Blackest Night: Green Lantern Paperback – July 19, 2011

You need to read this along with the Blackest Night compilation, it fills in a lot of the story line. Ideally you'll end up wanting to read all the Blackest Night tie-ins, but this is a crucial one. To see all the colours of the Spectrum fighting alongside each other for the sake of Earth and the entire universe is wonderful and awe-inspiring. It demonstrates even the Orange, Yellow and Red lights, often deemed evil, can be used towards the greater good, even though their individual motives may not be all that good. I don't know why I haven't read this sooner. Awesome writing, great storyline, great action, great artwork! -Waiting on my Indigo ring!

Multiple tie-in's to comic book mega-events are nothing new, but tie-in's that are actually worth your time and expand the main story are something of a rarity indeed, at least to me anyway. With Blackest Night, DC's latest collected mega-event, writer Geoff Johns creates a new Lantern Corps that is composed of deceased heroes and villains, and threaten to destroy all existence as we know it. This tie-in features issues from the main Green Lantern title which ran parallel to Blackest Night, and fleshes out much more of the main story as well. From witnessing Green Lantern villain Black Hand's disturbing admission into the Black Lantern Corps, to Hal Jordan and Barry "The Flash" Allen tangling with the resurrected Martian Manhunter, to Hal teaming up with arch-nemesis Sinestro and other various Lantern Corps, and a showdown between the posessed Spectre and a Paralax-possessed Hal; Green Lantern: Blackest Night isn't just smashing, it's essential. Doug Mahnke provides a majority of the pencil work here, and does a more than fine job in doing so as well. Since Johns brought Hal Jordan back from the dead and re-launched the Green Lantern title, he's done virtually no wrong during his run on the title, and that trend continues. After reading this, and Blackest Night, you'll be hoping that his run never comes to an end.

The Blackest Night event is, without a doubt, one of the greatest Green Lantern themed crossover events for the entirety of the DC universe, if not THE greatest of all time. While there is another book out there that covers the entire event as it played out for the Justice League as a whole, this book primarily focuses on the Green Lantern story threads, giving you more story elements to enjoy if you've already read the other Blackest Night Saga collection. While it is not an absolute must-buy, fans of Green Lantern and the Green Lantern world-building will enjoy having this in their collection.

Johns uses the Green Lantern title to provide a cosmic glance at what was happening to all the various Corps members prior to their team-up at the finale of Blackest Night. While the Justice League holds back the undead hordes on Earth, Green Lantern and Indigo-1 travel to collect the leaders of each one of the other Corps including Sinestro, Atrocitus, Saint Walker, Carol Ferris, and Larfleeze. The War of Light is actually the bigger story arc of this volume until the Blackest Night takes precedence and the Corps must set aside their differences for the sake of all life. Once the unlikely group arrives back on Earth we get to see a bit more of their battle against Necron and a bit more from the various Earth heroes and villains who are deputized during the Blackest Night finale (like Star Sapphire Wonder Woman or Sinestro Corps Scarecrow). We also get to see the conclusion of the fight between Black Lantern Specter and Hal Jordan (who momentarily goes full Parallax again to fight off the giant Black Lantern).

Blackest Night easily matches, perhaps surpasses, any of the "Crises" that have come before this in the DC Universe.As I noted in my review of the Blackest Night collected TPB (Blackest Night 1 - 7), the event works like a game of chess, and much of the stage setting for this chess game happens "off board" - i.e. not in the mini series or collected TPB, but here, in Green Lantern vol 9: Blackest Night (collecting issues 43 - 52). Some additional context is provided by Green Lantern Corps: Blackest Night and several other regular series issues, but I'd say this volume of Green Lantern is a must read if you are to truly make sense of everything; if I hadn't, I'd have had several WTF moments while reading Blackest Night. I doubt this book would be fun/ satisfying to read standalone.Why DC? Why couldn't you just publish a chronologically ordered single/ multiple volume TPB ed for Blackest Night? As things stand, people have to rely on reading orders and concordances to make sense of it. (Not to mention buy additional books). I'm therefore forced to dock a star from my rating... (I didn't for Blackest Night)Anyway - this book is worth reading, and I'd recommend any reader to go through this and the Blackest Night collection simultaneously. There are several helpful "reading order" type guides available to walk you through. Me? I just read the first issue of each, and then whenever events in Blackest Night seemed a bit off, went back and read the next issue of GL: Blackest Night. Worked well enough, although once or twice I was spoiled mid-read...

I recently started reading comics again and this was a great point to start back in. The art is amazing and the story is top notch. The Geoff Johns run on Green Lantern is one of the best comic story runs you can read.

Geoff Johns is, plain and simple, a genius. This is one of the best comics I've ever read. The compilation here had a few bits missing, tales of the corps and new guardian stories, but still the top of my list.

Beautifully illustrated. I'm new to buying comics but I enjoyed this great story explaining the origins of each Lantern, the Emotional Spectrum, and the history of the Guardians of the Universe. Many of DC's colorful characters clash together as they fight during the Blackest Night.

love this comic book

This book is pure gold!!!

Good reading.

Sono partito da BN per cominciare a leggere green lantern dato che il reboot rebirth faceva troppi riferimenti a BN e BD ( che spero di poter leggere presto). Il massimo della goduria è stato leggere green lantern BN , BN e BN : tales of the corps grazie ad una guida che suggeriva come passare tra un volume e l'altro per seguire la trama cronologicamente.

Outstanding tale and artwork. Love the green lantern universe it's all pure scifi, and this tale is of the highest order. Is part of a much larger series and I would recommend that you read the whole series to get the most out of it. It's not really a good starting point for someone new to the characters, you wouldn't be able to pick up the relationships they have with each other nor their history.The artwork is outstanding and deserves the highest praise possible.