Clean Shaven or Crumbling Zombies, Necrosha vs. Blackest Night

OK now I feel like an idiot.  Here I was last month talking about how original and interesting Marvel’s Necrosha crossover seemed.  Confined to the X-books, the miniseries is basically using dead characters as an army to plague our heroes.  Well over at DC,virtually the same thing is happening in the Blackest Night crossover event.  Substitute the Green Lanterns for the X-Men and you have villains robbing graves and bring back the recently and not so recently deceased.  At this point there seem to be two key differences  (1) The Necrosha undead aren’t zombies and (2) Blackest Night undead are mostly villains and relatives of heroes.

In this scene from the X-Force #21, the Merry Marvel Mutants are fending off an attack from Selene’s undead forces.  The amusing thing is that the undead have been furnished with their old costumes and look surprisingly fresh and clean shaven after being six feet under.  In the scene below, Banshee almost shakes his mind control and desire to kill X-Men, but then falls prey to his new prime directive.

In this scene from Blackest Night:Batman #2, Batman and Robin have broken into a National Guard armory to arm themselves for a fight with the undead.

These guys all look like your typical rotting zombies except that they are rocking these weird Black Lantern uniforms, which consist of the clothes they were buried in turned black with a little Black Lantern logo. Very chic.

And since Batman is very busy this month, sometime before the graves gave up their dead, he and Robin were taking on the Flamingo in Morrison’s Batman and Robin #6.  The Flamingo is a mute assassin on a pink motorcycle.  Before you laugh, the man has a bullwhip and knows how to use it.  Then over in Batman #693, Richard Grayson is still getting into role of philanthropist in Gotham City.

What I had completely forgtten was that Dr. Thomas Eliott (a.k.a. Hush) is still running around with Bruce Wayne’s face. This is when a strong editorial presence would help with some notes in the book instead of sending me to Wikipedia.  At any rate, Hush began to impersonate Bruce, after his “death” and Catwoman hunted him down and turned him over to Richard.  Hush escaped and is being kept on the short leash, since Alfred and Richard think that it helps having a Bruce Wayne impersonator running around.  I don’t get it and this the first time its been addressed in this title.

Speaking of the dead and reborn over in Captain America Reborn #4, we find out that Steve Rogers is alive and kicking.  Well he’s been displaced and is outside of our time stream.  Apparently, the bullet used in his assassination took him out of our time stream and the only way to get him back is to use Sharon Carter since her DNA has the chronal trackers to pull him back here.  We’re stretching the bounds of acceptable comic book science here but we do have Reed Richards, Dr. Doom, and Arnim Zola running around sounding like a Dr. Who episode.

Not sure when in proper Marvel chronology that story is unfolding, but Norman Osborn’s second in command at HAMMER, Victoria Hand is part of the aforementioned Captain America storyline as well as a key player in Dark Avengers #11.  Hand decides to surrender to the Molecule Man after he “kidnaps” Norman and defeats the Dark Avengers.  In a prelude to yet another crossover, Norman Osborn comes in contact with The Molecule Man, The Beyonder, Enchantress, Mephisto, and Zarathos.  Not sure what they want yet, but its an assemblage of cosmically powerful villains.  The first two are capable of wiping out the existence of the multiverse.  The Enchantress seems like the lightweight of the bunch, but still she’s a near immortal Asgardian goddess.  Mephisto and Zarathos are infinitely powerful demons, but it seems like they would be redundant with guys like Molecule Man and The Beyonder running around.

And speaking of villains, IGN.com did a top 100 Comic Book Villains countdown.  I’m not going to critique all 100, but the a couple in the top ten didn’t seem right to me.

1. Magneto
2. The Joker
3. Doctor Doom
4. Lex Luthor
5. Galactus
6. Darkseid
7. Ra’s Al Ghul
8. Loki
9. Dark Phoenix
10.Kingpin

I don’t consider Magneto, Galactus, or Dark Phoenix to be villains.  Have they slaughtered innocents?  Yes.  In the case of Galactus and Dark Phoenix they consumed galactic bodies.  But Magneto moves back and forth from being a villain to hero.  Galactus doesn’t destroy planets out of malice, he’s hungry.  And Phoenix was manipulated by Mastermind and the Hellfire Club, so unlike the others on this list pure evil intent isn’t a motivating factor.  I’d make The Joker number one on the basis of The Killing Joke and Batman RIP.  I’d put Two Face in at number five and put the Red Skull in at number nine.

Last and certainly least is this from the new creative team of the Justice League of America.

As you can see they are featuring the lesser heroes of the DC Universe in the lineup. What amuses me is that the characters are aware of the fact that they are second banana or junior varsity.  I don’t want a book where the characters have an inferiority complex.

The powers that be at DC have gutted what was a great team book to make sure that their A-Team of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman is always front and center in a crossover event. This leaves some books like JLA in limbo limping along from crossover event to crossover event.  I hope the new creative team can make a go of it.

Related posts:

1. Umbrella Academy and Necrosha Deliver as Ultimate Avengers Jumps The Shark
2. Mouse House Ponys Up Cash For Marvel
3. Wonder Woman’s Extreme Makeover
4. Thor Brings It, Meanwhile Oracle Goes On A Date
5. Wonder Woman in Chains, while Siege is a Bloody Yawn