Svoboda | Graniru | BBC Russia | Golosameriki | Facebook
Jump to content

Brightest Day

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Brightest Day"
Variant cover of Brightest Day 0 (June 2010 DC Comics), art by Ivan Reis
PublisherDC Comics
Publication dateJune 2010 – June 2011
Genre
Title(s)
Brightest Day #0–24
Main character(s)Green Lantern
Reverse-Flash
Jade
Osiris
Maxwell Lord
Hawkman
Hawkgirl
Aquaman
Martian Manhunter
Firestorm
Captain Boomerang
Deadman
Hank Hall
Anti-Monitor
Black Manta
Siren
Creative team
Writer(s)Geoff Johns
Peter Tomasi
Penciller(s)Scott Clark
Patrick Gleason
Joe Prado
Ivan Reis
Ardian Syaf
Inker(s)Oclair Albert
Dave Beaty
Vicente Cifuentes
Mark Irwin
Letterer(s)Rob Clark
Colorist(s)Peter Steigerwald
Editor(s)Eddie Berganza
Rex Ogle
Adam Schlagman
Volume 1 (hardcover)ISBN 1-4012-2966-2
Volume 2 (hardcover)ISBN 1401230830
Volume 3 (hardcover)ISBN 1401232167
Volume 1 (paperback)ISBN 1401232760

Brightest Day is a 2010–2011 crossover storyline published by DC Comics, consisting of a year-long comic book maxiseries that began in April 2010, and a number of tie-in books.[1] The story is a direct follow-up to the Blackest Night storyline that depicts the aftermath of the events of that storyline on the DC Universe.

Plot

[edit]

At the end of the 2009–2010 Blackest Night storyline, 12 deceased heroes and villains are resurrected for some unknown purpose. The events of Brightest Day follow the exploits of these characters as they seek to learn the secret behind their return to life.

The story begins the day after Blackest Night showing Boston smashing his tombstone. Nearby, a baby bird falls out of its nest and dies, but is resurrected by the white ring that Boston has on. The ring then takes him to everyone that was resurrected and he (while being invisible) sees how they are celebrating their new leases on life. Boston then asks the ring why it is showing him this; its answer was - it needs help. It then takes him to the destroyed Star City and creates a forest.

Characters

[edit]
First Appearance Last Appearance
Brightest Day #0

(June, 2010)

Brightest Day #24

(June, 2011)

Brightest Day was the event immediately following the Blackest Night. It focused on the White Lantern and the heroes that had been ressurected at the end of the previous event.

History

[edit]

At the climax of Blackest Night -- Nekron's attack on the living world using the so-called Black Lantern Corps -- a number of deceased heroes and villains returned to life through the agency of the Entity. The Brightest Day event refers to the resurrected's search to understand the Entity's reasons for bringing them back, and to deal with other consequences of their returns.

Generation Lost

[edit]

Soon after the Brightest Day resurrections, the Earth's super-heroic community organized a global manhunt to apprehend Maxwell Lord. The architect of the OMAC Project, Lord had once subjugated Superman, and had murdered Ted Kord (Blue Beetle). Wonder Woman killed Lord to stop his use of Superman as a weapon in the months before the outbreak of the Infinite Crisis.

To escape the manhunt and further his own goals, Lord pushed his mind control abilities to unheard-of levels and caused nearly the entire population of Earth to forget he had ever existed. The only people to escape Lord's rewriting of history were four former members of Justice League International, who were at "ground zero" when Lord performed his mind wipe. These four were Booster Gold (who successfully deduced Lord's location, but was beaten into unconsciousness) and Fire, Ice and Captain Atom (all of whom responded to Booster's call for aid).

Booster, Fire, Ice and Captain Atom found themselves isolated from the rest of the super-heroic community. Not only did no one else remember Lord, but any attempt to prove his existence was met with dismissal or suspicion. Soon, Fire lost her status in Checkmate, Ice was accused of trying to kill her former lover Guy Gardner and Captain Atom was accused of dereliction of duty. Booster, meanwhile, found that his own reputation was bad enough that no smear campaign was needed to keep him isolated.

Setting out to locate and stop Max Lord, the four heroes soon found themselves alongside Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes) and Rocket Red (Gavril Ivanovich), both successors to deceased JLI members. This seemed like happenstance at first, but was in fact the work of Lord, who decided to use the reunited JLI for his own purposes. This only drove the heroes further in their desire to bring him to justice.

The Entity revealed its reason for resurrecting Lord, telling him to "Stop the war before it starts." Lord understood this "war" to be a disastrous possible future in which generations of heroes would battle one another, the younger heroes led by the maverick hero Magog. (This possible future of New Earth is sensibly the same as the actual timeline of Earth-22.) To accomplish this goal, Lord (purporting to be speaking on behalf of Checkmate and the United Nations Security Council) ordered Magog to pursue and eliminate Captain Atom. To help him do so, Lord armed Magog with a modified lance.

Magog caught up to Captain Atom in Chicago, where he and the other Leaguers were following Lord's tracks. Magog's new lance -- firing exotic radiation blasts -- proved capable of harming Atom and their battle soon escalated to the point that it risked causing a radioactive detonation that could destroy Chicago. Lord then appeared, turning his mind control abilities on Magog. Forcing Magog to turn his lance on himself, Lord also twisted perceptions so the world would believe Captain Atom responsible for killing Magog. The modified lance then caused a large detonation, killing several hundred innocents. Only Captain Atom's energy absorbing abilities prevented the blast from killing many more (notably, he removed any lingering radiation).

The Entity confirmed that Lord has accomplished his mission to "stop the war", but Captain Atom discovered he would start another. Indeed, twice during Brightest Day, Atom absorbed massive amounts of energy, which temporarily threw him forward in the time stream. There he discovered a future in which Lord waged a largely successful war against metahumans, one that started with his murder of Wonder Woman. Atom returned to the present determined to stop this from happening.

Although Lord's vendetta against Wonder Woman faced unexpected complications -- namely that she too had been eliminated from the memory of most of humanity -- he was able to accomplish other goals. Using the actions of the reformed JLI, Lord managed to take over the espionage agency Checkmate and have it stripped of its UN charter. He regained his own private espionage agency under no one's authority but his own. Lord also developed several powerful new weapon systems, including the updated Creature Commandos and a revived OMAC Project. Notably he employed a mind-controlled Professor Ivo and a relocated Project Cadmus.

With the aid of Power Girl and Batman -- both former JLI members who came to throw off Lord's mind wipe -- the Justice League members thwarted Lord's attempt to assassinate Wonder Woman and defeated OMAC Prime, the robotic weapon developed for that purpose by Lord and Ivo. Captain Atom -- once again absorbing enough energy to become unlocked in the timestream -- threatened to take Lord with him unless Max undid his global mindwipe, thus restoring the world's memories. Lord himself escaped, however, thanks to a teleporter.

In the aftermath, Lord -- still a fugitive -- left a message for the world in which he cleared Captain Atom of the murder of Magog, laid the blame for the OMACs on Professor Ivo, and announced to the world that he and Checkmate would continue to function as a guard against meta-humans and other costumed heroes and villains. The heroes who had defeated him were left with the very uncomfortable feeling that he had gotten what he really wanted all along.

Batman encouraged Booster Gold to keep the reformed JLI together.[2]

Characters

[edit]

The Brightest Day Resurrected include:

Others characters intimately involved in the events of Brightest Day include:

  • Aquaman's wife Mera
  • Siren, Mera's sister
  • Black Manta
  • Hath Set, the ancestral enemy of Hawkman and Hawkgirl
  • Dove (Dawn Granger), Hawk's superheroic partner
  • D'Kay D'Razz, a Green Martian
  • Jason Rusch and Martin Stein who both have shared the Firestorm Matrix with Ronnie Raymond

Assignments

[edit]

Brightest Day #7 revealed that the 12 resurrected must complete an individual assignment given to them by the White Lantern Entity. If they are successful, their lives will be fully returned.

Publication history

[edit]

The series, written by Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi, was published twice a month for 24 issues[3] (25 if including issue #0) alternating with Justice League: Generation Lost written by Keith Giffen and Judd Winick.[4] Johns has discussed the general theme:

Brightest Day is about second chances. I think it's been obvious from day one that there are major plans for the heroes and villains from Aquaman to take center stage in the DC Universe, among many others, post-Blackest Night. Brightest Day is not a banner or a vague catch-all direction for the DC Universe, it is a story. Nor is Brightest Day a sign that the DC Universe is going to be all about 'light and brighty' superheroes. Some second chances work out…some don't.[5]

Brightest Day also crossed over into the Green Lantern series, the Green Lantern Corps, Justice League of America, The Titans and The Flash.[6] Gail Simone returned to a new volume of the Birds of Prey comic book, which also went under the same banner.[7] Other tie-ins included the first issues of a relaunched Green Arrow and the Justice Society of America. Jeff Lemire wrote the one-shot Brightest Day: The Atom Special with artist Mahmud Asrar, which acted as a springboard for an Atom story to co-feature in Adventure Comics with the same creative team.[8]

The Green Lantern series featured more of the characters Atrocitus, Larfleeze, Saint Walker, and Indigo-1 in a story arc titled "New Guardians".[9] Johns said that Firestorm is a "main character" in Brightest Day.[10]

The first issue, issue #0, was penciled by Fernando Pasarin.[11] David Finch, a newly DC exclusive artist, illustrated the covers for the entire series.[11]

Brightest Day event was also used to introduce Jackson Hyde, the new Aqualad created for the Young Justice animated series, into the DC Universe.[12] Similarly, the final issue of the series reintroduced the Swamp Thing and John Constantine into the mainstream DC Universe after a number of years in DC's mature Vertigo imprint.

Titles

[edit]

Involved, but not listed, under the Brightest Day banner

[edit]
  • Action Comics (beginning with issue #890–900) focuses on Lex Luthor and his universal quest to locate the energy of the Black Lantern Corps. Incidentally, issue #890 was labeled as Blackest Night Aftermath.
  • Booster Gold (vol. 2) #33–43 picks up on elements of the search for Maxwell Lord in Justice League: Generation Lost.
  • Power Girl #13–23 is loosely connected with Justice League: Generation Lost.
  • Untold Tales from Blackest Night #1 (October 2010): while it was labeled as "Blackest Night", this one-shot is loosely connected with Brightest Day #11–12, Green Lantern #59, and Green Arrow #5, all of which involve the return of the Black Lantern Corps.
  • Green Lantern: Larfleeze Christmas Special: while not bannered as a "Brightest Day" tie-in, this issue is a tongue-in-cheek one-shot issue focusing on Larfleeze's misunderstanding of the meaning of Christmas.
  • Shazam! #1: this one-shot is loosely connected with Osiris' mission to rescue his sister Isis.
  • Teen Titans (vol. 3) #83 explains why the Blue Beetle would be taking a leave of absence from the Titans, and the events of Generation Lost #2 are indirectly mentioned there as well.
  • War of the Green Lanterns is a storyline that crosses over all three Green Lantern titles, and is a direct continuation of the "Brightest Day" story arcs (Green Lantern #63-67, Green Lantern Corps #58-60, Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #7-10 and War of the Green Lanterns: Aftermath #1-2).

Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing

[edit]

In June, a three-issue miniseries involved the return of John Constantine to the DC Universe and his attempt to convince Superman and Batman that the choosing of Alec Holland (the new Swamp Thing) as the Earth's new protector is inevitable and the resurrected Alec Holland will have to die, so that his soul can merge again with the Green.[1] Archived 2012-08-11 at the Wayback Machine

  • Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing #1, 32 pages, June 22, 2011[13]
  • Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing #2, 32 pages, July 27, 2011[14]
  • Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing #3, 32 pages, August 24, 2011

Collected editions

[edit]

The series is collected into a number of volumes:

  • Brightest Day Volume One (collects Brightest Day #0–7, 256 pages, hardcover, December 2010, ISBN 1-4012-2966-2; softcover, December 2011, ISBN 1-4012-3276-0)
  • Brightest Day Volume Two (collects Brightest Day #8–16, 240 pages, hardcover, May 2011, ISBN 1-4012-3083-0; softcover, May 2012, ISBN)
  • Brightest Day Volume Three (collects Brightest Day #17–24, 280 pages, hardcover, September 2011, ISBN 1-4012-3216-7)

Other titles are also being collected:

In other media

[edit]

A Brightest Day skin attributed to Batman is one of the special skins in Batman: Arkham Origins.

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Segura, Alex (January 11, 2010). "DCU in 2010: Kick Off Your Monday With Some Major News". The Source. DC Comics.com. Retrieved January 11, 2010.
  2. ^ "Brightest Day". DC Database. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  3. ^ Phillips, Dan (January 11, 2010). "Geoff Johns Discusses Brightest Day". IGN. Retrieved January 11, 2010.
  4. ^ Rogers, Vaneta (January 12, 2010). "JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL Returns in "GENERATION LOST"". Newsarama. Retrieved January 12, 2010.
  5. ^ Segura, Alex (February 11, 2010). "Your first look at BRIGHTEST DAY — what does it mean?". The Source. DC Comics.com. Retrieved February 11, 2010.
  6. ^ Siegel, Lucas (January 11, 2010). "UPDATE 4: DC's BRIGHTEST DAY w/ David Finch!". Newsarama. Retrieved January 11, 2010.
  7. ^ McGuirk, Brendan (January 13, 2010). "Gail Simone Returns to 'Birds of Prey' in 2010 -- EXCLUSIVE". ComicsAlliance. Archived from the original on January 16, 2010. Retrieved January 13, 2010.
  8. ^ Renaud, Jeffrey (April 13, 2010). "Lemire Embiggens Ray Palmer". Comic Book Resources. Retrieved April 13, 2010.
  9. ^ Renaud, Jeffrey (January 11, 2010). "GEOFF JOHNS PRIME: "Earth One", "Blackest Night" & More". Comic Book Resources. Retrieved January 11, 2010.
  10. ^ Hudson, Laura (March 13, 2010). "Emerald City Comic-Con: The DC Nation Panel". ComicsAlliance. Archived from the original on January 3, 2011. Retrieved 2010-03-28.
  11. ^ a b Melrose, Kevin (January 11, 2010). "DC announces Blackest Night follow-up: Brightest Day". Robot 6. Comic Book Resources. Archived from the original on 2012-05-12. Retrieved 2010-01-13.
  12. ^ "DC Universe: The Source » Blog Archive » OPENING THE VAULT – A LIVE-ACTION BLUE BEETLE?". Dcu.blog.dccomics.com. 2010-06-15. Retrieved 2011-02-06.
  13. ^ Vankin, Jonathan. "DCU Comics - Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search #1 (of 3)". DC Comics.com. Archived from the original on September 27, 2014. Retrieved April 16, 2012.
  14. ^ Vankin, Jonathan. "DCU Comics - Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search #2 (of 3)". DC Comics.com. Archived from the original on July 21, 2013. Retrieved April 16, 2012.
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brightest_Day&oldid=1245345598"