Goodman Covers – “Blackest Night: Superman”
It’s time for another edition of Goodman Covers! This time we’ll focus on the recently ended mini-series; Blackest Night: Superman. Check the full review after the break!
Blackest Night: Superman #1-3
Written by James Robinson with Art by Eddy Barrows
When DC first announced the Blackest Night event, which involves dead DC characters returning to life via Black Lantern Rings, one of the first characters I thought that would and should be affected by this event is Superman. Turns out that DC and I where on the same page as Blackest Night: Superman came to a close last month.
As I said above, Blackest Night is DC’s big event for this year and started in the Green Lantern series, but has since moved on to its own title and spawned several tie-ins. The basic idea is that all of DC’s dead characters, hero or villain, are given a power ring that downloads all the memories of that particular character. After this, the Black Lantern is off to terrorize and kill anyone and everyone that stands in its way. But first, the lantern must scan a person, and get them to emit an emotional response, and then the lantern rips out that person’s heart. It’s an intense process to say the least.
The story of mainly focuses on Superman and Superboy as they battle the Black Lanterns in Smallville, but we also get a moment or two on New Krypton. I enjoyed both stories, but the events that transpire on New Krypton have a potential to really change things up in the on-going Superman family of books. James Robinson does a great job of showing the reaction of Smallville’s citizens as the Black Lanterns terrorize the city, yet I found that some of the best moments of the book come from Krypto and Ma Kent as they face a Black Lantern. The book reads very similar to a slasher movie not unlike the Friday the 13th movies. In fact, Jason has a small cameo in the first issue and helps reinforce the horror element that the Black Lanterns carry. I should also mention the art by Eddy Barrows is serviceable, but won’t blow you away by any means.
Overall, fans interested to know what’s going on with Superman during Blackest Night should pick this up. If you are just reading the main Superman titles (Action Comics, Superman, Supergirl, World of New Krypton) and enjoying those titles, stick with those as there really isn’t enough new information to warrant a purchase.
What did you think? Sound off in the comments below!
I really liked this mini series for the larger story of Blackest Night. It had a little bit of everything from the Superman family and had some great battles as well.
I can’t wait to see what Superman and Connor do in the rest of the event that is Blackest Night.
I was shocked at the review this series got on supermanhomepage…it was surprisingly negative. Personally I thought this series was fantastic. Every issue was fascinating. I particularly liked the parts with Psycho Pirate. I’m not familiar with the character, but he seems like a decent villain, and with the emphasis on emotion in Blackest Night it was a fantastic choice.