Welcome back to the Society Pages, a column that looks back at the ‘modern’ history of the Justice Society of America. The main thrust of this column is to look at “JSA” and “Justice Society of America,” two ongoing series, written for most of their runs by Geoff Johns.
And speaking of Johns, he’s back for this installment that features a thousand inkers and even more zombies in hard to distinguish costumes. Here, we tackle “Blackest Night,” and event that isn’t too JSA-heavy, but has some important connections, especially for the All-Stars.
Written by Geoff Johns, James Robinson, Tony Bedard, and Lilah SturgesCover by
Penciled by Ivan Reis, Eddy Barrows, Marcos Marz, Eduardo Pansica, and Freddie E. Williams II
Inked by Julio Ferriera, Oclair Albert, Rob Hunter, Joe Prado, Luciana de Negro, Ruy José, Eber Ferreira, Wayne Faucher, Sandro Ribiero, and Freddie E. Williams II
Colored by Rod Reis, Alex Sinclair, Richard Horie, and Tanya Horie
Lettered by John J. Hill, Nick J. Napolitano, and Pat BrosseauGeoff Johns (GREEN LANTERN: SINESTRO CORPS WAR, THE FLASH, ACTION COMICS, JSA) and superstar artist Ivan Reis raise the dead in a story that rocks the foundations of the DC Universe! Throughout the decades, death has plagued the DC Universe and taken the lives of heroes and villains alike. But to what end? As the war between the different colored Lantern Corps rages on, the prophecy of the Blackest Night descends and it’s up to Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps to lead DC’s greatest champions in a battle to save the Universe from an army of undead Black Lanterns made up of fallen Green Lanterns and DC’s deceased heroes and villains.
“Blackest Night” was a gigantic deal in 2009-10 when it was released, and it went from a “Green Lantern” event into something that touched almost the entirety of DC’s lineup. We’ll get to the JSA spin-off mini in a few minutes, but the event itself has a couple of important connections to the Society.
“Blackest Night” #1 culminates in zombie Dibnys killing Hawkman and Hawkgirl in the first of what is going to be a series of deaths throughout the series. Johns, obviously, has a lot of history with these characters, and writes them as less nuanced versions of what we’ve seen over the past ten or so years. His Carter, especially, seems to be ripped off all of his depth and is left just a violent shell of a man which, ironically, is how Johns would again repackage him just a few years later in the New 52. I understand that Johns knew that the vast majority of folks who are reading “Blackest Night” didn’t read all 50+ issues of “Hawkman” or a decade of “JSA,” and so you can’t present a truly three-dimensional portrait for the couple, but even so, this seems almost regressive.
The other big JSA tie-in is the death of Damage which, in Johns fashion, continues his hit job on the character, started in “Infinite Crisis” with his face being destroyed and continued in Johns writing him like an asshole throughout his entire JSA tenure. Here, he and Ray Palmer talk about the legacy of the Atom and have a moment where it seems like, just maybe, Johns won’t put Grant Emerson through the ringer. But then, he dies the most ignoble death of all: killed by Black Lantern Jean Loring.
I felt this way in 2009 and feel this way today: the designs for the Black Lanterns are really terrible. It’s very hard to tell characters apart, and when you have quite literally 60+ years of dead characters walking around, there’s almost no way to keep straight what you’re looking at dozens of these characters. I know that you need to give the ‘Corps’ a uniform, but there had to be a better way than this, especially since their faces are all disfigured.
The “Blackest Night: JSA” miniseries has a nice framing device, where each issue opens with the narration of one or more characters explaining their lives before becoming Black Lanterns. Most of these characters are JSA legends: Johnny [Chambers] Quick, Terry Sloan Mister Terrific, Charles McNider Doctor Mid-Nite, etc. We also get both Earth-2’s Superman and Lois Lane, last seen in “Infinite Crisis,” which ties Power Girl very deeply into this story. She gets about a third of the screentime, and her pain is palpable in those scenes.
Continued belowThe other greatly pained person in the story is Liberty Belle, Jesse Chambers, who uses the emergence of her Black Lantern old man to revert back into the Jesse Quick persona, who co-writer James Robinson would use in his “Justice League of America” shortly after this story. Robinson writes the first issue by himself, before being joined by Tony Bedard, who seemed to be lurking in every DC shadow at this point. I’m going to blame him for the biggest goof of the entire series, as he was likely the one scripting, which is that Jakeem Thunder is, twice, referred to as Jamal Thunder, which is both racist and lazy. Shame on everyone at DC for not catching that mistake, but especially Bedard and Robinson.
Eddy Barrows does great pencil work with the Black Lanterns here, but the design issues remain. Barrows gets to do some big, bombastic action when Mister Terrific gathers Alan Scott, Lightning, Stargirl, and Doctor Fate to all use their powers to create, essentially, make a Black Lantern bomb to wipe the tri-state area of all the zombies. It’s a clever move that is sort of waved away as a one-time solution, though not given a real reason as to why it could only be used once.
A big part of “Blackest Night: JSA” and “JSA All-Stars” #7 is the fallout of Damage’s death. Jesse had really taken Grant under her wing, and Judomaster had fallen in love with Grant, and so those are the two characters that the issues are really built around. For a character that has felt like an after through pretty consistently throughout his run, the grief that his teammates feel for him seems earned and real. “JSA All-Stars” #7 features a pretty cheesy ‘final message’ recorded for Judomaster, but manages to succeed beyond the maudlin just on sheer force of the emotional impact.
Overall, this event’s biggest JSA connection is that, at the end of the event, Hawkman and Hawkgirl are resurrected, alongside some other characters with tangential JSA connections, like Osiris, the brother-in-law of Black Adam (who featured in a ‘resurrected’ issue of “The Power of Shazam”), and Jade, the daughter of Alan Scott.
Jade will be front and center next week, when the JSA and JLA cross over for a few issues under James Robinson’s pen. See you then!
