Having the bodies from your past lives built as a dimensional gateway is not a pleasant discovery.
What They Say:
If this is the BRIGHTEST DAY then what is Black Lantern Firestorm doing?!
The Review:
Brightest Day certainly is finding some creative ways to end eac issue in a wy that makes sure you want to see what’s going to come next. The previous issue gave us an intriguing start with Boston Brand being whisked away somewhere cosmic only to land right in front of the Anti-Monitor. With Brand not exactly being a cosmic player in the past, throwing him into this situation is pretty stark for him. Which also essentially sums up everything that’s happened to him since he was brought back into his real body and given the only White ring. With the ring insisting that he fight the Anti-Monitor, but not being clear about it, his panic is definitely understandable and you can sympathize with the way the whole situation is just out of his league at this point. Seeing how the ring essentially screws him over by at first showing him a way to actually fight him on some level and then takes it away from him. There’s hints layered into this sequence that will definitely mean something later in the series.
The more personal side of the book deals with the Firestorm duo as they’ve now been split through the explosion and everyone has managed to survive okay, not that the sequence in the previous issue really handled things all that clearly. The main frustration with this story at this point is that Ronald has so completely set his mind against Raymond over what happened to his girlfriend to the point where it’s both believable and yet not. Considering his time as Firestorm, he has to have seen some twisted things and even in his grief should be able to realize what the reality was being the Black Lanterns and how they operated. His continued insistence that everything is Raymond’s fault ends up making this segment of the story less than interesting.
Another personal arc of a different nature involves the continuing story of Aquaman and Mera. Arthur’s return to the living has him still feeling a little off, though Mera has helped eased that. What’s rightly concerning him is that he seems able to call creatures from the sea that have died which has him feeling like his ties to the Black Lantern version of himself may be deeply rooted in him. What I liked is how Geoff Johns covers a good part of Arthur’s basic problems over the decades in just a few panels and makes it feel nature as the discussion about where to get help from is dealt with. He can’t go back to Atlantis and she can’t go back to her people so the solutions are going to be difficult, but they have each other. Yet each of them has their concerns in general that go beyond the immediate. Much is said from just a couple of panels without any dialogue.
Digital Notes:
This Comixology edition of Brightest Day contains both the David Finch primary cover which features Aquaman and the Ivan Reis variant cover which puts its focus on Firestorm. With the variant included in here as it would be with a trade paperback release, it’s definitely a welcome value added piece for digital fans rather than making us choose between two editions to buy, a practice I do not like as I’ve seen it done elsewhere.
In Summary:
Brightest Day has a bit of an uneven issue this time around. Aquaman and Boston Brand’s stories are really well done. Martian Manhunter makes a discovery that has a lot of potential, but I’m still having issue with the ease at which he took on the woman’s dead father’s role in order to gain the information previously. He’s come across as even more disconnected than ever before. The Firestorm storyline is the one that bothers me the most though just because of the misplaced anger. Thankfully, the positive outweighs the mediocre here since Aquaman really manages to carry things well and looks fantastic doing it. With the cliffhanger here involving Carter and Shiera, we learn more of what Hath-Set has been up to all these years beyond making masks and it’s an event that only serves to make him an even creepier character. And yet they find a very good way of making you want to come back to the next issue quickly with an ope-ended portal that you want to know more about.
Grade: B
