Black Lanterns and Overkill

My pen name in Overkill was Charles Victor Szasz. It's nuts to type it this many times in an article. Anyway. I submitted this elsewhere and apparently, it didn't take. Here's something about the Question #37.

Go Saints!

I got excited from the first five words: Charles Victor Szasz of Earth.

During a DC Universe-wide event (Something big happens in the fictional universe, to which the monthly series respond and draw upon) Blackest Night, the main artist took some time off and in the place of the main story, 10 cancelled series were brought back for a one-off issue tying into the event.

One of those was the Question, a little known monthly series active in the 80s, starring a C-list hero called the Question. It ran for 36 issues and ended there, influencing most of today's top writers and hadn't been touched since. (The characters were used elsewhere, but not in their own ongoing monthly series.) The series itself was a mix of Mike Royko and Batman, a 200-level philosophy final and Zen Bhudduism that congealed around Charles Victor Szasz, a TV news anchor who went out crusading as the vigilante without a face, the Question, at night.

It ended with him leaving the city because he was too attached to the city and to his lover there to be the Question without emotional pain.

The big event in universe to thank for the one-shot, Blackest Night, is about zombies. Evil zombies feeding off of the emotions for the person, if I had to be specific. In universe, Szasz is dead from lung cancer and his protege, Renee Montoya, is the current Question.

The issue's storyline goes like this: By an incredibly loose definition of a comic book reanimation, Szasz is back as a Black Lantern and it's up to Aristotle Rodor (mentor), Renee and Lady Shiva (kung-fu master, hyper violent) to beat Black Lantern Szasz.

Trouble is, they can't.

Past this point are spoilers, by the way.

The way this is dealt with is what sells me on the book. They don't defeat Black Lantern Szasz in combat. The vision of the Black Lanterns only extends to beings with emotions they can feel. A person who has no emotions will disappear and that's what the group does. They let go of their feelings towards Szasz and Black Lantern Szasz can't see them, so he walks out into the rain.

In short: Szasz had to let go to truly become the Question and his friends had to let go of their feelings for Szasz to survive. If you're aware of the history, it's a callback and if not, it's a unique piece of the larger Blackest Night mystery revealed. This issue, #37, has many different weights on it and shoulders them all. It's one part resolution for the lingering memories of Szasz and one part Blackest Night puzzle piece, set up and done in a way that is reminiscent of the series from years ago.

The issue was done the right way, with the original artist and writer coming back, even titling the issue One More Question. Shame that there's only the one.

Theme Week: Ghostly Tales!

"That is not dead which can eternal lie,
and in strange aeons even death may die." -H.P. Lovecraft

Which is to say that theme weeks aren't dead, they've only been sleeping. This week, the shambling beasts from outside time return as spectral adversaries to haunt our minds and send shivers through our imagination. This week's theme is, as the title has probably told you, ghost stories. So, without further ado:

The Adventure of the Haunted Trainyard
A true ghost story retold (but one of several ways) by Zach Marx, with much credit owed to his companions

Once upon a time, in a land of gray woods and rolling hills, a band of friends set out on an adventure.

They left their grey woods behind them, and found themselves in a strange postindustrial wasteland, populated by exceptionally hopeless suburbanites and home to strange, depressing sports outlets. Over a tangled cluster of old warehouses, auto-body workshops and ratty macadam courtyards, the foreboding single tooth of an industrial keep, big enough to build a mech in, loomed menacing but silent, its many antennae serving no visible purpose. The keep seemed close by, but could be reached by no direct approach, defended on all sides by outlying low buildings of uncertain purpose.

Skirting the outskirts of the postindustrial complex, our heroes happened upon a line of decaying train engines, embodiments of the same ideals that had once animated the complex, living engines of industry as it was, not the spectre of neo-colonial hypercapitalism that stalks the world today.

They adventured into the hearts and souls of those old trains, and brought back an echo of what it was when they had purpose and life. And when the old stories and old battles were over, they sat and studied the industrikeep.



They longed to know what secrets it housed, what diabolical plots or engines of despair it might conceal, but as they sat on the train-roof, they felt the sadness of the years rust soak into their bones, and knew that whatever truths it would contain were too much for them then.



Another day, perhaps, they would enter the tomb and discover the truth for themselves. For now, there was a sunset to watch, and another land to return to before the dark grew too deep, for at night the unquiet spirits of the closed-down factories would rise up from the grubby sidewalks of the unvisited storefronts, and rattle the windows with their fury.

Wishing to avoid this, the friends went home for cake.