Headscratchers / Blackest Night

• Exactly how did Barry Allen fall under the "came back from the dead" category? The impression this troper got was that the two Flashes picked Barry up from somewhere along his final run way back in Crisis on Infinite Earths. If that's the case, he never technically died; he just happened to drop back into the normal timestream.
  • Simple: that isn't the case. He wasn't plucked from his death run, he was plucked from the Speed Force after he died and was lost to it; Thawne says as much in The Flash: Rebirth #4
    • Thanks for clearing that up.
• Gonzo had fur, Carol, not feathers. I know it's insignificant, but it bugs me every time I read that line.
  • He was a muppet, the fur probably represented short small feathers. He is avian, after all.
  • Actually, he's an alien.
    • Yes, but he's an avian alien.
  • Look at the back of his head, especially back in the The Muppet Show days. Feathers. He has both.
• I've heard it said that Blackest Night was a commentary on the role of death in comics. I'm not sure what the commentary is though. Nekron is reintroduced as a unified theory of DCU resurrection (though his plot apparently begins with Superman who's resurrection left the door to the afterlife ajar), Hal rejects the notion that this means Nekron somehow owns him, and at the end of the series, in spite of a new wave of resurrections, and the emergence of the white lantern, Hal says they think that death means death from now on (though how would they know?). I guess just the mere fact that Johns is calling attention to it and trying to explain why it happens so much means they plan on taking death more seriously from now on and, "oh, would you just let us have one last round of resurrections and then we promise death will be meaningful from now on." Help me out here.
  • I think Johns was just throwing together some awkward explanation for why so many deaths occur, not commenting on it.
• So the entities that rose from the grave. Were they the actual bodies and brainwashed souls of former friends? Or just black light constructs. I can't figure this out and it bugs me.
  • The Black Lanterns are just the former bodies of the heroes being used as puppets by the Black Lantern rings. The souls of the heroes themselves are long gone and are not affected by the use of their body in any way. The rings themselves are like computer programs designed to induce the living into extreme emotional states and then kill them, but are not really sentient. Hope that answers your question.
  • Atom really put it best when he said that the dead weren't wearing the rings, the rings were wearing the dead.
• Did Batman's parents come back? Or the Flying Graysons?
  • The Graysons and the Drakes did come back (but not the Waynes, seeing how Bruce was dead too at the time).
  • Point of order: Bruce was not dead at the time, but rather, lost in the timeline. The result was the same either way though - no emotional tether for the Waynes to come back by.
• All resurrections happened because Nekron let them to. And he can turn resurrected into Black Lanterns. Okay, but... what does that mean for characters who have 'comes back from the dead' as a superpower? Does Nekron have a soft spot for Mitch Shelley? Imagine how awesome would be to see a Black Lantern Doomsday.
  • Nekron can indeed use black rings to target the currently living if they were previously resurrected to turn into 'living' Black Lanterns, as long as he has a black lantern who has an emotional connection to the person he is targeting. He did this with many of the Justice League when he brought back 'Batman'. Black Lantern Doomsday would be difficult. The only one who might be connected to him would be Superman, in a fear or rage kind of emotional connection.
• Similar to the above, what does Nekron's power mean to characters like Hob Gadling, who never dies? Or Darkseid, who has the power to resurrect people as many times as he wants no string attached (yeah, I know Darkseid was dead during this crossover but still...).
  • Sadly for Nekron, beings like Hob Gadling would be out of his grasp-we saw the the immortal Shade had his heart ripped out but his immortality prevented him from rising-so unless someone like Hob Gadling died before getting their immortality, they'd be shafted(and I can't imagine Nekron has the power or patience for asking Death if Gadling can die). As for Darkseid, I imagine that Nekron would use their former deadness against them(unless they don't have an emotional connection, so no zombie Desaad.) By the way, Nekron vs Darkseid with their armies of Black Lanterns and Anti-Life possessed New Gods would be AWESOME, and needs to be made into a fanfiction.
• From what it seems, the Black Lanterns(except for Black Hand and Scar) were more or less extensions of Nekron with the memories of their former lives. If so, then wouldn't Nekron be aware he'd be defeated? A number of Black Lanterns were of characters who either came from the future(Reverse Flash, who won't be born for a few centuries) or existed in the future(Conner Kent, who was brought back from the dead in the 31st century), and I assume he'd know about them considering the black rings are simply programmed with information about them instead of actually being their possessed souls.
  • They aren't extentions. The rings are pretty much independent except for their orders to harvest hearts, kill as many people as possible, & serve Nekron.
  • Still, Nekron could probably read their memories, notice the confusion that comes to time travel or just put two-and-two together.
• Nekron and William Hand were angry that people kept escaping death, however Nekron allowed people to come back from the dead for his plan. So why's he raging at Death Is Cheap?
  • Debatably, that's Fridge Brilliance; it isn't just his morality that's alien - or intended as such -, it's also his sense of logic and reason. Alternatively, hypocrisy.
  • Alternatively, he could be upset over genuine resurrections (returning to life) while being perfectly fine with bringing the dead back as black lanterns (un-death), similar to the way there is a marked difference between the light entity's "LIVE" and Nekron's "RISE."
• From Final Crisis tie-in Rage of the Red Lanterns to the opening of Blackest Night, Hal Jordan is facing a single, continuous storyline. How did he appear in all the other comics?