Brightest Day #24
Writers: Geoff Johns, Peter J. Tomasi
Pencils: Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, Patrick Gleason, Adrian Syaf, Scott Clark, Norm Rapmund, Vicente Cifuentes, Oclair Albert, Tom Nguyen, Mick Gray, Mark Irwin & David Beaty
Colors: Peter Steigerwald
Cover: Gary Frank & Rod Reis
Letters: Rob Clark Jr.
Price $4.99
Publisher: DC Comics
Story/Concept (7/10): The final pieces of the White Lantern’s plan for choosing Earth’s protector fall into place. Deadman, Dove and Hawk must protect the reanimated corpse of Alec Holland while a rampaging Black Lantern Swamp Thing attempts to exterminate the Parliament of Trees and corrupt Earth’s plant life forever.
Writing (7/10): I’m a big fan of Geoff Johns in the first place and throughout Brightest Day, his love for the characters that he is writing shows through. The big elaborate plot Johns and Tomasi have weaved finally comes together and I don’t feel like any plot point was left unresolved or any mystery was left unanswered; whether or not I agree with the choices made to resolve the plot points is a completely different story. Deadman, as usual during his appearances in Brightest Day, gets stuck with explaining the exposition with the White Lantern, which has never really been poorly done, but it has never gotten past feeling a little forced and awkward. The character moments at the end with J’Onn, Aquaman, Firestorm and Hawkman are great and set up the stage for ongoing adventures in solo books. DC has already announced that Johns is writing an Aquaman ongoing, and I will be surprised if they don’t announce that J’Onn, Firestorm and Hawkman are getting solo titles. My one big gripe with the writing was that very few of the main characters developed over the course of the series. Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Hawkman and Hawk are all just as unappealing to me now as they were when Brightest Day began. Did they have some great moments? Absolutely, but I still won’t read any of their ongoing titles. If Deadman or Firestorm get an ongoing, I’ll check that out because I liked their story and character growth. But otherwise, it felt like I was watching the other characters moved around a giant chessboard by the White Lantern. Again, Brightest Day as a whole was entertaining and I’ll read it again, but Brightest Day #24 was the last chance to get me onboard and care about the rest of its main characters; it failed to do that. The cliffhanger at the end was appropriate considering that Swamp Thing has returned to the mainstream DCU. I have nothing really invested in that character, but I’m interested to see where DC will take them.
Art: (6/10) The art was really jarring in this issue. For the first half, it was very clearly the Ivan Reis/Joe Prado team that I’ve grown to love. However, after that halfway point, the art style clearly takes a sudden shift and you’re dealing with a different artist. Then three pages later it’s a different artist and then another and then another. It was distracting and visually detrimental to the story. I understand that 38 pages of art for this oversized issue is a lot for one artist to do, but the styles of all these artists are so drastically different that it hampered my enjoyment of the piece as a whole. The coloring was consistent all the way through and some of the splash pages looked really nice while others just looked horrible when compared to the page before. I felt like I was watching the art through the distorted funhouse mirrors: everything was recognizable, but distinctly different.
Cover: (8/10) I bought the regular cover and the Ivan Reis/Joe Prado variant. The regular cover is pretty awesome: a huge, hulking Swamp Thing that’s getting up in the middle of a river and looks like he will kick you from one corner of the world to the next. The White Lantern logo on his chest looks a bit out of place, but that’s forgivable and doesn’t really detract from the cover. The variant is an homage to the cover of Blackest Night #1, with Swamp Thing opening his mouth and White Lantern rings shooting out. Very cool concept and a nice way to bookend the two events.
Overall: (7/10) A fitting end to the series that delivered some great character moments and wrapped itself up nicely. Johns and Tomasi should be proud of themselves for architecting some good stories and an overarching plot to tie them all together. My personal gripe was with the choice of Swamp Thing as Earth’s protector (I think it should have been Deadman since his entire purpose in Brightest Day was to appreciate life), but I understand why Swamp Thing was chosen and it makes a certain amount of sense. The cliffhanger will probably be polarizing for those of you familiar with the character involved. I have no real personal investment in that particular character, so I’m open-minded. I still can’t get past the art, though. It feels like I’m being jerked around.
The Bottom Line: This was a “Buy” for me. I liked Brightest Day a lot and this was a satisfying ending. Apart from switching artists, it’s a well-told ending when it could have easily fallen apart in the hands of a less-experienced writing team.
Written By: Dante Buccieri