Brightest Day #23

First, a warning: if you like being surprised, avoid most of the reviews out there of this issue of Brightest Day.

Too many sites gleefully spoil the ending (an urge we try to resist at this blog), and sometimes the company itself does the spoiling (though Marvel has been most guilty of this lately).

But they managed to keep this issue's ending under wraps (mostly), and it's a lot more fun that way.

But it does make it difficult to review this comic.

Here goes: this is the next-to-the-last issue of this series, so writers Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi have a lot of ground to cover.

The series was intended to revolve around the characters brought back to life at the end of the Blackest Night series. All well and good, but the series has been surprisingly dark (and sometimes grisly), and the story still doesn't make a lot of sense - even with this issue's revelations.

If I didn't know better, I'd swear that the White Lantern just brought those characters back so it could jack up their lives even more.

However, this issue reveals some of the motivations behind the Lantern's actions, and there does seem to be a goal - but we'll have to wait for next issue for all the reasons to be revealed.

The art is the usual mix of styles and artists, with some outstanding splash pages in there.

We won't know how the final surprise (and the series itself) works until the next issue, but so far it's been a fairly enjoyable book, if a bit dragged-out. Not great, but not bad, either.

Grade: B+