Spoiler alert for the ending of Blackest Night: the good guys win! I bet you never saw that coming.

Seriously, though, we’re at the halfway point of DC Comics’ company-wide crossover Blackest Night, and so far, so good. “But wait,” I can hear you say, “your blog is about ranting and complaining! Why are you being so positive?!” Very true, intrepid reader! While I’m certainly enjoying Blackest Night thus far, I do have some issues to raise. Get it? “Raise”? Like the Black Lanterns? Look, if you don’t like my bad jokes, you’d better buckle up, because I’ve got more.

Anyway, the idea of the DC Universe heroes and villains facing resurrected friends and enemies is pretty cool. (Even though it’s not really the dead, of course; just simulacra of them. Nekron’s Black Lantern rings find a dead body or spirit, “download” its memories, and create a physical construct to attack the living.) We’ve seen the whole “hero fights the dead” before, but this is on a massive scale on par with the mayhem seen in Marvel Zombies, which most certainly influenced Blackest Night.

My first nit to pick is some of the incredibly silly speech and actions by some of the characters. For example, let’s look at Hal Jordan himself; at one point, he bitches and moans about how he’s not a “pawn of the Guardians.” Well, that’s a bunch of horseshit for two reasons: one, if you’re a Green Lantern, then you’re the Guardians’ lackey. Period. Two, the last time Hal made a statement like that…he went off his rocker and destroyed the Corps he was possessed by a giant space bug. No matter what he says…he’ll toe the line, because that’s what Rebirth-era Hal Jordan does. Don’t try to make him seem more badass, when you know it’s a crock.

Larfleeze, the holder of the Orange Lantern, has been acting very much out of character lately, as well. When introduced in the Agent Orange storyline earlier this year, he was shown to be an incredibly arrogant and greedy enemy, with ridiculous levels of power to back it up. He’s currently being hunted by Black Lanterns…and acting like a complete wuss in the process. This dude’s killed Guardians, fer crissake, as well as their cousins the Controllers. Not only that, his Orange Lantern Corps was kicking the living snot out of the Blue Lanterns on their base planet of Odym. Recalling his constructs back and smashing some zombies should be a walk in the park, but Larfleeze sees fit to act and speak like he never has before instead. I can understand that a massive horde of superpowered zombies could frighten anyone, but this is a very abrupt shift for the character, and it doesn’t mesh with his previous appearances at all. (Of course, now Red Lantern leader Atrocitus wants to kill Larfleeze and take his lantern, so we’ll see how that turns out. I have a feeling Larfleeze may not survive the crossover in general, and someone else will take his place to possess the Orange Lantern.)

My next problem of note has less to do with the story, and more to do with DC Comics’ business model: there’s a ridiculous amount of tie-in miniseries that really don’t add much to the overall plot. There might be a seemingly important bit on a page in Blackest Night: Titans, and another piece in a panel in Blackest Night: Batman, and maybe another in Blackest Night: The Flash…but why not put that shit in Green Lantern or the main Blackest Night miniseries, where all of the really critical stuff is happening, anyway? Obviously, we know that DC’s just trying to squeeze more money out of the consumer. (Marvel Comics does this with their crossovers, too; look at all of the pointless Dark Reign nonsense that they’ve shit out.) From a story perspective, though, it just dilutes the whole saga. Stories work much better when they’re more tightly woven.

Green Lantern scribe and Blackest Night showrunner Geoff Johns has done a decent job juggling all of the multicolored Lanterns he’s introduced over the past few years, even though the very concept seriously dilutes the premise of the Green Lanterns, and our favorite heroes therein. Of course, this isn’t going to stop anytime soon; more colors are sure to come. You will see at least one White Lantern, as I’ve mentioned before, and it’ll almost certainly be Hal in that role. The obvious choice for their symbol would be a blank white circle, but that’s already been used by the Green Lantern Corps; it’s what recruits have on their uniforms before they earn their badges. Since artist Ethan Van Sciver designed each of the other color Corps’ symbols to be opposites of one another, here’s my guess as to what a White Lantern badge ought to look like:

See, it’s white, and the arrow’s pointing up instead of down. Brilliant, huh?

…But I digress. While the use of a White Lantern to beat Nekron is an obvious choice, it’s also a cheesy one. Wow, white is the opposite of black: how incredibly original. (That was sarcasm, in case it didn’t come across well enough in text form.) The fact that the wielder of the white light will end up being Hal (or even Kyle Rayner, who “died” recently) is also very clichéd; I understand that he’s the hero of the Green Lantern series, but c’mon…we can rock the boat a little bit without sinking it. Since it’s a company-wide crossover, why not have a character who is not a Green Lantern do it, which would actually be a surprise? (Now that I’ve written extensively on this subject, watch Geoff Johns fuck with me and not use White Lanterns in Blackest Night. Just my luck!)

Overshadowing all of my other concerns, though, is this: I dread the idea that Blackest Night will have a largely formulaic ending: the various Corps team up, recreate the white light of creation, destroy the Black Lanterns, and send Nekron back to his own dimension or whatever, with very minor ramifications (if any). Unfortunately, this is likely unavoidable due to comic book fanboys’ extreme distaste for change in any form, and their preference for simple, predictable stories.

Well, half down, half to go. The only way to see how Blackest Night will turn out in the end is to keep reading it. I doubt any of my concerns will be addressed, but let’s make like a Blue Lantern and hope. They’d certainly help turn a good series into a great one.