Blackest Night, or, The Continuity Shuffle, Part 2

My son Coleman has been buying and digging DC’s latest extravaganza, Blackest Night, and he was kind enough to lend it to me so that I could check in on the company’s latest twists and turns in continuity. Lately he’s been one of my windows into the DC Universe (along with Batman and Robin and the disappointing New Krypton franchise); thanks to him, I have a better idea of what’s now happening to the Green Lanterns and the various other “colored” Lanterns of the DCU, the reds, the yellows, and so on, who together comprise Geoff Johns' so-called emotional spectrum. This “spectrum,” in effect a prismatic retcon of the Green Lantern mythos, strikes me as one of the more interesting gimmicks with which the DCU mythos has been retrofitted in recent years.

Unfortunately, no offense to Coleman, I haven’t found much to enjoy in Blackest Night. Not my cuppa tea, and all that.

Mind you, I’m grateful to have been able to read it; nice to keep a hand in, so to speak. But I’ve ended up having the same reaction to it that I’ve had to most of the DC and Marvel “event” series I’ve sampled these past few years: it ain’t for me. That this should be my default reaction to a type of comic book that once felt very much “for me” is bemusing, though it probably doesn’t warrant more than a gusty sigh and an “Oh well.” Suffice to say that these days I cannot muster enthusiasm for full-on continuity maintenance/revision.

From where I’m sitting, Blackest Night does not bear out the potential of the emotional spectrum concept. The series doesn’t offer much by way of world-building or sense of wonder. What could have been a grand pile-up instead feels like a confused postmortem. Its story-logic is thin and opportunistic, that is, frankly rigged, leaning toward nasty setpieces without the kind of connective tissue that would make those setpieces feel deserved and meaningful. As in so many crossover series, plot requirements are stipulated but not earned: a series of conditions, rather like rules in a game, are asserted so as to divide the story on several fronts and involve a plethora of characters. The results are both bewildering and unpleasant. Too many scenes are set up as if to torture beloved characters (and their fans) by having zombified mockeries of the dear departed -- the so-called Black Lanterns, based on the reanimated corpses of bygone friends and lovers -- attack the heroes and press them viciously in all their emotional weak spots. The dialogue is laced with cruelty and an unconcealed element of sexual sadism: some of the Black Lanterns get “hot” when they see nastiness enacted. For example, in issue #3 the “old” Firestorm, a Black Lantern, delights in forcing the “new” Firestorm to participate in the murder of his other half (Firestorm being the result of two people symbiotically joined).

This scene drags on with a kind of suffocating unpleasantness. That sort of salt-in-the-wound relentlessness characterizes much of the series, especially in its early, premise-setting chapters. Psychological suffering is the order of the day. Characters like the Atom are reminded over and over of the awfulness of Identity Crisis (a particularly wretched event series) and all the losses and shocks suffered in the recent past, et cetera, so that the process of grieving is prolonged, sharpened, and rendered sickening.

The upshot of all this is that many of the story-beats are repulsive to me. Worse yet, the narrative delivery is spastic, arrhythmic, and plain hard to follow. I cannot get an emotional toehold in the story, because I don’t see a robust, solidly crafted narrative follow-through to justify all the awfulness and the portentous hype that surrounds it. Despite the (I take it) painstaking seeding of this story across the DCU over the past couple of years, the actual storytelling is a hazy blur, the presumption being that I’ll do my homework so that I can understand the import of what’s happening.

It’s axiomatic by now that DC and Marvel have given up on casual readers. Hell, that was true twenty-odd years ago. The vast narratives of the DC Universe and Marvel Universe not only allow for, they’ve practically come to revolve around line-wide crossovers like these, mega-events that presuppose readers steeped in company lore and conversant with the latest involutions in continuity. Blackest Night is yet another example of a story that isn’t really a story in itself, but a skeleton, a notional blueprint, a whiteboard’s worth of Post-It notes. It continually gestures outward and backwards rather than resolving into a tight, self-contained performance. The resulting impoverishment of the narrative is twofold: for one, the plot judders unpredictably from one issue to the next, transitioning vaguely, with unexplained sidelong bits that are never fleshed out. The result is a hectic patchwork of allusions that makes clear only one thing, the fact that DC is banking on me investing in a bunch of interpolated tie-in issues from other series. Secondly, all the emotional cues are dependent on obsessive reader investment in the DCU characters, specifically the ways those characters have been “developed” or ravaged in other recent event series. Attempts at pathos depend on minute knowledge of the Identity Crisis/Infinite Crisis/Final Crisis cycle of crossovers, and, more broadly, on the literal-minded, demythologizing, and reductive treatment of the heroes that recent DC books have trafficked in so heavily, a kind of treatment that has rendered longtime favorites nigh-unrecognizable.

Granted, the Flash (Barry Allen) and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) are marshaled to serve as heroic exempla and anchoring presences, affirming putative Silver Age values. Also, some attempt is made to wake the Atom (Ray Palmer) up from his current spell of suffering and befuddlement so that he can likewise turn a corner. But these efforts at recuperation -- aesthetically conservative gestures toward DC’s well-remembered past -- are overshadowed by necrophilic renderings of death, torment, the plucking-out of hearts, and (what must be artist Ivan Reis’s forte) spectacular summonings and transformations of the armies of the dead. What we have here is an uncomfortable mashup between Silver Age conservatorship, which in itself is usually pretty boring, and Zombie Apocalypse style (bracing when done in a blackly comic style, enervating when, as here, it’s taken seriously).

In sum, Blackest Night is Marvel Zombies by way of Julie Schwartz, but in earnest-redemptive rather than darkly humorous mode. It mixing of genres, superheroes and horror, flatters neither, lacking the exuberant, can-you-top-this excess of an untrammeled zombie tale but also the unembarrassed gosh-wow absurdity of a top-rank costumer. Impeding everything is the series’ obvious function as a franchise-builder: a calculated, fussy attempt to ravel out the implications of the emotional spectrum concept and pull off yet more retconning of the Lantern Corps mythology. I suppose these aspects -- revelations about still more bad things the Guardians have done, still more trouble Sinestro is going to cause, and so on -- are tied to Johns’ larger plans for Green Lantern, but they just confused me. The whole thing is a mess.

What is most frustrating is that, as I follow the story’s dotted line, I cannot make out any sense of progress, or of narrative way stations or stops reached along the way. Everything seems to be taking place in a very short time and a very constricted span, despite multiple clues that it is supposed to be taking place over a long period and on a vast, cosmic scale. I cannot grasp the significance of what is happening and the story’s premise remains soupy and uncertain under foot, like quicksand. Again, there are gaps that seem to want to be filled by tie-ins -- and apparently we are now above such hand-holding devices as editorial notes, sign-posting, and expository dialogue, things that would make all this confusion easier to process. I’ve guess we’re supposed to assume that we’re too grown up for that.

Compounding the problem are fumbles in the visual storytelling, as in, for example, the spread in issue #1 that introduces the idea of the Black Lanterns’ “rings” spreading out across the universe. I was genuinely puzzled by the sequencing in this section -- I couldn’t figure out where I was, or why -- and wondered for a moment if I had inadvertently skipped some pages (nope). You’d think that the complicated plotting of crossover events like this would enforce an editorial commitment to crystal-clarity in breakdowns and layouts, but, based on this and Final Crisis, you’d be wrong. These are comics made for readers accustomed to Wikipedia glosses and blogospheric chatter: occasions for networking and the accrual of insider knowledge rather than freestanding stories.

In other words, what we’ve got here is a highlights reel rather than a game: a flickering series of reminders that Something Important has been going on.

I shouldn’t be surprised, I know. Most comic book fans are familiar with the continuity system and the implied contract behind it. We understand that “event” comics and their tie-ins are supposed to interlock, but also that such meshing inevitably involves some grinding of gears. Imperfect if not broken interfaces are part of the system. The problem is that overreliance on the system vitiates the drama of the individual comics, hollowing them out so that to get anything like meaningful emotional payoff you’ve got to invest in the entire crossover just for the sake of investing. That’s the only way you can feel you belong to it, or feel as if it belongs to you: the way sports fans will follow a losing team come hell or high water just because that’s what it takes to feel a sense of ownership. The emotional payoff has less to do with what's in front of you and more to do with your sense of your own effort and commitment.

There’s some sociocultural interest in this kind of exercise, but it’s not an artistic interest, is it?

Intensity, as in the spectacular brutality of Reis’s images, would seem to be Blackest Night’s only virtue. The spectacle reaches fever pitch in #8, with three double-page spreads and one foldout that works as a four-page spread -- in essence, a poster. This is where Reis excels, not in the beat-by-beat delivery of narrative (among the series’ many graphically exciting stunts are several spreads that have to be turned sidewise to be read). Story-wise, Blackest Night is barren; the gourd is empty and dry. The antagonists’ motivations are barely even sketched in, and the conflict seems phony. The storyline is justified only metanarratively, as a commentary on continuity itself and on the elusiveness of comic book “death,” rather than justified intrinsically in terms of story-logic. Sure, it’s momentarily clever to point out to fans -- who already are very aware of such things -- that continuity maintenance is, increasingly, a form of graverobbing. Ha. But this is not grounds for a major crossover series.

What happens in the end (do I even need to say SPOILER ALERT at this point?) is that the real-world ulterior motive behind the series is fulfilled, meaning that several once-dead DC characters are revived, so as to pave the way to Johns et al.’s follow-up crossover Brightest Day and what is generally being touted as a tonal shift for the DCU, something, presumably, along the lines of Marvel’s new “Heroic Age.” Hmph.  By now I guess we can take it for granted that readers take this sort of thing for granted: everyone knows that the big event series are rigged to revise the rules of the game, to position new or revived properties, and to set up further event series. Everyone knows that crossovers always have larger editorial mandates in sight. But in this case the obviousness is especially brazen. I’ll concede that Blackest Night #8 takes some stabs at poignancy by spotlighting the reactions of the resurrected; that’s nice. The results, though, are garbled due to hastiness and compression, the assumption being, I suppose, that these things can always be explored in greater depth in some other comic. Again, this isn’t storytelling but blueprinting. By which I mean marketing.

In the end, Blackest Night is simply about an idea, the kind of evocatively ghastly idea that Reis can render with gusto: “the dead will rise.” This is high-concept marketing with a vengeance, a sure-fire sales lure, and I understand that, sure enough, the series has been a hit. There is, admittedly, a certain appealing craziness to the premise. I gather from talking to Coleman that he enjoys the series’ sheer chutzpah and the fact that it doesn’t try to over-rationalize everything. He thinks of it as old-fashioned or Silver Age-ish in that respect, and I can see that. Anyway, I appreciate the loan; I like keeping tabs on things like this, even if only from arm’s length. But from my point of view as a reader -- and this is fatal for my long-term interest -- Blackest Night is not about a conflict whose terms make sense inherently. What’s more, it seems a bit desperate. Its emphases on grief, psychological torture, and head-exploding, chest-bursting body horror strike me as cheap and unmotivated: frantic lunges for currency in a comic book universe half-buried in its continual obsessive exhumation of the Silver Age past. The coming Brightest Day will perhaps tack in a different direction, but I don’t expect that to last.

There must be an interesting way out of the sand trap of continuity, but this ain’t it.

 

Comments

[Mike Rhode]

Well, I'm sure that was more interesting to read than the comics could be. Still, you'll never completely get them out of your brain now, Charles.

And what is it w/ the necrophilia going on in American pop culture now? Vampires in fiction, zombies in comics...

[Charles Hatfield]

What can you say about a trope (vampirism) whose once-implicit subtext (an illicit sexuality) has been made explicit and driven home with monotonous regularity?

Bo-ring.

As for the Zombie Apocalypse, Romero's original "Night" is terrific, a kind of existentialist locked-room nightmare, but the more recent riffs on this formula, it seem to me, have to do with the nasty thrill of blowing the heads off of people who are your neighbors, but aren't.

Not bo-ring, exactly, but rapidly spiraling down the drain of repetition, self-consciousness and parody.

Claims for the satiric potential of this are overstated.

[Rob Ullman]

I don't know if these things used to be better...like maybe the strings weren't quite so evident...or maybe I was just a kid and hadn't seen it all a thousand times before. I dunno. It's almost impossible to see the creators cashing their paychecks with books like these...their existence as "product" and little else is so glaringly evident. It just seems like a colossal waste of everyone's time, and beneath you as a reviewer.

Couldn't agree more with the disgustingness of Identity Crisis, which I read not too long ago while loitering at B&N. Same goes for James Robinson's recent Cry for Justice, whose "big finish" was the death of a child, Speedy's daughter. The death of a child! In a friggin' comic book? Have these men no shame?

[Marc]

I always think of the explanation Grant Morrison offered in an issue of The Invisibles more than a decade ago: a culture whose thoughts have turned to death is a culture that knows it's dying.

Charles, you've clarified exactly why I haven't read Blackest Night or most of its predecessors: I don't have anybody to loan me the copies. I like keeping tabs too, but these aren't comics I want to buy, or own.

[Charles Hatfield]

There's an additional reason why continuity-driven comics keep graverobbing: there isn't incentive, in fact there's a positive disincentive, to develop fresh, original properties within the corporate-owned comic book universes. It's just not a smart thing for creators to do. So resuscitation and revamping take the place of coming up with new notions.

Zombie stories are reflexive in the sense that they acknowledge this tendency toward the exhumation or reanimation of "dead" things.

[Groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com]

Did you only read BLACKEST NIGHT, or the GREEN LANTERNs too (which Johns also wrote and interwove very tightly with the main event title)? GL is so closely tied in, it almost doesn't make sense to call it a tie-in; really, the crossover story pings between the two titles, and if you read one without the other, the gaps you mention are bound to seem many and enormous. Other tie-ins have some bearing on the main story, but GL is the one (and really the only one) that completes those dangling threads you complain of here.

[Austin]

Interesting view on "Blackest Night," and one that moved along the same lines as my reaction. I've been reading DC for probably ten years now, though I would not say I'm a "DC Reader." Green Lantern has been my favorite superhero since Kyle Rayner debuted (I grew up with him), and Geoff Johns' foray into the universe with "Green Lantern: Rebirth" was promising. At the time he was one of my favorite writers, but since has become a writer whose work only induces groans.

You made some good points, although I disagree that the layouts within "Blackest Night" are in some way indicative of readers with low to non-existent attention spans, something you allude to when you say, "These are comics made for readers accustomed to Wikipedia glosses and blogospheric chatter: occasions for networking and the accrual of insider knowledge rather than freestanding stories." You never blatantly indict the readers as being lazy, although your thinly veiled jibe becomes clearer when you have to clarify your statement by saying, "In other words, what we’ve got here is a highlights reel rather than a game: a flickering series of reminders that Something Important has been going on."

The end of Geoff Johns as a writer to watch came with "Blackest Night" navigating the path I knew it would: White Lantern arrival, characters being revived, goofy dialogue, etc. Although some amount of surprise came with Sinestro being revealed as the White Lantern, it doesn't make the obviousness of the plot point less hackneyed. Over in the main "Green Lantern" title Johns furthered the weak plot by giving each "emotion" a corresponding animal, achieving what I had feared when the initial reveal of the "emotional spectrum" came, that Green Lantern would seem far too similar to the Power Rangers.

[Charles Hatfield]

Austin, in no way did I intend to indict BN's readers for laziness. On the contrary, my point was that the comic's creators and publisher rely excessively on the dedication of their audiences.

"Lazy" readers wouldn't bother with "blogospheric chatter" and "Wikipedia glosses." Only dedicated readers would do this, so no accusation of laziness is intended.

My point was that the readers' dedication has to do with participation in a larger fandom and the fascination of accruing specialized knowledge, which is an interactive process that makes up to some degree for poor or abstruse storytelling. I think DC and Marvel both understand this, and lean on this understanding, to the detriment of the actual comics.

I do not buy the cliched talk about comics readers, or young people in general, having "low attention spans." IMO comics fans tend to have high, albeit selective, attention spans, and can focus for long periods on things that uninitiated readers find puzzling. This is true, BTW, of many people diagnosed with ADHD, who really are capable of sustained attention but not necessarily under strictly regimented circumstances, e.g., in classrooms. I don't think anything in my BN review contributes to the idea of readers/fans having limited attention spans, and I certainly didn't intend any such jibe.

My point was that Johns et al. do a poor job of connecting the dots. Dedicated readers or not, I think the comics would be better if the creators paid at least some minimal attention to coherence and through-plotting. This is not necessarily an indictment of the readers (though I confess myself bemused by fans' appetite for things like BN) but a complaint about craft.

[Charles Hatfield]

@ Groovy, a.k.a. Curt:

I figured that BN and the current GL titles were tightly interlaced; obviously, the GL Corps is at the heart of the emotional spectrum concept. Out of stubbornness, I would not buy BN and certainly wouldn't buy the tie-ins, so inevitably I missed some of the connective tissue. Call my review an experiment in reading an event series without its attendant crossovers.

BTW, Curt, your blog is cool, thanks. BN and DC fans will want to read your own overview of BN at:

http://groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com/2010/04/blackest-night-concluding-overview-pt-1.html

I also really liked your "Can Comics Be Scary?" post and the discussion it engendered:

http://groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com/2010/04/can-comics-be-scary.html

Go check 'em out, folks!

[Austin]

Charles,

First, I agree with you that Johns and his luminaries do a bad job of connecting the dots, and overall his attempt at utilizing (see: fixing) convoluted continuity has failed. Plotting massive events such as "Blackest Night" might not be possible without certain failings craft-wise. Character betrayals, plot holes, entirely superfluous tie-ins (both "Blackest Night: Superman" and "Blackest Night: Batman") are the norm now for "big two" events. "Blackest Night" was guilty of all of these.

The only reason I felt you were making any kind of statement about readers' laziness/lacking attention span was the reference to Wikipedia, which has entire plots to novels, comics, movies, and TV shows readily available to read without actually having to commit to the original product. I also agree that the majority of readers are not lazy or unable to focus on complex narratives, whether in comics or other art forms, so I'm with you there.

I disagree that Marvel or DC "rely excessively on the dedication of their audiences." Both companies know these events are not written for casual readers, and are merely doing their part to receive the return (cash) on their investment. Also, "accruing specialized knowledge" has always been a part of the comics world, and has no more affect on "Blackest Night" than any other storyline. I doubt Johns wrote "Blackest Night" just to add more information to all of the character sheets involved; that is simply a side-effect which happens whenever a new story is created.

There is an argument to be made for blatant consumerism powering the sales behind "Blackest Night," though, as DC was offering plastic rings for each lantern available by purchasing certain books. The comic shop I work at sold a huge amount of each issue, most just so the customer could obtain the ring. Overall your review was good though. I think I probably forgot to say that.

[Groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com]

Thanks, Charles (and btw, I quite liked your remarks about FINAL CRISIS linked in this post)! Your dissection here is spot on, and if I don't arrive at the same damning judgment as you do, it's not because I disagree with anything you say, but because I found enough to like that on balance I can still come away from BN having enjoyed it to some extent. We've actually independently singled out a number of the same details for criticism--that Firestorm/Gen scene is truly execrable, as I mentioned in a review of that issue:

http://groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com/2009/09/blackest-night-3.html

And then again when dclebeau tore into the scene at read/RANT!, I felt even more inclined to agree in comments there:

http://readrant.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/rant-blackest-night-3/

Also, that spread you mention from the first issue with the black rings scattering through the cosmos seemed problematic to me, too, as I mention in a post about outer-space establishing shots in comics:

http://groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com/2009/09/blackest-night-great-darkness-saga-pt-7.html

Thanks again, Charles! Glad I found your blog, and looking forward to reading more from you!

[Mikael]

Lots of BIG words with very little in the way of examples to back it all up.

If you don't understand Blackest Night, then stop reading super-hero books. Cause clearly you're too stupid for them.

[Charles Hatfield]

@ Mikael:

Oh, I backed it up fine. Look again. My BIG words pull their weight.

But I'll remember that I'm too stupid for the subject matter when I get to teaching a seminar on superhero comics this fall. Having a fair sense of one's own stupidity is, after all, the Socratic definition of wisdom.

Drop in again when you have something worth saying.

[Charles Hatfield]

@ Austin:

You said,

"The only reason I felt you were making any kind of statement about readers' laziness/lacking attention span was the reference to Wikipedia, which has entire plots to novels, comics, movies, and TV shows readily available to read without actually having to commit to the original product."

I may have misled you, sorry. I intended to criticize DC's (and Marvel's) emphasis on comics that encourage the amassing of information in the form of databases, wikis, etc. I didn't mean to suggest that readers who have recourse to such things are lazy. I imagine that a lot of superhero comics readers find those kinds of resources enjoyable and even like contributing to them. As you can probably tell from my post about DC's Who's Who

( http://www.thoughtballoonists.com/2010/04/the-spinner-rack-that-forgot-time.html ),

I don't dig that kind of thing so much, though when I was younger I enjoyed glossaries, maps, and other such materials about high fantasy worlds, which I think is a similar itch. Nowadays I'm more about the style of delivery.

You're right that accruing specialized knowledge has long been a part of the comics world, and I would never claim to be outside that. I just don't like comics that are so continuity-driven that the individual comics become hollowed out and only function in terms of the system. I guess what I don't like is the aggrandizement of the editor's role over those of individual writers and artists, and, concomitantly, the sense that even eager writers like Johns are losing their grip on story because they are engaged in pushing toy battleships around on great big maps.

[Charles Hatfield]

@ Curt (Groovyage):

Thanks for your comments, again!

I shouldn't be too hard on BLACKEST NIGHT. I suppose it's better than IDENTITY CRISIS, INFINITE CRISIS, 52, and COUNTDOWN, based on my admittedly limited sampling of those titles.

Not as miserable as IDENTITY CRISIS, not as decentered and shapeless as INFINITE CRISIS (though I didn't get far with that one), not as boring as 52 (of which I read, what, eight or nine issues?), and not as stupid as COUNTDOWN (though my sampling there was very small, admittedly).

I read a couple of issues of Marvel's CIVIL WAR and felt very similarly about them as I did about BN.

I think I prefer FINAL CRISIS by just a hair, because of Grant Morrison's conceptual chutzpah. Though BN has more, er, consistent artwork.

Thanks again for the links. I enjoyed that post about "establishing shots" in space opera-like books.

[Joseph Thomas]

Charles: re-vamping. Heh heh. Get it? Vampires?

I wonder if this summer, while I'm away in VA, I might write something to/with you about Morrison, as I actually liked Crisis (as I've said in past comments).

Oh, and I'm reading Irredeemable, as Craig suggested (I think?) you should. I'm not finding it as fresh as I hoped it would be (hope in the face of the fear it wouldn't be fresh at all, actually). In fact, I'm finding Ellis's SuperGod series much more satisfying. Especially after reading his No Hero and Black Something (Friday?), the first two of his trio of super-hero musings (or "deconstruction"? As in "making radically undecidable"--you know, actual deconstruction).

I had a great class today. The Silverstein class is really paying off. And the students seem to love it. Having a great time talking about his art. Thought about you, and mentioned you, today; something along the lines of: I wish my buddy Charlie Hatfield were here. He'd have some interesting things to say about this art. Unlike me." That got a laugh, as we had just finished a 30 minute in-depth discussion of a single panel of one of Shel's cartoons.

Anyhoo, We should chat soon. Miss you, pal.

[Mikael Bergkvist]

Interesting and well thought out. Thanks

[ryan]

The saddest part is alone, BN is weak, and thus, the HC/TPB/GN will be weak because instead of printing them in order ala Sinestro Corps War, they aren't doing Blackest Night with all the middle parts (GL/GLC a little) between each issue. Ideally it should have been a 3 volume series or one pretty huge HC.

[Charles Hatfield]

@ Ryan:

Wouldn't you say that a huge HC collection would falsify the experience of BN by implying that it is one coherent, monumental work, rather than the opportunistic series of tie-in products that it really is?

We fans crave the monumentality, legitimacy, and durability that a big HC seems to confer, but, really, the whole point of something like BN is being strung along for months and going with the flow and seeing what kinds of surprises the experience has in store for us. As a collected work, a series like BN simply doesn't have the coherence that would justify a massive HC omnibus edition.

I would think that keeping BN issues in a long box would be a better memento of the experience than buying some oversized book collection. I just don't see the narrative and aesthetic coherence that would make a $50 "Blackest Night" HC worthwhile.

It's like this need that so many of us have now to own all successive episodes of a TV series in DVD form. A few series warrant this, sure, but, come on, do we need every episode of a sitcom just because we enjoyed tuning in week after week when it was first on TV?

[Thechannelocho.blogspot.com]

rev sully of the channel OCHO blog here...

I guess I liked it and categorized what I bought. I posted it here so give it a spin if you wanna.

http://thechannelocho.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html#6343617086743117123

I'm going to post this column as a really insightful & great foil to my extolling of the Blackest Night. I believe in fair & balanced and I really like your argument. I still like it...

crea shaakti,
Rev Sully

Eric O'Sullivan
Boston, MA USA