Blackest Night was a straight up excited event. I know this because I felt remarkably betrayed after reading the final issue. Good comics have a tendency to do that. Imagine: you are a fanboy, become dangerously invested in these characters and their mythology. Then an event comes along and changes things. I won’t spoil anything, but Blackest Night essentially serves as a reset button for many previous “incidents” in the DC Comics universe. Which, FYI, is fucking lame. But,really, how else are events like this supposed to end? With a song?

The next big event, Brightest Day, starts next month, in which DC will most likely retcon some retcons of retcons. The final issue will most likely fold out into a mobius strip.

It is no secret that I’m a huge Wonder Woman fan. I adore her character and everything she stands for. She has been a huge influence on me my entire life. I think she’s swell!

Whenever there is a huge DC Comics event, I find myself asking: Where is Wonder Woman? She’s always ignored, leaving stupid Superman to resolve the story. Final Crisis ended with Superman singing a song to save the world while Wonder Woman had been transformed into a pig faced mutant. Totally weak.

I’m thrilled that the latest DC event, Blackest Night, has a Wonder Woman tie-in. Not just any tie-in… a good one! See, once upon a time Wonder Woman committed straight-up murder on a dude named Maxwell Lord. It was terrible! She snapped his neck after being slightly provoked. She’s been haunted by this ever since. So, what happens when DC is doing a mega-event like Blackest Night where villians rise from the grave?

OH SHIT WONDER WOMAN WHAT YOU GONNA DO.

I’ll admit that a lot of other interesting things are going on with this story arc — like, say, Bruce Wayne rising from the dead to kill Superman — but Wonder Woman’s personal demons are way more thrilling to me. It’s a trinity of superheroes, god dammit, but writer’s normally treat it like a boy’s club. Wonder Woman is amazing, and you should learn to love her.

Okay, okay, okay… okay. Excuse me as I have a major geekgasm.

Barry Allen, the Flash, died in 1985 during Crisis on Infinite Earths. He saved the entire frickin’ universe by running so fast that he transcended time and concentrating the entire speed force into a single bolt of lightning… which ended up being the same lightning bolt that connected him to the speed force in the first place. Very La Jetée, right? His death was meant to signify the end of Silver Age and the dawn of modern, darker stories in comics. He’s one of the few comic book characters that died and stayed dead.

Until last year, when he popped up during Final Crisis and ended up playing a huge role in the story. It was awesome. So, he’s like alive again. And last month DC Comics launched a new series: Flash Rebirth. The first issue wondered “Why did Barry Allen come back? What is his purpose here? What does this signify?”

The last panel of the second issue answered that question. And, spoiler alert: it is awesome. I got seriously giddy. You can tell because I ran to my laptop and wrote this post. I didn’t even put pants on first.

Carry on.

After finishing Final Crisis #7, I was a bit confused. Mainly about why it was at all necessary. I mean, some parts were cool… such as the event shown in the panel above. But, really, I thought the whole thing was patchy at best. Then I read this great summary over at Comic Book Resources that made me realize the whole thing was remarkably thoughtful…

Let’s just pause a minute to appreciate the arrival of Captain Carrot and company. True, they don’t actually do anything other than show up and pose before the final assault, but their appearance in this comic shows the scope of Morrison’s plan. He embraces the variety of the DCU, not to sterilize it and cut it down to size like Marv Wolfman did, but to celebrate its diversity. While Darkseid chants of “one body. One mind. One will. One life that is Darkseid,” Morrison gives us a range of different heroes, of all shapes and sizes. They may all be based on the first Superman — the first “superhero story” — but they are not identical. Their differences matter. Life matters. Multiversal chaos will overcome singleminded order any day, and though a new order is established at the end of “Final Crisis” — an order based on hope and rebuilding a status quo that’s not all that different from what came before, the explicit declaration at the end of “Superman: Beyond” #2 appears again in “Final Crisis” #7, in a slightly different guise.

Superman’s “To Be Continued” epitaph is rewritten in the series finale as a drawing on a cave wall.

When I was first reading the story, I though “What the fuck? Is that Captain friggin’ Carrot?” Now, rereading it, I think “God damn, this is awesome.”