This week's post will feature Fear Itself: Book of the Skull and Brightest Day #22. In addition, we'll be revealing a special event at the end of this entry.
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Fear Itself: Book of the Skull
This issue served its purpose: to plant the seeds for the upcoming Fear Itself arc. The story is told in two stages. In the first, Sin and Baron Zemo hunt for a Book (the titular Book of the Skull) supposedly containing the Red Skull's greatest failure. The story contained in the book is the second stage of the story: a flashback detailing the attempt of Red Skull to use Atlantean magic to turn the tide of World War II in favour of the Nazis. He is stopped by Captain America, Bucky, and Namor, but the magic succeeds in causing a hammer to crash to Earth. If this is beginning to sound familiar, then ten points go to you.
Sin reveals to Zemo that the Hammer still resides in its original landing zone, as no one was able to move it. Again, another ten points if you can see where this is going. On her way to retrieve the hammer, Sin betrays Zemo and leaves him to die at the mercy of the Egyptian desert.
So as you can see by my review, this issues was fairly short on content, but not short of promise. That is a good thing, as it was billed as a "prologue" issue anyway. Given that it has been revealed in promotional material that the plot of Fear Itself centres around a cataclysmic event caused by the reveal that Odin may not be the All-Father, it makes sense that we have so many ties to Thor and Norse mythology in the book. I hope it doesn't go too overboard with the Asgardian situation as Siege did, but with Matt Fraction at the helm, I think we'll be okay.
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Brightest Day #22
This issue delivered, in one of the strongest showing for this series. The main plot of this issues is the fight between Firestorm and Deathstorm and his army of Black Lanterns, aided by the Anti-Monitor. The Anti-Monitor has the White Lantern hooked up to some apparatus and is attempting to force the Lantern to create life. The Anti-Monitor then intends to consume this life, and increase his own power supply infinitely. The White Lantern then detects the presence of Firestorm and declares that it is "not ready to leave", before blasting the Anti-Monitor with some form of White Light which is hinted to have taken information about the Anti-matter universe. Firestorm then takes this opportunity to jump into the fight.
After wounding the Anti-Monitor with an incredibly creative use of the Firestorm powers (seriously, I was wondering how no one ever thought of this before), Firestorm grabs the White Lantern. However, the Anti-Monitor recovers and splits Firestorm back into Jason and Ronnie. Taunting them, Deathstorm states that Ronnie may have been brought back, but Firestorm wasn't, and that they were simply outmatched against the Black Lanterns. He frees Stein and Jason's dad in order to heighten the emotional states of their enemies, and fires a blast at Jason. Ronnie jumps in front of it, but Stein jumps in front of him, taking the full brunt of the blast. In response, the Jason and Ronnie rejoin to form Firestorm again, and attempt to use the White Lantern to heal Stein. It fails, and he dies. In response, Ronnie and Jason prepare for a fight to the death, however it was not to be. The White Lantern releases a huge burst of light and transforms Firestorm into a White Lantern. The resultant blast defeats (but does not kill) Deathstorm and the Anti-Monitor, while simultaneously teleporting Firestorm and Jason's father to safety on Earth. Once there, Deadman appears and demands that Firestorm hands over the Lantern.
Two issues to go, ladies and gentlemen. It has certainly been a wild ride, but it was worth every second of it. I'm eagerly awaiting the next issue of this series, as we come to the close of Brightest Day.
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We've come now to the end of the entry, and we at the Next Level have been working on something special for all of our readers. Many of our readers are relatively new to comics, but are intrigued with upcoming events, such as Flashpoint, War of the Green Lanterns, Fear Itself, and the Death of Spider-Man. And so, we've devised special Next Level Primers, designed to bring our readers up to speed in preparation for these upcoming specials. Our first two primers should be out tomorrow, in advance of the first issues of War of the Green Lanterns, and The Death of Spider-Man. Following that, our primer on Fear Itself and Flashpoint will be posted. We hope that these posts bring new readers in, and excite the old readers in preparation for the events of the future.
Thoughts? Questions? Feedback is always welcome. Leave a comment or email nextlevelstaff@gmail.com
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