Blackest Night #7(of 8)

Well, much to my surprise, my comic book order arrived at my front door today. With the snowfall we've gotten around my area, I honestly wasn't expecting to see that package until Monday at the earliest, so if I were wearing a hat, I'd tip it to the postal service. This package of comics contained all of my non-subscription comics from the past three weeks, so needless to say, there's a lot of good stuff here. With that said though, when I had to decide what to read first, it was a complete no-brainer... More then anything else(yes, even more then Dark Wolverine #83)I couldn't wait to dig into Blackest Night #7. So was BN #7 worth the two months worth of hype, or was it a real letdown? Let's find out!

Blackest Night #7: Writer: THE Geoff Johns. Pencils: Ivan Reis.

The penultimate issue of Blackest Night gets started with Nekron and his zombie army dragging all of the Guardians of the Universe to a designated place on Earth. The combined forces of the New Guardians launch into an attack on him, but Nekron is completely unaffected and goes about his business as if they weren't there... Well, that's not a good sign... Black Hand arrives on the scene and prevents the New Guardians from further assaulting his master, wrapping them up in black barbwire. Upon spotting Atrocitus, Black Hand remembers him from his first meeting with Hal Jordan, and attempts to tear the alien's heart out, but meets with no success since Red Lanterns HAVE no hearts. The New Guardians take advantage of this momentary distraction and launch an attack on Black Hand, an attack surprisingly led by Scarecrow. Lex Luthor watches Scarecrow have his moment and becomes insanely jealous, tearing the Sinestro ring off of Scarecrow, and adding it to his own hand. With that, Lex decides to take EVERYBODIES rings, and he goes after Mera's red ring. While this is going on, John Stewart is attempting to turn back the Black Lantern planet of Xanshi, which is on a collision course with Earth. Luckily for John, he is soon joined by pretty much every member of all of the other Corps, and they are all informed by their respective leaders to put aside their differences and join forces with their rival Corps. Returning to Nekron, he proceeds to murder one of the Guardians of the Universe and with some assistance from Black Hand(who returned to his master's side while the heroes dealt the power mad Lex Luthor), he tears out the Guardian's heart. Nekron then uses the heart of the Guardian to draw out the Entity, which is basically the thing that grants life to every being in the universe. Ganthet reveals to the New Guardians that life originated on Earth, and that the Guardians of the Universe hid that knowledge from the rest of the universe in order to protect the Entity and it's homeworld. This revelation pisses Sinestro off something fierce, since the Guardians pretty much destroyed Abin Sur's life because he had come across that knowledge. Sinestro attacks Ganthet, but is stopped by Nekron's continued assault on the Entity, which harms every living being in the universe, including Sinestro and the other New Guardians. Hal figures out that the Entity is like Parallax or Ion, in that it needs a host to use it's powers, so Hal races to the Entity in order to let it bond with him. Sinestro prevents Hal from bonding with the Entity, citing his failure to properly use Parallax's powers in Green Lantern #50, and this issue concludes with Sinestro bonding with the Entity, becoming the first White Lantern!

Wow, so Sinestro is the White Lantern?!? I have to say that I am QUITE surprised by that, since I(and probably everybody else)thought Hal Jordan would get that honor. This comic was extremely good, and I enjoyed pretty much everything about it, with the exception of the big reveal... I was NOT very fond of the whole, “Life began on Earth” revelation, because it disregards the role the Guardians of the Universe had in the DCU. Yeah sure, Ganthet does his best to try to explain that the Guardians are indeed the oldest living creatures in the universe, while stating that life began on Earth, but I just can't buy it... I'm not going to go into the scientific reasons as to why that doesn't make sense(and believe me, I could!), so I'll instead get into the DCU reasons why that doesn't make sense. If life began on Earth, then shouldn't Earth be the home to the most advanced society in the Universe? In the DCU, the Earth is one of the LEAST advanced worlds around! Hell, even Korugar is more technologically advanced then Earth! However, disregarding the Entity/Earth stuff, the rest of this comic was very solid. I loved Lex attacking his fellow New Guardians, because that is SUCH a Lex Luthor thing to do... The greatest evil in the universe is attacking the Earth, and Lex Luthor is still trying to find a way to acquire more power... Leave it to Lex! All in all, this comic was really good, although the Earth/Entity stuff did take something away from it for me.

Score: 9 out of 10.I really hope Black Hand survives Blackest Night, because he's rapidly climbing my list of favorite villains.I'm as surprised as everybody else!