Brightest Day #4

First off, the title is a lie. I read the whole thing and not once did I see Black Lantern Firestorm, just Ronnie Raymond passed out drunk in contrast to Jason passed out studying. I know this is all building somewhere, but this storyline has the attention span of a hummingbird.

So- things that are happening [spoilers]

-Deadman is getting jerked around by a white ring
-Aquaman is summoning dead sea life
-Ronnie killed Jasons girlfriend while he was a Black Lantern
-Martian Manhunter is not alone
-Hawk is angry (suprise, suprise)
-And Hawkman and Hawkgirl are embroiled in some weird plot with their arch-foe and are now on Pandora or something (complete with hovering rocks)

That's a lot to follow, and not a lot gets covered every issue. Blackest Night had an obvious thesis statement: Zombies and how to kill them with emotion-powers. This is just, well, confusing. I guess the heroes are confused and if Geoff is trying to recreate that for us, good job, but it's not the good type of confusion where I'm worried and wondering what will happen to characters or anything. I just want answers so we can move on.

Brightest Day #4 is good but nothing special. I've not really been disappointed with anything in this arc except the lack of focus. It just keeps bouncing from cliffhanger to cliffhanger with little actual progression save people getting more and more confused and leaving me with and confounded look on my face. I am interested to see where this goes and how it all fits together, but I'm still wondering how they are going to wrap this up in a nice big bow. Blackest Night was good in the sense that it slowly revealed things and had a discernible dramatic structure. There was action and a climax a resolution. Brightest Day just sort of feels like a denouement where everyone is standing around awkwardly standing around wondering what to do.

It's been 4 issues and nothing has really happened in terms of rising action. I'm going to keep reading because I'm already halfway in and I want to know what's going on, and if I don't keep up I'm going to be way out of the loop, but I'd be really happy if Geoff would get to it already.

In short- buy it if you like DC comics and knowing what's going on. It's nice vignettes that may one day become a full fledged story. It's going to get there. I hope.