All the Colors of the Rainbow

Blackest Night #7

Nekron is putting his final gambits into place, and the various representatives of the Lantern Corps are not working together well. Specifically, Lex Luthor, weilding an Orange Lantern ring, has decided that his greed entitles him to all the other power rings. He manages to take Scarecrow’s yellow ring and tries to take Mera’s red one, but before he can do that, the full populations of all seven Lantern Corps finally arrive at Earth. But Nekron reveals his ace-in-the-hole when he kills one of the Guardians. That enables him to summon from inside the Earth a glowing white entity called simply “The Entity” — the embodiment of all life in the universe. And if Nekron call kill the Entity, guess what happens to everyone else?

Verdict: Thumbs up. More chaos, more hitting. Scarecrow and Luthor get some brief moments to shine, but at this point, it’s nearly all boiled down to just the Green Lanterns and the other Emotional Colors of the Universe. That’s not a bad thing, because the story is still rocking, and it’s still managing to get a few good shock moments out there, including a completely unexpected cliffhanger.

The Incredible Hercules #141

I really hate to say it, but it appears this is the final issue of this wonderful series. As it starts, Typhon has succeeded in almost all of his objectives. He’s killed Hera, he kills Zeus, and he’s about to use the power of Continuum to strip the universe clean of all life. Athena manages to return from the dead and re-curses Delphyne Gorgon with her snake-headed appearance. Hercules goes off to confront Typhon after telling Amadeus Cho to quit worrying about him all the time. There’s a terrific battle, and Herc almost has the ancient Titan on the ropes, but Typon wears a magic chestplate that drives all attacks on it back on the attacker — and that’s enough to almost take Hercules out of the fight. Does Hercules have a chance of defeating Typhon? Can he stop Continuum from destroying the universe? Or is there one more betrayal on the way?

Verdict: Thumbs up. And thumbs down, too. On one hand, it’s a great story, and a better ending than I was expecting from this storyarc. But on the other, I’m so tired of seeing great comic series like this get cancelled. This one has had a great run, and has profited from a lot of wildly unexpected success — but it should’ve lasted a heck of a lot longer.