Blog

Publisher: DC Comics
Writer(s): Geoff Johns & Peter J. Tomasi
Artist: Fernando Pasarin
Cover: David Finch

Spoilers

“Carpe Diem”: At the conclusion of Blackest Night, various heroes and villains had been resurrected by the White Light; and now in Brightest Day #0, we are treated to the beginning of the fallout from the dead coming back and trying to figure out the next step in their renewed lives.

The story itself is told with the help of Deadman, as his White Lantern ring teleports him to the other eleven individuals at various points for brief periods of time.  From Aquaman trying to reconnect with Mera, to Jason (Firestorm) mourning over the death of his girlfriend at the hands of the Black Lantern Firestorm Ronnie Raymond while he was stuck inside of his body.  Fortunately for Deadman, he is invisible while watching the events unfold, but he ends up having more questions than anything during these various jumps.  His ring keeps asking for his help, but doesn’t give him any clues as to with what.  However, in Star City the ring is a little more direct with him, when it forces a painful vision of the eleven others who were brought back, and yells at him to help them.  We are even treated to a cameo of Sinestro, as it seems he’s been searching for the White Lantern power battery since all of the excitement of Blackest Night came to an end.

Johns and Tomasi aren’t giving many definitive answers in this issue, as it pretty much just sets up future plot lines for us.  There are certain background moments showing the actions of unknown individuals with hidden agendas, which helps break up the “day in the life” theme going on, but other than that this book is basically a big preview event for later issues of the series.  This isn’t too bad of a thing, but I would have been happier paying half of the cover price for it.  I do think that Johns and Tomasi did a fine job at answering very little, and though there were some pretty good character moments, some of them were a little off.  I was a little confused as to why Flash paid a visit to Captain Boomerang but not Zoom, since they were in the same facility.  I want to know exactly how those two villains in particular were captured and put in Iron Heights Penitentiary, which I’m hoping to get in some filler issue later on.  I did find a few highlights in the book, like Deadman’s inner dialogue throughout the story and the interaction between the two Firestorms at the funeral.  Other than that, I think I could have skipped out on this issue and not missed out on anything too big.  Though I did chuckle a bit at Aquaman being a little scared to get into the water again.  The artwork by Fernando Parasin was consistently great throughout the entire book, and  he even got a little help for the scene of Deadman’s vision of the resurrected from various artists.  My favorite page actually is the spread of Star City, which was a bit of a shocker to me.  And speaking of artwork, I see that DC chose to go with their newest acquisition David Finch to reel us in with a pretty awesome cover, and to be honest I was hoping he was doing the interiors as well; but hey, maybe he’ll end up on a title that I’ll actually buy.

So now I wait for this thing to REALLY kick off, because this issue just didn’t do it for me.  Maybe I just expected too much from this zero issue that’s coming off the heels of one of the best overall cross over events this year.

Infinite Speech
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