Review: Brightest Day #23

Written by Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi
Illustrated by Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, Norm Rapmund, and Oclair Albert

It’s the beginning of the end as we head toward the epic conclusion to BRIGHTEST DAY! The mystery of the heroes’ return and the secrets of the white forest are revealed! Plus, Captain Boomerang draws closer to completing his mission! And at last, it’s Firestorm vs. Deadman!

Earlier I reviewed Fear Itself #1, Marvel’s big blockbuster event that will supposedly change everything here and there. Now, to balance out the event magnitude, I’m taking a look at the penultimate issue of Brightest Day, DC’s bi-weekly book that has been running for almost a year now. The main thing to note, however, is that so far DC’s big “event”-thing has been fairly maligned at this site.

So with that in mind, as things supposedly come into focus and the “truth is revealed” and all that jazz, does that opinion change at all?

Check behind the cut for some thoughts. As a note, spoilers are discussed – specifically with the identity of the White Lantern. If you haven’t read the issue yet, you may want to give it a read.

Before we begin, let’s take a moment to look briefly into the past to put some perspective on what we’re about to talk about. After Infinite Crisis, DC released the series 52 to much fanfare by fans and critics alike, as we followed the various issues of some new and underused heroes through the DCU while our main heroes took a break for a year. The success of 52 led to DC crafting and putting out Countdown (To Final Crisis), which in turn was met by the deridement of fans and critics alike. What was supposed to be the exploration of the revamped DCU led to a series ultimately too big for it’s britches that spent too much time being unfocused and failing to pay-off the majority of it’s stories. DC did not publish any more weekly event books (there was Trinity, a weekly book by Kurt Buseik, but it wasn’t exactly an event book like 52 or Countdown), but as Blackest Night ended they announced two bi-weekly titles that would take up the next year or so from the comic book giant, following two different post-Blackest Night stories – Justice League: Generation Lost and Brightest Day.

So now we’re at the end of both series, with two issues left for each and the first of the penultimate issues out today. Today marks the big revelation that Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi, the Brightest Day scribes, have been promising since the beginning. All is supposed to have a purpose, all will be well, etcetera. And in turn we have been given a series of character pieces that have all been seemingly unrelated as characters go through various trials and tribulations now that their life has been restored to them – specifically Hawkman/Hawkgirl, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, and Firestorm. While the seven other characters of the series have been busy in other titles (for some unknown reason, because this is Brightest Day, isn’t it?), our heroes and heroines have all been reunited in the finale as the Dark Avatar of Death finally rears it’s rather ugly head and begins an assault on the Star City forest as the world begins to tear itself apart.

To which I say – what? Really?

Let’s be honest with ourselves for a minute – as awesome as 52 was as a series of character pieces, the big event that united all the characters was rather disappointing. World War III, which was supposed to be the big battle against an insane Black Adam, was over in a single issue without much fanfare to it. What really makes 52 worthwhile in retrospect is it’s build-up to the reveal of the multiverse – that’s what made 52 great. Now that we’re looking at our “almost finale” for Brightest Day, what are we given? The integration of a Vertigo character back into the DCU with what has to be the biggest stunt to bring a character back DC has ever pulled. Most times when DC brings a character back from the dead, they do so in a fairly normal fashion. At the end of Blackest Night when twelve heroes and villains returns, it may have been done in an excessively glossed over fashion but it still made sense within the context of the story, all things considered. With Brightest Day, apparently the White Lantern needed to gather various bits of information and lead characters to do a series of pointless endeavors just so it could bring back Alec Holland. I can’t be the only person who feels a tad cheated by this aspect.

DC certainly wants to play this off as a tremendous endeavor, with a hulking Swamp Thing monstrosity attacking the Star City forest as if it was truly the most important element of Brightest Day. However, the story has had so little focus that it honestly feels like all the time that this story has spent developing Firestorm, the Hawks, Martian Manhunter and Aquaman for their inevitable ongoings was essentially a waste. So Swamp Thing is back in the DCU. Do we play fanfare now? Or do we simply wait until Alan Moore makes another comment about how DC can’t work with anything he didn’t do first? It was Moore after all who developed the Parliament of Trees and Swamp Thing’s role as an elemental entity. Moore called out Blackest Night and Geoff Johns for taking from his book of ideas before – did it really just happen again?

I think it’s safe to say that Brightest Day is the new Countdown at this point. We still have one issue left, so we can probably assume that there will be some extra twist that will “make everything make sense,” but at the same time we were led to believe we were following a story where twelve characters were brought back to life for unknown reasons, all of which had a convergence. This isn’t true, as several characters “completed their missions” in other books (really – what did the resurrection of Max Lord and Osiris have to do with any of this?) and have since gone on to do their own things. Brightest Day is simply an excuse for DC, Johns and Tomasi to play around with a bunch of characters they like for a year in an “event” before putting them back into the DCU for everyone to love. That doesn’t mean Aquaman and Hawkman don’t deserve the chance (as they’re the only two with confirmed ongoings) because there is never a reason not to try and promote the character. However, DC could have certainly brought Aquaman back to life and put him in an ongoing by simply giving him the Aquaman: Rebirth title that his portion of Brightest Day essentially was.

So it’s with a rather heavy head that I note that Brightest Day has essentially ended my particular love of both creators. Tomasi and Johns were previously two of the brightest names (pun intended) in the DC roster. With their Green Lantern titles as well as runs in various minis (The Mighty remains a personal favorite) proved that they were creators who could take mythology and expand on it to a grand ordeal. To a certain extent, that’s what Brightest Day was all about. We have a group of characters – again, seemingly intertwined – who all need a place in the DCU. This was the place to do it, and while that task has been done, it’s been done incredibly poorly. Johns has definitively run his lantern color concept into the ground, pun intended. We’ve seen character regression as soon as a character returns (was Aquaman’s hand loss really necessary?) and a myriad of stories that went nowhere (Firestorm had to watch the Professor die so that Swamp Thing could come back? – and yes, that’s how the White Lantern explains it) to the point that $71.76 later we were given next to nothing in return. I really hate to sound like someone who is merely disappointed at spending money on this type of thing, but considering I am “voting with my wallet” for stories like this to exist I certainly expect a tad bit more bang for my buck other than the hackneyed return of a character only a niche group care about. This isn’t the return of “the world’s greatest superhero” – this is the return of the world’s most famous walking pile of garbage (as made famous by “that Watchmen guy”). I’m glad DC’s incredibly excited to bring Swamp Thing back, but without editorializing too much I can honestly say I can’t remember a time when I’ve cared less about a major event in comics within the last five years alone.

To an extent, the title isn’t all terrible. While the story has ended up as just meandering to get to some garbage (pun once again intended) about elementals, the book is at least visually entertaining. Ivan Reis is a talented artist, and the team behind this book does the best they can with what they’ve got. You’ve got pencils from Joe Prado, Norm Rapmund, and Oclair Albert all working together on the title, and as much as the ultimate reveal of Swamp Thing as the Dark Avatar is incredibly dull emotionally, it’s a nice visual piece. The splash page covered in various veins that create the creature intertwine in an interesting and complex fashion, and the page featuring the return of certain heroes as elementals is as good as Reis’ splash work in Blackest Night (although again, it’s rather devoid of any emotional resonance). The story is supposed to feel big, and it at the very least looks it as the elementals go against the Dark Avatar in a big throw-down. There is also certainly something to be said for the visual pacing of the issue, which is very cinematic – albeit in a Michael Bay fashion.

In the end, Brightest Day is a pretty epic disappointment. If nothing else, this issue has only validated the “zero” issue of Brightest Day, as it slowly attempts to bring some of the characters back for the story to resolve a few of the “tasks” they were supposed to complete before all was said and done. In all reality, it feels like if you just read the zero issue and then read this issue, you wouldn’t have missed much that you couldn’t understand from just briefly looking at covers. So a bunch of characters “evaporated” and became elementals for the Earth. Ok. There was never really that much room to care about any of the characters you didn’t already love anyway, so not much has changed from the beginning of the story. Instead, we’re given two all-star creators putting out one of the worst titles they’ve ever collaborated on in a rather poor way to push one character back to the DCU. If DC had been honest and given us “X: Rebirth”, etc., then that would’ve at least felt appropriate. 24 issues later and all I feel as a reader is regret for putting so much time into a story that clearly could’ve been passed on since the beginning.

I suppose this is a very round-about way of saying this, but this title would’ve been a hell of a lot better if the Reverse-Flash had shown up once. At least Generation Lost has been pretty good.

Final Verdict: 2.7 – Pass, unless you really like Ivan Reis