Black Hand #1

Geez, Hal. You suck. First you get chained to an asteroid then to a tree all the way over on Earth 2 and now to a gravestone!

I have a pretty shitty theory about Forever Evil so I thought I'd put it out there. There are probably more arguments against it than for it but since this is comic books I'm talking about, I figure anything is possible! So the events happening in Forever Evil are not happening on Earth Prime. The fight between the Justice League and the Crime Syndicate has not happened yet. The story that ended at the end of Trinity War has been paused to tell the tale of the Crime Syndicate and their battle on an Earth that was very nearly identical to Earth Prime (or Zero or whatever. But here on my blog, it's going to remain Earth Prime until I hear differently!). You have to really stretch your suspension of disbelief to think that the same events that brought the Crime Syndicate to Earth Prime happened at least once before on another world as the Crime Syndicate searched for a new home they didn't destroy. And then they end up destroying their new world and Ultraman winds up snorting all of the Kryptonite and then they need to look for a new world. And for some reason, only The Outsider and Atomica can travel between worlds to find the "Pandora's Box" which will allow the rest to follow. It gets really convoluted when looking at individual story lines and how they're going to proceed if Villains Month stories aren't actually taking place on Earth Prime. But if you consider the world the Crime Syndicate are attacking in Forever Evil is very nearly identical to Earth Prime then I imagine the events on both worlds would be nearly the same. So maybe the Crime Syndicate will defeat the Justice League and they'll be down and out for enough time that Lex thinks Superman is dead and Gotham begins to fall apart but then they'll come back and save the day. Meanwhile in Forever Evil, since it's a different Earth, Nightwing can be killed no problem. Big deal! Not the real Nightwing! And then Batgirl can follow. And whatever heroes are left after that that weren't in a Justice League. I think that's only Hal Jordan at this point?

Like I said, it's a shitty theory with a lot of holes. But this is fucking comic books so I figured I'd put it out there.

On to Black Hand. I've only read the first page with a couple of laborers are cremating bodies from an asylum when I turn the page and see the credits. Another fucking book written by Charles Soule? What is this guy doing? Trying to make as much money as he can in one month so he can take the rest of the year off? Although if DC is still giving out royalties on books, I think this would be the month to take on extra issues!

A Black Lantern Ring drops from the sky and into the pile of crazy serial murder lunatic ashes these men have dumped in a ditch. I don't know where the ring came from. Did Hal Jordan lose it? And why is Hal Jordan alive again anyway? Was that ever sufficiently explained or am I just supposed to accept the "it's a fucking comic book" logic of it all? Not having read any of the big Lantern Epics of the Naughts, I don't know how many Black Lantern Rings there are or where they go when they're not animating corpses or any of that shit. But now one is free and it has taken control of the ashes of the dead so that they could envelop and kill a man and turn him into Black Hand.

Is he going to be Black Hand this time because the Black Lantern Light will have to form his Black Right Hand? On a gathering storm comes a tall handsome man in a dusty black cape with a black right hand! DONG!

Black Hand does not need a fucking light hand. He just picks up the one on the ground and shoves it on his wrist. Good as new, motherfuckers! Time to go kill some Green Lanterns! But first, how about a tour of the old family mortuary? Which ends up getting Black Hand Tasered and thrown in a cell. It's quite possible this is the first time a super-villain has ever been captured by rent-a-cops. No offense to security guards. You guys do a great job keeping empty businesses safe and keeping word search puzzle book sales steady. I just thought that sound better saying "captured by rent-a-cops!"

Oh, I'm sorry. After thinking about that last paragraph, I should really apologize. I'm sorry to legitimate puzzle books for including "word searches" among them. That was uncalled for.

Waking up in his cell, Black Hand soon remembers that he has the power of death and undeath. Or unlife. He soon has a cockroach army which trades up to a rabbit-eared rat army which equals a single undead cat which eventually leads to a zombie cop. Don't worry, the math works out. You can trust me. I know it seems like a loss of effectiveness from undead cat to zombie cop but the undead cat can't work the keys for the cell, you know? So Black Hand had to go with a less cool minion in trade for an opposable thumb. After the zombie cop kills the other criminal in the cells, Black Hand escapes his cell with the beginnings of a zombie gang composed of about 68 cockroaches, one cat, one cop, and a drunken vandal. And with all the chaos outside, Black Hand finds plenty of new recruits for his army.

It must suck to be a zombie horde in the Era of Zombie Preparedness.

Turns out those Security Guards earlier were actually real fictional cops. Oops! I didn't mean to portray them as lazy bastards that do more sleeping than guarding. I should have portrayed them as power hungry asshole with itchy trigger fingers. My mistake!

Black Hand's army can't get to the cops so he uses his power to find something dead on or in the cops and to use those dead things to touch the cops and kill them. So he uses the dead virus inside one cop who just had a vaccination. He uses the dead tooth inside another cop's head which his partner is acually thankful for because holy fuck was he stinking up the patrol car with that rotten tooth stench. And he uses the dead sperm in the underwear of another cop that just masturbated at lunch and had some post-ejaculatory leakage when he sat back down at his desk and his boys fired that one final shot that never seems to get clear until you piss or squat. And just like that, the cops are down! Looks like they'll have to add a few new rules to their Zombie Training Manual like no vaccinations, regular dental check-ups, and no ejaculating while on the job.

Black Hand remembers what he was going to do during Geoff Johns run but because Johns had so many children in the fire, he couldn't maintain all of his plot threads. So Black Hand heads back to Shady Vale Cemetery to speak with Hal Jordan's father, the corpse of Martin Jordan. But what did he want from him? Some dirty Hal Jordan teenager secrets? To know Hal Jordan's middle name? Hmm, I don't know what else a father would know about his son!

Oh. That's what he wanted? I bet I know the first thing he's going to do with his new right hand!

Umm, yeah! Exactly what I was thinking!

Black Hand #1 Rating: If you're into all of this Green Lantern, Black Lantern, Rainbow Lantern crap, maybe you liked this issue. I don't know! Maybe you didn't like this issue because it wasn't written by Geoff Johns! I'm not even a comic book reviewer but now I'm supposed to tell you if you'd like this issue or not? What gives me the right? Who am I? I don't know anything! Especially about all of this Green Lantern crap. But I did like this issue. Once again, it felt more like a back-up story than a main arc. Maybe that's because Charles Soule is writing so damn many of these things, his stories have been stretched out to fill twenty pages when they probably really just need half of that. Anyway, Earth is kind of fucked with Black Hand raising the dead everywhere. I think Power Ring is going to have to deal with him. Except he probably shits himself and faints whenever he sees a dead body.