First off, apologies to all of you non-comic readers, but Blackest Night is a pretty big deal story in the DC Universe (that’s Superman and Batman, not Spider-Man and X-Men) focusing on the Green Lantern Corps. The story’s been building for years and the Blackest Night story itself focuses on the Black Lanterns, an evil group of zombies made up of dead characters from the DCU.

Okay, assuming all the non comic fans have probably dozed off, I’m going to get into the nitty gritty. DC recently released a trade called Tales of the Green Lantern Corps that reprints a three issue miniseries of the same name from the 80s (I believe), along with some back-ups starring individual GLs from throughout the cosmos. It also sports a rad re-painted Brian Bolland cover.

Well, the main story not only feels like a possible inspiration for Geoff Johns’ wide-sweeping epic, as the entire GLC gets together to face a potentially galaxy shattering event, but elements of it seem like they could potentially play into Blackest Night. I’m not saying that that Johns stole from this story at all, so don’t think that’s the point of this. It’s been clear in Johns’ JSA, GL and Superman books that he’s a big, big fan of DC’s history so I’m guessing he’s at least read this story and might refer back to it. Also, it’s possible that DC put this trade out to get people ready for a story that Johns will be referencing (kind of like when they released that Jimmy Olsen trade around the time of Countdown).

Anyway, on to my point. The book’s main threats are Krona and Nekron. Krona was a member of the Guardians’ race before they became the Guardians. He was obsessed with seeing the beginning of the universe and actually created the big bang and, I believe unleashed evil into the universe. As punishment he was turned into energy (because he, like the Guardians are immortal, and, in theory, can’t be killed) and sent to travel the universe. After some shenanigans Krona eventually reached the end of the universe where he found himself in Nekron’s death dimension. Nekron’s a pretty powerful dude because, at the end of the universe, everyone’s dead, so he leads everyone.

The thing is, Nekron doesn’t want to only be in charge of the dead, he wants to be in the regular world. So, he gives Krona physical form and some henchmonsters to wage war on the regular universe, focusing on killing Guardians because, when an immortal dies, it opens the rift between dimensions.

There’s a battle and all that, and, surprise, the good guys win, but only after the bad guys show some of the GLs images of their dead relatives asking them to join the realm of the dead. Once everything’s cool, they celebrate like true players, drinking from GL goblets! So, this leads me to my theory. I’m guessing that Nekron and or Krona will play some kind of part in Blackest Night. I guess that’s not much of a theory, but there you go. We’ve seen that Scar will probably be/is the Guardian of the Black Lanterns who seem to be lead (at least for now) by Black Hand (as seen in this awesome piece of art by Doug Mahnke from the Free Comic Book Day giveaway Blackest Night #0) and they all have something to do with the Anti-Monitor’s corpse. Obviously already connected to death and considering how Johns brought up the Controllers when it came to Agent Orance, it would not surprise me if Nekron was the driving force behind the Black Lanterns.

So, there you have it. I haven’t seen this theory anywhere yet online, but I haven’t looked too too hard. Maybe I’m onto something here. What do you think?

(Sorry for the crummy scans, this is my first big image post in a while. And of course, all the images are copyright and trademarked to DC Comics.)