Who in the Blue Hell is Nekron?
Up front, I’ll admit that I’m not as much of a comic nerd as I probably seem. Considering the fact that I write for a blog about comic books, you’d think I’d know a lot about the history of all the characters, their big bad villains, etc, etc, but, yet, truth be told, I know surprisingly little about these stories I love so much.
So when I saw this week’s cover of Previews, with the spoiler of who the main villain behind “Blackest Night” is, it should come as no surprise that I had no clue who this dude is. I mean, seriously, Nekron? That’s all you’ve got, DC? I’ve been following comics fairly seriously my entire life, and I honestly don’t have the slightest idea who this nefarious fellow is.
And, really, I don’t think I’m alone on this. Jim Doom and I buy comics together every week, and he was as confused as I was about who this character is. Our local comic shop, Capes Comic Book Lounge, is run by a fella named Sean, who informed us that Nekron is apparently in charge of some afterlife realm between limbo and hell, but I wasn’t really paying attention, and I don’t care enough to try to recall his words verbatim, but, good Lord, that’s a let down.
Over the course of the past few weeks, I had convinced myself that there was going to be some huge, all-powerful entity from the Black Power Source, ala Parallax and Ion, that would take Bruce Wayne as its host and lay waste to the entire DCU. Imagine if Bruce Wayne was given the powers of the Anti-Monitor or something. That’d be flippin’ sweet.
Instead, we get Nekron. Whoever that is. He sounds like a cheap battery.
Yep, Nekron. Anyone who wasn’t reading everything and anything Green Lantern back in 1981 is likely to be familiar with Nekron. He was THE major baddie in a short, 3-issue Green Lantern Corps story back then. In fact, so far Blackest Night is a retread of that old GLC storyline — albiet on steroids.
… er, that is, ISN’T likely to be familiar with Nekron.
… oh, heck, you know what I mean. 😕
Something tells me that if they’re revealing the villain on the cover of Previews, there’s probably more to it than that. Also, Geoff Johns made lame-os like Captain Cold and Superboy Prime into super bad-ass villains, so no doubt he can accomplish the same thing with Nekron.
When did he make Captain Cold bad-ass? Was that during that Rogue’s Revenge series? Cuz I didn’t read that.
I agree with Fin Fang Doom that I think there’s still more to this whole thing than just “OK, everyone’s going to fight Nekron now.” I think there’s more to be done with Anti-Monitor fueling the battery, for one.
Also, they mentioned before that Black Hand is actually the avatar for the Black Lanterns, so since he’s been going around with Batman’s skull, maybe there will be some sort of inhabiting there.
Oh, and Johns made Captain Cold awesome during his run on the Flash, though Rogues Revenge was a great mini-series that tied up the loose ends from those characters after the last Flash series and so forth.