Green Lantern #43

Usually in this space I'll have a little introductory paragraph talking about whatever it is I plan on reviewing. However, I really don't think that's necessary here. It's Green Lantern. It's the final "Blackest Night Prologue" issue and most importantly, it's written by comic book GOD Geoff Johns. If that doesn't excite you on some level then nothing will!

-This comic opens up with Scar(the evil Guardian)speaking about the Blackest Night prophecy from the book of Oa, the Book of the Black, her "master" the leader of the Black Lanterns and the birth of the first Black Lantern.

-From there we find Black Hand sleeping in an open grave(with some corpses)near his family's mortuary. The "master" of the Black Lanterns gets in contact with Hand mentally, and Hand gives us a long-winded origin story. He was a creepy little kid who seemed enamoured by the corpses that he would find in the parent's mortuary. He began killing and stuffing the dead bodies of animals(including the family dog)and was sent to several shrinks who he learned to eventually fool.

-From there Black Hand thinks back to the "Secret Origin" Green Lantern story(which was awesome by the way!)where he first met Hal, Sinestro and Atrocitus. He continues his trip down memory lane thinking about his many defeats at the hands of various Green Lanterns(mainly Hal), to losing his hand, to being kidnapped by those weird German speaking gremlins from the early issues of this series.

-We return to the present where Black Hand reveals that the new hand the gremlins provided him allows him to "see" the death all around him. He is able to see the deaths of several prominent DC heroes, as well as the heroes who died but managed to cheat death by returning to life. Hand rises from his grave and walks over to the home of his family and promptly murders his two brothers and his parents.

-After completing that gruesome task, Hand sits down at the kitchen table(surrounded by the remains of his family)and reflects on what he just did. As he's thinking, the voice of the master of the Black tells Hand there is one more person he needs to kill, and Hand raises his cosmic divining rod to his head and blows his brains out!

-Scar then arrives on the scene and looks at the bloodied corpse of the Black Hand. Scar's master tells her that Hand is now "ready" and Scar vomits out a Black Lantern ring. The ring affixes itself to Black Hand and he rises from the floor, reborn as the herald of the Black Lanterns, similar to Ion for the Green Lanterns and Parallax for the Sinestro Corps. As this issue concludes, Black Hand announces to Scar and her unseen master that he will do everything in his powers to extinguish all light in the universe.

Well, if I wasn't chomping at the bit to get my hands on Blackest Night #1 before, I sure as hell can't wait to read that book now! This was a great set-up issue, which did a wonderful job turning Black Hand into a universal threat, along with setting up the Blackest Night event itself. I honestly didn't realize Scar was working for somebody until this issue. I just thought she was crazy! So now we have Black Hand, the embodiment of the Black Lanterns, Scar, who serves as their Guardian, and an unknown character who is the mastermind/leader/god of the Black Lanterns.

So, who is this mysterious lord of the Black light? It isn't the Anti-Monitor, it serves as the Power Battery of the Black Lanterns, and if memory serves me correctly, there was some mystery figure who turned the Anti-Monitor into the Black Power Battery at the end of Green Lantern #25(the conclusion of the Sinestro War). After finishing this comic up, I went and pulled GL #25 out hoping to garner some hint as to who the mystery master of the Black is, but Geoff gives absolutely NO clues in that comic. All we know is that the master of the Black resides in Sector 666, and that they have enough power to imprison/kill the weakened Anti-Monitor(no easy task). I personally can't wait to discover who this mystery being is. Hopefully it won't be a new character, I know I'm hoping the master of the Black Lanterns turns out to be some already established character. For a score, I'll give this comic a 9 out of 10. I'm going to have a tough time waiting for Blackest Night #1 to arrive after reading this comic... I want to read Blackest Night #1 now!!!