Nobody on the Justice League of America’s roster of superheroes has more duties than Green Lantern. That is possibly due to the fact that, unlike the League, whose primary operational area is Earth, Space Sector 2814 is under Lantern’s purview.
And given that the JLA has only been there for a few decades at most, and the Lantern Corps has been in existence for millions of years, his obligation to the Lantern Corps is greater than his duties in the JLA.
One of DC’s most effective non-Crisis crossovers in recent memory was made possible by Geoff Johns’ extraordinary storytelling skills and the idea that a power ring’s abilities are based on emotions.
In order to determine which is the ultimate truth of all creation, the plot of The Blackest Night set the very ideas of life and death against one another. Nekron undoubtedly had all Lantern Corps on edge with his tremendous strength, but in the end, it was a hero’s sacrifice that delivered the Universe from unending gloom.
However, what if it hadn’t? What if a hero with divine power chose to hoard it rather than distribute it? What if Death triumphed over Life, dimming the universe’s light one galaxy at a time? This is Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Blackest Night – Explored, and that is what we are here to discover.
“In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night” – What was the Blackest Night Prophecy?
Ever wondered why the Green Lantern oath begins with the words, “In brightest day, in Blackest Night”? Sure, it’s a rather Shakespearean way of reaffirming one’s servitude to the “greater good”, but the language is rather specific, don’t you think? When will the Brightest Day arrive? What will the Blackest Night bring with it? Well, as most great cosmic stories go, it’s all a part of an ancient prophecy.
You see, the Guardians of the Universe are guided in their quest by an ancient piece of text, called the Book of Oa. In it, there is a prophecy that foretells the worthlessness of their quest. It speaks of a day when the emotional spectrum will be represented by more than willpower & fear; and how when all of them unite against a common enemy, all life in the universe will be snuffed out by the latter, ushering in the aforementioned “Blackest Night”. Abin Sur knew of this prophecy; it’s part of the reason he gave his power ring to Hal Jordan.
And after the Sinestro Corps War was over, the prophecy kicked into high gear; using the husk of the being formerly known as the Anti-Monitor, the Lord of the Unliving Nekron created a Black Lantern Power Battery and sent thousands upon thousands of Black Lantern Rings into the universe to seek out dead hosts to re-animate. Using this Army of the Dead, he invades Oa, as it is considered to be the “centre” of the DCU and the “cradle of creation”.
His plan is simple: perform an unholy ritual to summon the Life Entity, then kill it, thereby killing all life in the Universe and filling it with eternal darkness. He gets a good start on this goal as well, but is thwarted when Thaal Sinestro bonds with it instead and becomes the 1st White Lantern.
He tries his best to live up to his destiny as the strongest being in the universe, but Nekron is still stronger. So he decides to share the Life Entity with Hal Jordan who shares its powers with his friends, sends Nekron back to the Dead Zone and saves the day yet again. So that was the “Blackest Night”; the night where Sinestro’s unwilling sacrifice of power saved the entire universe from certain doom. But what if things hadn’t played out that way? To put it plainly, it would be the worst nightmare of every living creature in existence. And you know what they say about the Dark Multiverse; your worst nightmares are given life in this realm.
Prophecy Fulfilled, Universe Destroyed: That Time the Blackest Night Prophecy came true
The issue opens up, as most of these Tales from the Dark Multiverse do, with a monologue from Tempus Fuginaut. Once the cosmic entity traverses the barriers between worlds, looking for a hero from a doomed planet who can help him save the greater Multiverse. Usually, he stumbles across isolated planets that are contained to a singular point of nightmarish existence; this time, it’s an entire universe.
For this time, Tempus is gazing not at a solitary world, but at multitudes of them, desecrated, ravaged, and mortifying because of the simple fact that here, Life lost to Death. Here, in his greatest moment of heroism, Thaal Sinestro chose to indulge his ego; and an entire universe paid the price for it. Because he wasn’t ready to wield the Life Entity; Sinestro might have had one of the strongest wills in the Multiverse, but his was driven by fear and a malevolent intent to hurt other people.
Hal Jordan’s was rooted in kindness & compassion, which are 2 crucial aspects of Life, which is why he could wield it better. And Thaal’s misjudgement of his own capabilities led to the deaths of the entire Color Corps at the hands of the Black Lanterns, at which point Nekron promptly raised the dead and added them to his collection as well.
Hal Jordan, Atrocitus, Larfleeze, Star Sapphire; they all get converted into Black Lanterns, and pick up the fight their “peers” have been fighting restlessly. Over the course of the next 19 days, he murders a trillion life forms every day, as his “curse” spread across the entire known Universe. Thaal Sinestro is nowhere to be found, presumed to have been incapacitated by Nekron’s awesome power. On Earth, nobody could survive the onslaught of the Black Lanterns; every man in sight had fallen to the Lord of the Unliving’s demonic spell. Well, all men, except the main man himself.
Lobo’s Mission & The Limbo Lantern: A Dove called Hope
Earth is a fraggin’ bastiche of a mess, with Black Lanterns prowling the streets like rats in a New York subway tunnel. But that doesn’t matter to Lobo, because his Czarnian physiology ensures he will never die. He’s here to collect something; a bounty, more specifically.
And as it happens, that bounty is the last living avatar of positivity in the Universe; the superhero Dove. Lobo received an anonymous contract to bring her to the prison planet Takron-Galtos, and he intended to fulfil it before he could go off to sip on mai tais and get manicures all day long.
He’s attacked by Black Lantern Teen Titans when suddenly, they are commanded by the Life Entity to live; this causes them to cry out in pain because of the conflicting nature of their existence. Then, as life began surging through their decaying spirits, they were condemned to die again, locking them in a torturous cycle of life & death. The same entity attempted to kill Lobo, but failed, whereupon it was revealed that it was none other than Thaal Sinestro; the 1st White Lantern and, by the looks of him, the last Black Lantern.
Turns out, Sinestro was indeed killed by Nekron, but the power of the White Lantern Ring was such that he managed to survive. A Black Lantern Ring still found its way to him, though, and transformed half of his body into a necrotic scarecrow, thus turning him into the Limbo Lantern. Sinestro tells Lobo he is here for Dove for 2 reasons: 1) his White Power Ring compelled him to seek out the last true personification of life in the known Universe, and 2) he had figured out how they could fix everything that had happened since Nekron destroyed the Color Corps.
Uneasy Alliances, Unlike Allies: The Trinity Travels to Takron-Galtos
Lobo, obviously, refuses to give over Dove to Thaal because, after all, this is his bounty. But after he tells Sinestro where he is supposed to deliver Dove, the latter decides to travel with them, deducing that whoever had summoned them to Takron-Galtos would be working for the side of the living. The unlikely trio hops on Ramona and travels to stars to the prison planet, while Sinestro explains to Dove just how Black Lanterns operate.
Every deceased soul maintains some form of emotional tether to the realm of the living; hatred for an enemy, fear for a brother, the longing for a lover. Nekron manipulates those tethers to bind those souls to their bodies, and then make them serve his ends as Black Lanterns. So any kind of big emotional display could basically turn the 3 of them into a bright flare for them, which is why he suggests Dove & Lobo to keep their emotions suppressed.
As they get closer to the surface of Takron-Galtos, Sinestro realises that something is wrong. His Black Lantern Power Ring starts registering Black Lantern Energy on a scale he hasn’t seen before; and it’s coming from the direction they are supposed to be heading towards. Ever the strategic tactician, Thaal suggests that they withdraw; regardless of the conditions that brought her there, Dove still was the only key they had to reversing whatever had happened to their world, and he wanted to preserve it at all costs.
But the superhero in Dove hadn’t died yet, and emboldened by the fact that she was “chosen” for this fated task, she dives in to take on the Black Lanterns head-first. Sinestro & Lobo are close behind, but Thaal’s Black Power Ring practically starts bursting with energy, as if Nekron had fed his Black Lanterns some Eternity juice…or added a few gods to his collection. New Gods, to be precise.
The trinity is faced by Black Lantern versions of practically everyone who lived on Apokolips; Granny Goodness, Desaad, Big Barda, they’re all here, and they all want to clip Dove’s wings before she can do something major. But just as Lobo & Sinestro prepare to take them on, out of nowhere emerges yet another denizen of Apokolips, albeit one unaffected by the Power of the Unliving; Mister Miracle.
Scott Free guides Sinestro, Dove & Lobo into a hidden chamber where he explains that he was the one who arranged Dove’s bounty. Scott pretty much knew everything that would happen the moment he handed the contract to Lobo; how Thaal would show up at Earth, and how he would follow them out to Takron-Galtos to face the person behind this arrangement. And he needed all 3 of them because, as it turns out, Mister Miracle was about to truly live up to his gimmick; he had a plan to save the Multiverse from the darkness engulfing it.
Desperation, Horror, & Despair: The End Game of the Blackest Night
Scott Free’s plan went something like this; at the edge of creation lies the Source Wall, which, as its name suggests, is created from the pure light of creation; and a few dead pre-historic Promethians as well. Mister Miracle suggests that if they can somewhere harness the power of the Source Wall using his Mother Box and channel it through Dove, they would be able to scour out the Black Lanterns like the parasites they were and restore the Universe to what it was like before.
They arrive at the Wall, with Dove strapped into her Harness, and Free checking everything to make sure it works right, and Lobo on look-out duty. For the first time in a long time, Thaal Sinestro allowed himself to hope; but that would turn out to be his biggest mistake; and, grimly enough, his last. Because at that moment a Boom Tube opened up and 19 trillion Black Lanterns came spilling forth, including their demonic overlord, who had chosen perhaps the most terrible body of all to host himself within; Darkseid’s.
The 2 sides engaged each other, with Nekron’s forces fighting against as many Lobos as their own numbers. Thaal Sinestro had to live through the horror of resurrecting his closest friend (Hal Jordan) and his own son (Soranik Natu) and reconciling with both of them; before his Black Power Ring turned them into Nekron’s thralls once again. In the meantime, the Lord of the Unliving relayed to Mister Miracle the futility of his plans; even if he managed to burn the Black Lanterns out of existence, there was nothing else left to restore.
He would have to recreate sentient life from scratch; which means, that in the end, Nekron would always win. Maddened by the thought of losing his beloved Barda, Mister Miracle turns on Sinestro & Co. after Dove has already started channelling the Life Force to alter reality.
This enrages Lobo, who kills him, and proceeds to batter Nekron into submission. In this broken moment of chaos & anarchy, Thaal Sinestro finally embraces his true destiny. Hal Jordan’s words remind him that he is, in fact, the strongest Lantern of all time. His White Power Ring starts overflowing with Life Energy; and he knows just how he’s going to use it.
He swaps in Lobo for Dove and uses him as the basis for the creation of the New Universe, arguing that the Czarnian physiology was the very essence of life (since he could not die), and hoping that it would be fertile ground for sentient life that would, for once in its entire existence, stay in line and keep the peace. What ended up happening was way more nightmarish.
It Ended in Darkness & Death
In the eons after Thaal Sinestro re-made the Universe in Lobo’s image, he was forced to live with the consequences of his many failures. Thaal knew Lobo’s cruel, self-serving, barbaric nature; and yet he went against better judgement and used such an incendiary being as the foundation for sentient life. The backlash came for him quick, hard, and ruthless; much like the main man himself.
Lobo was revered as the god of this new universe, which grew rapidly; within days, single-celled organisms had been created, and they had developed into full-fledged life forms in a matter of months. Societies, cultures, religions, and many other institutions of civilization cropped up within the first 2 years. You’d think that this would be a great achievement for him, right? He did what the Maltusians themselves couldn’t! He created hyper-intelligent, all-encompassing life! It would’ve been his greatest triumph had it stopped there; except it didn’t.
Soon enough, these civilizations advanced so far beyond their “intended timeframe” that they became capable of inter-stellar travel; and with it, they initiated an inter-galactic wildfire of conquest and slaughter. Every life form in this new world tried to kill every other life form to ensure they were the last one’s standing; and every last one of these bastiches was deplorable to their cores.
Sinestro was horrified by what he had done and tried to escape his reality by traversing through the tear between realms, but he was blocked by Tempus. The Fuginaut bade the Korugarian to bear witness to his greatest failure; a universe created from the blood of a ruthless killer that was descending into madness & quickly as their progenitor could heal. The issue closes with Tempus Fuginaut silently listening to Thaal Sinestro’s desperate cries for help, as he thinks to himself that he has seen the true Blackest Night; and that it is one where no bright lanterns will ever shine.
Why Tales From the Dark Multiverse: Blackest Night is more terrifying than the original story
The British historian Lord Acton once stated that power tends to corrupt; and absolute power, corrupts absolutely. It’s as if Tim Seeley & Kyle Hotz took it upon themselves to breathe life into this quote; because that is exactly what Sinestro personifies in this tale from the Dark Multiverse.
In the original Blackest Night event, the Life Entity is shared by him & Hal Jordan because they realise it is the right thing to do. In the Dark Multiverse, however, he chooses not to give up his absolute power; and it literally corrupts him by turning half his body into a mortified cadaver. Even his actions are tinged with aspects of this quote; who in their right minds would think Lobo was a good template for creating stable, sentient life?
And that’s exactly the point; Sinestro wasn’t stable. His consciousness was divided between Life & Death. Dove saw him as a figure of perfect balance, when the exact opposite was true; the imbalance created by his very existence bred pain in the Universe. Tales From The Dark Multiverse: Blackest Night is a grim reminder that with great power comes great responsibility, and that responsibility must be shared; because kept locked within one vessel, it is more likely than not to rot away; and what it comes back as, is something none of us want to know.