The words falling from everyone’s lips this week were “Blackest. Night.” and the folks here at CPB were all adither about DC’s latest cynical attempt to cash in on the momentum of Final Crisis event. Green Lanterns! The dead rising! Friends become foes! Free Black Lantern rings while supplies last! What did our review team think of issue #1?

Tim Schmidt’s thought:

Once again, I find myself all riled up and excited about a new comics event. Geoff Johns and company have done a masterful job manipulating expectations and timing in order to maximize this debut and with the first issue we have a nice flashback to those summer crossover feelings.

Johns starts the story with a neat idea, that the anniversary of Superman’s death has become a day of celebration for all fallen heroes. We get a quick tour of the DCU, seeing bits with the JLI and Ted Kord, Mera and Aquaman, the GLC and the hall of fallen GLs, the Rogues and more. Barry Allen and Hal also visit the vault containing the fallen villains of the DCU that Peter Tomasi suggested back in Nightwing a couple years ago. At this point, there are plenty of Black Lanterns to threaten the living. This feels a lot more like a DCU crossover rather than a GL-specific one since so much time is spent on the Earth-based heroes and so little on the emotion corps. Scar does finally upgrade from shadowy manipulation as she savagely attacks (and eats!) another Guardian. This book is not for the squemish!

Johns gets in plenty of trademark ultra-violence. The gruesome murder of two heroes is as savage as anything he’s written, and the book actually opens with Black Hand eating some flesh off of Batman’s skull. Keep it classy Geoff! Speaking of the fallen heroes, their murder is worse because it comes from a friend. This particular black lantern was one a lot of folks hoped would be exempt from coming back evil, but this is a clear signal that everyone who comes back is totally corrupted. Another bad thing for our heroes? The fallen immediately rise as black lanterns. I was laughing to myself that with these two coming back evil, I think I have more favorites amongst the dead than the living in the DCU. Maybe I’ll cheer for Black Hand! Although it is hard not to side with Guy Gardner when he reacts with “You gotta be kidding me” when he sees a mass of dead GLs (including Ch’p!) assembled against him.

Ivan Reis’ work is clear and classic looking. His work on the icons is so solid that this first issue instantly felt like a DCU crossover classic. Of course, the gore and viscera factor is much higher than we’re used to, but we’re used to that with Johns, right?
Grade: B+

Randy Broadwater’s had this to say:

Blackest Night #1
The first issue of Blackest Night was a solid effort by Johns but still suffered from “eventitis”- though not nearly as bad as most before it. Blackest Night is basically DC’s more sophisticated version of Marvel Zombies and actually works a lot better for it given its status as in-continuity. I’m not going to spoil anything here, but lets’ just say there were several “Oh $#@&!” moments that set the stage for what could be a very entertaining story. The “eventitis” drawbacks I mentioned earlier are minor but still noteworthy. For one, because it’s an event, the setup is a bit heavy-handed, especially if you’re a regular DC reader. Blackest Night starts on the anniversary of Superman’s death where the DCU honors those superheroes that’ve died. It’s a good backdrop to set the story up for new readers, but for the rest of us it’s like having Night of the Living Dead take place on Halloween night. Likewise, unless you have a DC P.H.D. there’ll likely be a bunch of names thrown about that you don’t recognize and don’t really care about. These are minor nick-picks, however. Solid start, can’t wait to see where it goes.
Grade: A

Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps #1
Tales of the Corps is basically just a collection of side stories giving background info for members of the various Corps members. The Indigo Tribe story was the most interesting, and shortest, but the rest were just “meh”. This would make a great addition for the trade or any of the other inevitable Blackest Night collections, but at $3.99 it’s definitely not worth the money to shell out for the single floppies unless you just have to have everything Blackest Night in singles for your collection.
Grade: C

Sean McGrath’s didn’t hold back with:

Blackest Night #1
I’m not even going to whitewash this: I L O V E Geoff Johns. If I had eggs, I’d do whatever was necessary to secure his DNA and start making a brood of love children to rival that crazy lady’s with the clown car uterus. Yeah, I’m that serious about it, and here’s why: he knows how to write an event from ground level. I haven’t read a Green Lantern title in years… probably since 1979, but the first issue of Blackest Night told me everything I needed to know about the story without having to spend hours pouring over a DC wiki to name all the players and their goals and what the hell just happened (yeah, I’m looking at you, Final Crisis, and while I have your attention: this is how metafiction can be done without alienating readers). And while I’m not a summer-blockbuster-count-the-explosions kinda guy, I am a Titus-Andronicus-how-high-can-the-body-count-go kinda guy, and wow Johns is already in the Saving Private Ryan to the power of Hamlet range. Blackest Night is taut, and I’m dying to see who snaps first.
Grade: A