Rating: ****

Wow!  Blackest Night may be Geoff Johns’ best work yet and along with artist Ivan Reis, it makes the story that much better.  In the two previous issues we had a lot of fighting and an establishing of the situation, but with this issue we get a firm direction of where this series will be headed and what needs to be done to stop the Black Lanterns.

Our story opens up with the new Firestorm, Jason Rusch.  As we know from the previous Firestorm, Ronnie Raymond, Firestorm is not just one person.  It took the combination of Ronnie Raymond and Professor Mark Stein to form the Firestorm matrix.  Currently Jason’s other half of the Firestorm matrix is his girlfriend Gehenna whom he calls Gen.  The two are discussing their relationship.  Jason is able to read the thoughts of Gen when they are merged together as Firestorm and realizes Gen wants to get married.  Jason isn’t ready and Gen says that maybe they shouldn’t be Firestorm together.  But before Jason can answer that, his Justice League comm link goes off alerting him to some trouble.

We then switch to the Black Lanterns as they battle Green Lantern, Flash, and the Atom.  Flash is fighting the Black Lantern, Ronnie Raymond, and tries to take off his Black Lantern ring.  He is unable to do so and realizes that the rings are rooted to the dead bodies like plants.  The Atom is able to travel into one of the rings and believes that those who were killed and became Black Lanterns like Hawkman may not be able to come back to life.

Firestorm heads over to JLA headquarters and meets up with Mera who was using Aquman’s signal to send out a distress call.  She reveals that those who are living must hide their emotions as strong emotions will only attract the Black Lanterns to them.

We finally see the Indigo Lanterns as they make their way to GL and the others.  For whatever reason they are able to defeat the Lanterns and get them to JLA headquarters.  The Indigo Lanterns leader is called Indigo-1 and she tells them the history of what is going on with the various colored Lanterns and how the various colored Lanterns can truly stop the Black Lanterns.  If the various Lantern Corps team up to find the source of the Black Lanterns, they can recreate the “white light of creation” and that will eradicate them.

As they formulate a plan of action, the remaining super-hero Black Lanterns attack.  The Ronnie Raymond Black Lantern goes after Jason and is able to separate Jason and Gen.  In a powerful scene, the Ronnie Black Lantern tortures Gen in front of the helpless Jason.  Jason tries to attack Ronnie, but in a wild twist Jason becomes apart of the Ronnie Raymond Black Lantern Firestorm Matrix.  He can see and feel every thing that BL Ronnie is doing to Gen and is helpless to stop him.  Jason is unable to clear his mind as Mera advised him to and BL Ronnie finds the chemical formula to table salt in Jason’s head and kills Gen by turning her into table salt.  Holy %#$#!!!!!!  That was awesome.  Feel sorry for the characters, but what drama!  I felt that same tense feeling you get when you watch a thriller in the movie theater with this scene.

More Black Lantern rings arrive and they merge with the dead bodies that are in the caskets at the JLA headquarters.  On the last page we see Black Lanterns of various villains including Max Lord, the original Dr. Light, and Alexander Luthor of Earth 3!  This is too good.  I’m geeking out here people!

Mega props to Geoff and Ivan here, but more so to Geoff because he’s the writer and you need a good story first to make a good comic.  So now we have a direction for where this story is headed as we will soon see all of the Lantern Corps teaming up against the Black Lanterns.  I hope that the final issue is a double size issue because this story is so massive you need more pages to show all of the battles that are going to be happening.  As much as I love comics, I almost feel that this story should have been told as an animated feature film because the medium of comic books can barely contain the massive action and story that is going on here.

I’ve never read much about the new Firestorm, but I like this kid Jason.  Kudos to DC for creating another great new character to go along with all of the golden oldies running around.  This story is great and it’s reminding me of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths as far the scale and drama of the story.  I repeat this may be Geoff’s best work and could very well go down as a classic like the original Crisis.  Next month the power levels of the Black Lanterns are at 100%.  Can they be stopped?  How will it all end and who makes it out alive?!  Great stuff.  Can’t wait for next month.