The path to saving the world is riddled with pain and sacrifice.
What They Say:
The mystery of the twelve heroes’ and villains’ return is resolved, the secret of the white forest is revealed. Plus: The Aquawar rages to its bitter end, Firestorm battles Deadman – and who is the new champion of Earth?
The Review:
With Brightest Day being a series that was released with a bit of a delay compared to the print edition, it was easy to fall out of it as it went along, especially when we get caught up in the Flashpoint summer event series and then the New 52. We had read through the first dozen or so issues of the series and enjoyed it a lot, but it wasn’t until a recent sale on the series went up that I grabbed the remaining issues I needed, thirteen through twenty-four, and found the time to sit down and read it in one sitting. Rather than a blow by blow piece from a world that doesn’t quite connect anymore due to Flashpoint, I decided to just look at the second half of the run as a whole. And that definitely works better since the series does come across as more cohesive, yet still lacking in that little bit of continuity it needed within the run to make it a stronger series. It’s focus on the character was very good as it went along, but it didn’t resonate with how it all connected together wel.
With the varied group of heroes and villains that were brought back to life, the focus on some of them was quick and done with during the first half of its run. Others dominated and continued to do so through the end of it, though they even lost their stature a bit in favor of another. The main theme of the book as it went along and dealt primarily with the heroes of the story is that these people brought back from the dead had to fix things that went wrong during the lives. Some of the stories were less than interesting for a chunk of it, like Carter and Shiera’s as it was convoluted and twisty in dealing with their origin world which then went on a strange turn to Zamora and dealing with the Star Sapphires. It had its moments, but it just felt needlessly complicated, but that’s part and parcel with that character.
The same can be said of Firestorm, who as getting close to blowing up entirely with the fear of destroying the universe as they know it. It instead caused them to wink out of our universe and into the anti-monitor’s universe, which lead to a lot of dealings with the remnants of Nekron there that wanted to figure into the White Lantern’s plans to its own advantage. The darker forces involved here were like the Hawk’s enemies in that perhaps it made sense if you’d been reading for an age, but it didn’t hold up well if you weren’t too familiar with it all. Coming off of Blackest Night as this series did, it does make sense to wrap up the remaining things with Nekron. And that does become a more pointed focus towards the end of the run. But the story involving Qward and what’s there, and the uninteresting Firestorm character himself, well, it just left it more as something you got through rather than enjoyed.
And there are things to enjoy in the book. I loved seeing Boston getting things on with Dawn after all this time and seeing him having a life of some sort. There’s a good exploration of his pre-Deadman past and we see just how badly he botched the importance of connections in life and why becoming Deadman was poetic justice in a lot of ways. Putting him into a relationship, experiencing the physical world again first hand, and being connected via the White Ring really worked well. Especially when the Ring started to move its plans forward, which came as more of the White Lanterns ended up finishing up things that needed to be resolved in their lives. Powering up of the ring began the cycle of events that rushed into the ending which, while it certainly does make sense, also feels like it came out of nowhere.
The idea that after the Blackest Night event that the life web of the world would be corrupt makes a lot of sense, especially as it was just much more heightened after years of humanity screwing around with it knowingly and unknowingly. The central idea of the White Lantern is to purge it, but in doing so it needed pure forces to combine into the elements to do so. Bringing the varied heroes into that form was rather forced in some ways, but tying it together with them having to combat the Green was just perfect as that was the presentation of the life-web in physical form. With the dark avatar being a Black Lantern Swamp Thing, corrupted by Nekron, using the White Lanterns in their pure form to deal with it while the protected area revives Alec Holland to become the Swamp Thing for the first time is poetic. We’ve seen this touched on in the post-Flashpoint Swamp Thing book when it comes to how Alec’s life worked and the previous incarnation of Swamp Thing, so reading it here left it making plenty of sense. It all comes together in a big way at the end here, but with plenty of pain and heartache as well so as to not make it a complete victory for the good guys.
Digital Notes:
This Comixology edition of Brightest Day contains both the David Finch primary covers and the Ivan Reis variant covers.
In Summary:
Overall, I did like the Brightest Day as a series that let some characters shine and be explored in ways that would have been difficult otherwise. They couldn’t carry their own books well enough to tell it and it would have just been awkward in trying to do those stories while drawing in new fans. Through this form they were able to clear out a lot of baggage, provide a new look on certain characters and bring others back to be properly used again in the mainstream DC Universe. While some haven’t been able to hold onto their own books in the post-Flashpoint universe, they’re back in it fully and that’s a big thing for me since several of them are favorites, like Dove and Swamp Things. Brightest Day could have worked better with a few less issues, a few less characters involved and a bit tighter plotting in some areas. It may not be the event some wanted, but I think it accomplished a lot of goals and served to set up a lot of things that were easier to deal with when the New 52 hit. Good stuff overall, but it’ll definitely vary depending on how much you like, or don’t like, certain characters.
Grade: B
