I can't see a damned thing with this black lantern

At the end of the whatever-the-hell-the-major-story-arc-was dominating the Green Lantern books in late 2007, DC ran several teaser panels of up-coming events, up to and including "Blackest Night - Summer 2009." With great excitement and anticipation, I thought, "Yay! Martin Lawrence is doing a sequel to his Greatest Movie Ever!!" But alas, it was not to be. "Blackest Night" has nothing to do with the urban(e) comedy stylings of Mssr. Lawrence.
"Blackest Night" is the culmination of several stories revolving around the rise of several other ring-bearing corps of various colours and power sources. It seems that different colours correspond to different feelings or emotions. The Sinestro Corps have yellow rings that are powered by fear. Red Lanterns are fed by rage. A veritable rainbow of lantern corps are forming, running the gamut of sentient emotion. Fear, rage, hope, love, boredom, ennui, sarcasm and, uh, playfulness, I guess. Then lastly, the absence of all feeling and emotion, the Black Lanterns, representing Death.
Since the initial announcement, the hype around Blackest Night has snowballed, steamrolling through the DCU, rolling like a big, steamy snowball, flattening extraneous plotlines and picking up leftover bits from the last five years of "Events."
And we'd expect nothing less from Geoff Johns, the Brian Michael Bendis of DC Comics. Johns did for Hal Jordan what Bendis did for Luke Cage. He's currently doing for Barry Allen what Bendis is doing for Jessica Drew. And "Blackest Night" should do for the DCU what "Secret Invasion" did for Marvel 616 (because, let's face it, "Final Crisis" left readers slightly less than satisfied and feeling like the guy with a steak knife at the vegetarian buffet).
Lately my DC pull list has consisted mainly of Geoff Johns' books and related titles. He has a sense of scope and long-term planning to his writing. Like Bendis, when he signs on to write a comic book, he seems to be in it for the long haul. "I'll write this book until I run out of stories to tell." That's a refreshing change from writers who sign a contract for a twelve issue run on a title and we're all supposed to be thrilled when, around their eighth or ninth issue, they sign on for another six, then they're done.
Don't get me wrong; I love Mark Millar's writing whenever it happens and I enjoyed Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men. I even liked Kevin Smith's stuff on Daredevil and Green Arrow. I just really love the moment when you're reading a comic and there's a big reveal of some major plot twist and you remember seeing the clues three years earlier. That's just quality story architecture and it impresses me.
Also like Bendis, Geoff Johns seems to able to adapt and absorb other writers' storylines into his longterm plots. Apparently every DCU character who has died in the last few years will be returning as a Black Lantern when "Blackest Night" gets into full swing in July. Earth-2 Superman, J'onn J'onz, that little yappy dog that got crushed under a giant robot's foot in a back up story in an unpublished issue of Blue Beetle's Burlesque Bonanza. There's gonna be a whole bunch of dead folk rising from the grave to kick the little blue asses of the Guardians of the Universe. "Blackest Night" promises to be big.
Even bigger than you might suspect.
Recently Marvel began running some teaser ads in their comics. A white star standing out starkly against a background of black. Across the bottom of the page, the ominous words, "JULY 2009." Upon closer examination, a chainmail pattern was discernible on the black background.
This can only mean one thing.
Black Lantern Captain America.
Awesome.
DC doesn't have enough dead superheroes of their own. They have to borrow some corpses from the competition.

Some Slightly Less Personal Questions About Superheroes

Do other superheroes tease Green Lantern for having a super-power based on jewelry and wishing really hard?

The thing about Green Lantern is that he's not simply another Earth-bound superhero; he's part of an intergalactic police force. There are about 7200 people in the universe answering to the name "Green Lantern," four of them are from Earth.* 7200 people of various shapes, sizes and alien species, each one equipped with a power ring. The Guardians of the Universe (little blue dudes from a planet whose name sounds like you're trying to remember something; "Oh... Ah...") gave a ring to each member of the Green Lantern Corps (yes, they're a corps, because "Green Lantern Gang" sounded so working-class) and them out to protect their assigned sector of the universe.
Apparently all you need to police the universe is the ability to accessorize and make wishes.
The Guardians are obsessed with maintaining,or more accurately, imposing order in the universe. Their goal is to eliminate chaos, thereby making the universe a much more manageable place to live or at least exist. To achieve this goal they have harnessed the power of fashion sense and imagination, two of the most chaotic things ever.
But it was already fairly apparent that the Guardians hadn't really thought this whole thing through, anyway. The took something infinite (the universe) and divided it into a finite number of equal-sized sections (3600 of them, in fact).
I guess nobody told them there'd be math.




*There is a fifth guy on Earth occasionally going by the name Green Lantern, but he's not part of the whole universal police force thing. He has an ancient power ring that doesn't work on wood. Think about that... his magic ring is thousands of years old, from a pre-industrialized civilization when most adventures, quests or assigned tasks would be likely to take place in a forest, and it doesn't work on wood. I'd be taking it back for a refund.




So Thor doesn't actually fly, he just throws his hammer and then hangs on tight? Really?

Thor, Marvel Comics' God of Thunder, has a big hammer made of mystical Uru metal, It has a leather strap at the bottom of the handle. Thor even named his hammer, because, well, doesn't everyone name their hammer. He named his hammer Mjolnir and sometimes he talks to it.

Already, you can see why Thor's parents make him wear a helmet all the time.

When Thor has to travel a great distance and he doesn't want to go on the short bus because the other kids will take his lunch, he just winds up and throws his hammer in the air (aiming in the general direction of wherever he wants to go) and then hangs on to the strap. The force of the throw (generated, remember, by Thor) is enough to actually lift Thor himself and fling him through the air to his destination, many miles away.
Really. That's the explanation, going all the way back to Journey Into Mystery #83 in August of 1962. Ponder that for a moment. Even in 1962, the physics of that are dodgy at best.
Many years ago, as a joke, I proposed to some friends the game of Tackle Bowling. There's barbed wire at the end of the lane in front of the pins, you have to wear a helmet and you've got a modified skateboard strapped to your torso. It's just like normal bowling, I explained, except you don't let go of the ball. This whole "throw-the-hammer-but-don't-let-go" thing sounds like a similar sort of thing. Thor's adopted brother Loki is the prankster God of Mischief. it's really no mystery where Thor got the idea for his fake-flying power.

But then it just gets silly. Having thrown Molly the Hammer, Thor is "flying" along beside Iron Man, on the way to an Avengers cook out or something. "Lookest thou at me, Iron Man," Thor says, with stars in his eyes and a bit of wind-blown dribble on his chin. "I canst fly! I doth be flying just like thee. Now we canst be bestest friends. Yay!" Wishing he hadn't given up drinking, Iron Man says, "That's nice. Turning left now." So Thor, while in motion through open air, with nothing to anchor against and no pivot point, being dragged along behind a hunk of metal and leather COMPLETELY CHANGES DIRECTION BY AIMING THE HAMMER TO THE LEFT!!!
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. That's just messed up. Even with Asgardian physics, that's gotta be about eight different flavors of impossible.

Here's a fun game you can play with children... (Don't play it with your own children; use nephews or neighborhood kids or any kids that, ultimately, you won't have to wheel around if things go wrong.) Get a big plastic hammer and tie a belt to the handle. Better yet, just duct tape the hammer to the kid's hand. Then tell the kid about Thor and how he can fly just like a real superhero when he throws his hammer. Then sit on your back porch, have a beer and watch the eager little thunder god fling himself around the backyard in his futile attempts to fly.
Fling! Waahhh! Thump!
Fling! Waahhh! Thump!
Fling! Waahhh! Thump!
Oh, it'll be lots of fun.



Do superheroines get to choose their own costumes?

I'm sure dressing like a swimwear model or a well armed hooker might seem like the best way to fight crime and other assorted universal scourges that my arise from time to time, it hardly seems practical to spend the night leaping from rooftop to rooftop wearing high heels and very little else.
Not that I'm complaining, of course. I could happily spend the day watching super-powered women run around in their impractically flimsy and petite costumes. In fact, i would actively consider committing crimes on a regular basis if I knew that Wonder Woman would show up to spank me (metaphorically speaking, of course). But that's just it, isn't it? You never know who's going to show up. There's no guarantee that it's going to be Wonder Woman. Or any woman.
Let's say you've just robbed a corner store and a couple of representatives from Justice Revengers Local 212 arrive. You are going to have your ass handed to you. No doubt about it. Would you rather a/ get beaten to a pulp by some testosterone-soaked guy dressed head-to-toe in spandex with anger issues that compensate for his steroid-shrivelled testicles, or b/ get beaten to a pulp by a triple-D cup fantasy girl in thigh-high leather boots, a chainmail thong and screaming-eagle pasties?
Yeah, me too.
Either way, you're going to end up in the prison hospital, but at least if she puts you there, you'll have a mental image to dream about during the three years you spend in a bodycast.