hello readers and welcome once again to another one of my comics reviews this time I’m going to do something a little bit different then my normal reviews and bring you my thoughts (rantings) on just two of the big things to come out in the last couple of weeks in comics, so lets get right to it shall we.

First off I’m going to talk  about Blackest Night # 1,  now there were parts of this comic that I liked but over all I found it a little bit lacking.   It seems like they are just trying to do to much to quickly here,  in no time every DC character to have ever died is back,  hell even those who die in the issue come back right away and this is where my biggest problem with this comic is.  I guess I’m just tired of DC bringing dead characters back to life, somewhere in the back of my mind I know that at the end of this run the majors will have some how come back from the dead and no longer be a rotting corpse and will have broken free of the black rings.  While this is a cool idea on some level, I think that the return of people like Ralph and Sue Dibny cheapens and ruins both their deaths, and the comics  that they respectively died in.  Now that I said that, on to my next problem.  I really struggle with the fact that on it’s own Blackest Night falls short.   However if you read Green Lantern #43 and 44 it makes it a better comic.  This necessary exposition from other titles  that’s required to make a blockbuster comic event worth reading isn’t right and seems to be a reoccurring problem with DC.  Inorder to understand a major story in DC you almost have to read every bit of print related to said story line.   I’m unless you happen to be a billionaire playboy this phenomena can get pretty f’n  expensive.  Marvel’s big events are just as long (maybe even longer) but with Marvel you can get away with just reading the 7 or 8 part major story and still come away satisfied and not have to have read all the side stories. For the most part the side stories are good but I’ll say probably about 30 – 40 percent suck ass and are a waste of your 4 dollars.  Four bucks a pop adds up quick when you have to buy 100 comics just to understand one story arc.   I would so far as to say that this is the reason why downloading comics has become so poplar. Now I should love this arc it features my favorite character in the DCU and that’s the Green Lantern ( Hal Jordan) but I just can’t get behind Geoff Johns on this and I know I’ve been raging on Geoff a bit lately, but I think I know why he’s been so far below what I’ve come to expect from his books this year.  What John’s problem has been is that he’s trying to write to many titles at once.   Between Flash Rebirth,Green Lantern,Blackest Night, Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps , how could you expect all of his titles to be solid gold?  With that much work to do I think it’s inevitable that the guy would eventually crap out a few titles that are lacking that certain something that makes comics great.  I say this because while Blackest Night 1 and Tales of the Corps 1 & 2 were weak Green Lantern 43 & 44 were great and made Blackest Night 1 a better comic than it was. My final problem is with Tales of the Corps this is a unneeded comic full short stories giving us a little taste of the other color Lanterns out there. I’ll say in each issue so far 1/3 of the pages were already seen in blackest night #0 (which was free on free comic book day) and if you follow the Green Lantern books you already know they exist and can just save your self 4 dollars an issue.  This sucks…  Geoff Johns is a great writer and I love his other stuff I just wish he would stop writing for trade publications and start writing for issues again.  Trades are great but people wont buy (at least i wont) them if the first 5 of a 7 part arc suck I know we need build up but you can do that without ruining the issue. So read it or don’t your choice I still will and I’ll keep hoping that this was just a little bump in the road before the arc really begins.

Next we have mile stone The Amazing Spider-Man # 600 (that means 600 issues have been released over the last 47 years true believers) and in this issue (larger than most) you get a great story feature one of Spider-Mans greatest villains (that would be Doc Octopus) I can’t think of a better villain than the good Doctor for Spideys 600th issue. Now I want to tell you the story… I really want to tell you the story,  but if I did it would just ruin the comic for you so all I will say is you get a revealing look at Doc Ock in the first few pages, a wedding, cameos from the Avengers (real ones not Osborn’s rejects), the Fantastic Four, a reminder that spidey is not just a radioactive spider bitten guy in spandex, but also a genius (like you forgot) and a surprise return for the ending you can’t miss .  Also worth mentioning is that at the back you get a couple of mini spidey stories as well as some comic covers that you have never seen.   All this for the low low price of 5 dollars; this will be 5 dollars well spent trust me on that one. If all of that wasn’t enough you should buy it for the chance to see the often forgotten Spider mobile in one of the mini stories (it really is sweet looking).

So while this weeks edition was different I hoped you all liked it. To recap Spider-Man 600 awesome, Blackest Night was alright and I can only hope it will get better. This has been Cool Terry reminding you

“Just because a guy reads comics doesn’t mean he can’t start some $@#%!”
— Brodie Bruce (Kevin Smith)

see you next week.