Friday, January 28, 2011

Comics Talk: DC's Brightest Day and Marvel's Chaos War

I began the month with comics talk, so I'll go ahead and end it with comics talk. :-)

Before I start, let me go ahead and put my spoiler warning, because I’m going to discuss the following recent comic books:

Brightest Day #18
Chaos War #5


If you haven’t read these books yet and don’t want what’s in them spoiled for you, then

STOP READING NOW!

You have been warned!

Those of you on Facebook saw me call DC Comics’ Brightest Day storyline as: Worst. Storyline. Ever.

That is, at least so far. In my mind, it’s actually surpassed Marvel’s Civil War in regards to high level suckitude, and judging by what I’ve seen in the most recent issue, I don’t see a lot of hope for improvement. In fact, I give up on this series; I’m not buying any more issues, because I so badly do not want to see a very disappointing ending and know that I spent good comics money buying it when I could have bought something more entertaining and inspiring – like Mickey Mouse or The Smurfs.

What exactly don’t I like about it? It’s going nowhere! Blackest Night, at least, was entertaining, even if they got carried away resurrecting every freakin’ dead hero and villain ever created by DC. But Brightest Day has had no focus, no direction and no logic to what it’s doing with the resurrected characters. And geez, I am so sick of seeing the stupid, dumbfounded expressions of shock on the resurrected characters just about every damn issue. I thought there was some point as to why these particular characters where resurrected by the White Lantern entity, but so far I have not seen it. Instead, we are treated to more and more plot twists that do nothing to help explain or clarify what is going on.

The recent issue of BD#18 was it for me. In it, Hawkman and Hawkgirl had completed whatever goal that the White Lantern Entity had set out for them to do and they were rewarded with the Entity’s “Life Restored” command. They were finally able to get their life back, and they were free to live as they had always wanted to do over the thousands of years that they had been living. And as might be expected for lovers, they were about to engage in some passionate love-making. So what happens? The Entity comes in and disintegrates them! I was there yelling “WTF??” I mean, seriously man! WTF??!!?

This is an especially insane and even cruel way to end their lives when you consider that the resurrected bad guys of Reverse Flash, Captain Boomerang, and Max Lord were all able to go on with their lives once they completed the goals that the Entity set out for them! It was then that I also knew what I had to do: I had to blog about it! LOL So gang, I am done with Brightest Day. I am saving my money for other comics.

As for Chaos War #5, at least it didn’t stretch on forever like recent comic company “blockbuster” storylines have done as of late. And the ending, in which the Chaos King was tricked into a parallel pocket universe to complete his goal of totally absorbing the universe into nothingness, kinda made sense. But it also made you wonder why anyone didn’t think of that sooner. Consider that you had Bruce Banner and Amadeus Cho, two of the smartest people on the planet, who didn’t think of doing that until the end. Pocket parallel universes have been well-known and even visited by Marvel characters for ages, so it’s not like it was a brand new concept to them. I mean hell, they even knew about the parallel universe that they sent the Chaos King to!

After the gang finally puts the Chaos King away, Hercules – who had been given a promotion of sorts by being elevated to a “skyfather on steroids” - gave up his powers in order to put things back the way they were. The extent of his gift was such that he is now mortal and powerless. So basically, what this makes the ending is a "deus ex machina" - in other words, kind of a cop-out giving the kind of buildup that had been going on to get to this point. Oh well, it was still an enjoyable read.

Have a great weekend! :-D

No comments: