White Knight to the Rescue

Green Lantern #52

It’s the next-to-the-last chapter of the “Blackest Night” event. Sinestro, almost entirely to my surprise, is now the White Lantern, the embodiment of all life in the universe. This leads all the Black Lantern zombies to fly top-speed at Earth, hoping to kill him, pursued by all of the other Lantern Corps. Looks like they didn’t need to bother, though, ’cause while Sinestro is exulting in all his power, Nekron goes and cuts him in half — length-wise — with his scythe. Doesn’t seem to have killed him, though. And a group of Lanterns manage to blow up the zombie planet of Xanshi, drastically reducing Nekron’s power and demolishing most of the zombies. Can they all shield Earth from the wreckage? And can a reborn Sinestro still lead the forces of life to victory?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Not the best of these issues, though, but it still does a good job of getting the story points across. After all, the big moments will come with the very end of the “Blackest Night” saga. Doug Mahnke’s artwork is just entirely and unbelievably awesome — the big double-sized splash page of the giant Lantern-powered framework protecting Coast City from meteor fragments is fantastically beautiful. Definitely looking forward to seeing how this is all going to shake out.

Power Girl #10

Satanna has stuck a device on Power Girl that is about to use a gravity field to compress her into a small, dead ball. Luckily, Terra has shown up, knocks Satanna around a bit, and uses a particularly nasty threat to get her to release PeeGee. While Satanna makes her escape, Power Girl and Terra return to Kara’s apartment, where they meet up with Fisher, the kid who’s blackmailing Power Girl with photos of her real identity. He has a bunch of serious demands — he wants her to go with him to pick up his comics this week, he wants her to take care of some bullies, and he wants her to help him get a date with a girl from school. Okay, that coulda been a lot worse. Power Girl and Terra head off to Kara’s company for a few hours, then go off to see Fisher’s friends at the comic shop. After that, there’s another attack from some of Satanna’s monsters, and Terra starts acting quite a bit more bloodthirsty than normal. What’s going on?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Holy cow, I just love this comic to pieces, and there are only a couple of issues left before Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Amanda Conner leave it. We get all the great stuff we’ve come to expect from this book — lots of funny stuff, outstanding artwork, great action, awesome dialogue, the best facial expressions and body language and background details in the comic world. If you’re not reading this, I’m gonna chase you down and beat you with an aardvark, I swear.