice slick art, I would definately suggest picking this up. This is real hero vs villain stuff and it was fantastic.

5 out of 5



Red Robin #6

I gave it to this issue, where new artist joined Marcus To joined, to be the decider as to whether or not I would continue to pick up this series... and it's dropped. I believed this title was to deal the hunt for Bruce Wayne but writer Chris Yost has hardly dealt with this at all, instead focusing on Tim becoming leader of the League of Assassins, rediculous and totally out of character imo. Geoff Johns wrote the character better in a few panels of his Adventure Comics last month than Yost has in this entire series. And when Bruce does retun it will be well advertised and no doubt in a special mini series so as DC can charge $3.99 per issue, therefore making this series pointless to me. Marcus To does are fine job on pencils but his style is much like many other artists around, and nothing special to write home about. Pointless book and not very entertaining. Avoid

2 out of 5

Dark X-Men #1 - Review

This is a book with some real characters in it. You get the always enchanting and dangerous Mystique, the whacked out and needy Mimic, the power junky Omega and supreme evil Dr Henry McCoy from the alternate reality; Age of Apocalypse. That’s a great cast to begin with right? So I was going to pick up the book anyway to see what plans Osborn has for this evil misfit band of X-Men but when I heard Nate Grey was to return in these very pages, the ‘Nathan Summers’ from the same ‘Age of Apocalypse’ reality as Dark Beast, It was moved to the top of my Must Read pile.

What is great about this book is the character work by Paul Cornell, he gets the characters down really well and Leonard Kirk does fine work on the art. The story line at this moment is pretty thin. It seems there are masses of folk walking around in a mind controlled state claiming “I am X-Man”. Osborn sends his team to investigate which results in the team at a hospital bedside of one of these crazies. It seems that somehow the possessed people’s collective thoughts were being controlled by something extremely powerful which ends up consuming both Omega & Mimic and sending their powers out of control. At the end of the issue it is revealed that this power is actually Nate Grey who has returned, though so far how or why is unexplained.

The problem that I have is that this issue is not very new reader friendly, hopefully the second issue will do a short 1 page recap of the history of Nate Grey, not something too long that it holds up the progression of the story and bores older Marvel/ X-Man fans, but gives enough info to get new readers up to speed on one of the coolest Marvel characters from the last decade.

Character focused, the return of X-Man, not a bad start, but not spectacular either.

3 out of 5

Thunderbolts #137 - Review

Thunderbolts #137 - Review

WRITER: Rick Remender
PENCILS: Mahmud Asrar

Sometimes it’s nice to get a one and done superhero tale and this is exactly what this book is. I have not been reading Thunderbolts since Warren Elis left but this was any easy issue to jump onto as Rick Remender steps into the role of writer as Andy Diggle moves over to Daredevil . The reason I decided to pick this up was as a fan of the Iron Fist and Luke Cage characters I was intrigued to see them team up against Norman Osborn and his Thunderbolts, I have enjoyed some of Remender’s work in the past so decided to give this a shot.

The story goes that Iron Fist has been captured by the Thunderbolts by orders from Osborn which we see in a nice action packed flash back. Norman’s idea is to capture as many hero’s as he can and use his new toy in order to mind control them and eventually replace his bickering Thunderbolts team. Now the nice little twist that Remender writes into is that some of the Thunderbolts have figured out Osborn’s scheme and are obviously not to happy about it, their mission then becomes to mess with Osborn’s plan and help Iron Fist and his would be rescuer Luke Cage escape.

I feel Remender writes the Thunderbolt characters very well, I had no prior knowledge of any of these characters except for Robert Kirkman’s Ant-Man and they were all enjoyable to read, especially Ant-Man who provided the main comic relief for this issue in the way Spider-Man would in a New Avengers book.

The art is good looking nothing if nothing spectacular, but suits the feel of the book nicely.

If you want a bit of Iron Fist & Power Man team-up action with a few laughs along the way and a nice one and done superhero tale, check this issue.

3 out of 5

Haunt #1 - Review

This title has been highly anticipated to say the least, you all know that. What you want to know is if it’s any good, and judging by other reviews on the net you’d probably be inclined to think this book was terrible, well you know what, I thought it was great. Here’s why:

The two lead roles for this story are brothers who lead very different lives but are both really captivating characters. One is very depressed priest named Daniel Kilgore who seems to have a lot of women issues, firstly for being in love with his brothers girl, secondly as he has a tendency to visit prostitutes.

The other brother, Kurt, is a Special Ops type action hero who gets killed on a mission (during some great action scenes). What we learn throughout the issue is that Daniel is now being haunted by his dead brother who urges Daniel to visit Amanda, whom it seems they were both in love with, as Kurt believes she may be in danger.

While Daniel stays at Amanda’s house it is raided by some nasty looking guys out to kill the girl, they start shooting and the ghost of Kurt merges with Daniel just as he is about to be shot and together they suddenly take on the ghostly monstrous appearance as seen on the cover. Cool stuff.

The idea of this book came from both Robert Kirkman and Spawn creator Todd McFarlane with the actual series being written by Kirkman, with layouts by Greg Capullo, Pencils by Ryan Ottley, and inks by McFalane.

I really like Kirkman’s script, the dialogue is realistic and sharp but the art on this title is the real star, it just looks fantastic. Ottleys pencils especially. It’s also worth noting that this is a $2.99 book but this has a glossier paper that is slightly heavier than normal with a really nice feel and it makes the art and coloring extra bold to look at.

I thought this was a brilliant first issue and I’m definitely on board for future issues, I’m really unsure why it has received such negative comments elsewhere as I think the execution of this book and its creators was fab. It seems a lot of people had problems that the story was not very original and there have been a lot of comparisons to Spawn but I’ve never read a Spawn book so can't comment there. All I know is this book is fun and cool and has action and espionage and really looks amazing. I say sod everyone else and pick it up.

4.5 out of 5