Brightest Day Vol. 3

I am probably in the minority here, but I loved the conclusion to the Brightest Day saga! A lot better handled than it's predecessor event, Blackest Night, because Brightest Day where focused on a few characters and stayed close to a self-contained series, but did have tie-ins, that stood nicely on their own, that were not essential to the main event. I loved volume one, again, having been somewhat letdown by Blackest Night, so my expectations were low. I couldn't wait for volume two, which was slower paced but still a great addition. Brightest Day Volume 3 three is a really amazing and epic climax and conclusion to this series. Our main characters, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Firestorm, and Hawkman and Hawkgirl fulfill their personal missions for being brought to life as the story races to the finish line with main protagonist, Boston Brand formerly Deadman, lighting the way, well, sort of. Some of the other resurrected 12 appear to fulfill their mission to the grand scheme the white entity brought them back for. The forest raised in Star City comes into play in a major way. It was nice to see these under appreciated characters get spotlighted with beautiful artwork in such a grand story to not only save the earth but save who they are, for themselves and to us, the audience. I felt Johns and Tomasi did a great job with the characterization of these superheroes.

Johns' brilliant Brightest Day story arc comes to a good, not great, end with this volume. After all the build up and mystery over the new protector of the Earth in the previous two volumes, the story feels unfortunately a tad rushed to close here. First and foremost, numerous characters are killed before Brightest Day ends and while a few of these are re-resurrected by the end a few are cruelly left dead. What's more frustrating however is that some of the minor characters such as Maxwell Lord, Jade, and Osiris, don't end up playing into the story at all. The missions they were supposedly tasked with the by White Lantern either end up factoring into other comic books or they are simply glossed over. Even Hawk, who had been a bigger part of the story at the beginning, ends up rather ignored. While the final reveal of the protector is fun, I can't help but feel that Johns didn't have enough time (possibly due to the impending New 52 relaunch) to wrap things up as completely as he may have wanted to or had planned to.

This review is for the Kindle HD version, where it looked very good ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Again I say: The Brightest Day series is a MUST READ once you are done with Blackest Night (which is an awesome story, wow!!!). This volume has a lot of action and important plots that will continue taking you beyond the Blackest Night. Good dialogues and tremendous art. I will leave you wanting more, at least I did!!!! Yes, I will definitely recommend it to all DC fans!!!!!!

The art has very vivid colors. The story had lots of cliffhangers. Some characters will die. There's lots of twists and turns. A very engrossing series.

For some reason this book and this book alone would not rotate on my Kindle. But besides that I really enjoyed this story.

In the preceding two volumes, the Brightest Day arc juggled a dozen or so main characters and half a dozen subplots to somewhat uneven result. Some subplots or characters had more to do than others; some characters dropped out entirely and are not mentioned until the end. The mystery-driven plot introduced at the beginning of Brightest Day hinged on the explanation of how or why these particular characters were chosen and brought together by the mysterious white lantern entity. Unfortunately, not only is most of that unexplained, but what does get explained comes out of nowhere. Without getting into spoilers, the climax hinges on a major DC character that seems to spring into action with no warning, and the readers are told, through exposition, that this person was always key to the resolution of the conflict at hand. I wouldn't even properly consider this a deus ex machina or a twist per se, just a headscratcher with very little basis. All in all, there are good moments in this series, great art, and some time to shine for less well known characters like Deadman or Martian Manhunter. But it doesn't really add to the Lantern mythos and is more of a trippy side story when all is said and done.

Few Spoilers ahead I loved Blackest Night and I came into this one expecting to be blown away like I was with Blackest Night. Unfortunately, I was not. The story didn't seem to solve anything other than introducing Swamp Thing, which ended up being the most anti-climatic moment of the entire story arc. However, it was still interesting enough to keep my attention, but if you are expecting to be as pleased as you were with Blackest Night, then you'll be disappointed. If nothing else,the artwork is beautiful just as you would expect from Ivan Reis.

In my opinion, one of DC's best run. Not only did you get great character development with characters that so needed it; but, it also bought back some characters that you already knew were going to put DC on it's head. Lol... A must read, a must have!!