100 Days, 100 Comics #79: ‘Brightest Day’ #0

C2E2 week seemed like a good time to end my absence streak from Dark Tower Comics today, and Brightest Day #0 by Geoff Johns, Peter Tomasi, and Fernando Pasarin was a fine note to come back here with. Strangely enough, I did not immediately see this cover and recognize it as a piece of work by David Finch, even if I did catch the pleasant aroma of Peter Steigerwald’s colors. Anyway, this was a pretty epic 48-pager, and it’s nice when a $3.99 pamphlet comic feels like a value for what’s inside these days, so I want to dive into the content.

In the aftermath of Blackest Night, all sorts of characters are back from the dead, and this is a one-issue prologue to what’s going on with them going into the Brightest Day storyline. Boston Brand is one of my favorite characters in DC’s history, and I never really liked Martian Manhunter’s new look prior to his death, so seeing Deadman and J’onn J’onzz’s old brow ridge and costume re-re-tooling gave me a positive impression to go in on. The page economy allotted per storyline, the fact that I actually cared about the Hawk characters and the great little Maxwell Lord sequence brought it home.

Meanwhile, there was an extremely heartwarming moment when Guy Gardner presented J’onn with a tanker of Oreo cookies to make me smile and a totally bizarre moment in the Firestorm section with a kid at a party dumping a keg of beer all over a nearly topless girl at a party that had me scratching my head a bit. First off all, that is a reprehensible waste of beer. Second, he’s quite strong to be lifting that up and pouring it with any accuracy so effortlessly. And third, I’m a little surprised that got into a DCU comic — though stranger things have happened.

Moving on, Pasarin is an astonishing talent. His figures tend to out looking a little long in the torso — a bit like Michael Turner at times — but the overall strength and variety of his work page-to-page earned my four bucks. Johns’ story hit a memorable note with each of the revived heroes and villains, and I dug the seeds that were sewn.

If I’ve got one hope for Brightest Day coming out of issue #0, though, it’s that the Hawk-mythos doesn’t overshadow or impede the Boston Brand development. And if someone wants to make a current timeline of exactly what the Hawks’ history is at this point, I would not hold a grudge.

6 thoughts on “100 Days, 100 Comics #79: ‘Brightest Day’ #0

  1. Enjoyed your review, Brian (reached by the link provided by Tom Spurgeon). Especially enjoyed the fact that you liked Brightest Day #0. I thought it was very good. I had only one major gripe with it, one I’ve pretty much gotten out of my system by posting about it elsewhere on the Internet. So I’ll only concur with all that’s positive here. A good start! I look forward to this series!

  2. Enjoyed your review, Brian (reached by the link provided by Tom Spurgeon). Especially enjoyed the fact that you liked Brightest Day #0. I thought it was very good. I had only one major gripe with it, one I’ve pretty much gotten out of my system by posting about it elsewhere on the Internet. So I’ll only concur with all that’s positive here. A good start! I look forward to this series!

  3. the Kid dumping beer is proably a future super hero in the making or works out. as for the hawks history its so convulted that dc will never figure it out . for the hawks are forever lovers that wind up dieing tragicly and then being reincarnated to do it over again. though love deadman’s new look and . the oreo tanker. only in the dcu

  4. the Kid dumping beer is proably a future super hero in the making or works out. as for the hawks history its so convulted that dc will never figure it out . for the hawks are forever lovers that wind up dieing tragicly and then being reincarnated to do it over again. though love deadman’s new look and . the oreo tanker. only in the dcu

  5. Hey, thanks guys. The comments on here were clogged up in a filter I’d set up on WP. Sorry about that. Problem looks likes it’s remedied now.

  6. Hey, thanks guys. The comments on here were clogged up in a filter I’d set up on WP. Sorry about that. Problem looks likes it’s remedied now.

Leave a Reply to Brian Warmoth Cancel reply