Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: Princes of Darkness Part 5: The Last Night
Written by: David Goyer & Geoff Johns
Penciled by: Leonard Kirk
Inked by: Keith Champagne
Colored by: John Kalisz
Lettered by: Ken Lopez
Editor: Peter Tomasi
Publisher: DC Comics
Anthony Stewart Head: Previously on “JSAâ€
Dr. Midnight: The medical tests I ran are inconclusive towards the case of Atlantis menopause you claim to be experiencing Kara. This makes me wonder if you are really from Atlantis at all…
Power Girl: B— I’m as Atlantis as Atlantis gets. My grandfather was Arion the MOTHER F—— SORCERER! Now if you would run the test again and don’t spend all of your time taking pictures of my p—- and feeling my boobs, you’ll see that I’m 100% Atlantis!
Dr. Midnight: 1. I haven’t groped or ogled you once during this routine medical examination. 2. Have you ever considered hypnotherapy? It might tell us where you truly are from and what you’re origin really is.
Power Girl: Therapy is for suckers and middle aged men who can’t stop fantasizing about having sex with teenage girls.
Dr, Midnight (staring up at the ceiling): WAS I THAT BAD IN THE SACK BLACK CANARY? WAS I THAT BAD OF A LAY THAT YOU SENT THIS (pointing at Power Girl) INSUFFERABLE HARPY TO BE YOUR REPLACEMENT WHEN YOU LEFT ME TO RUN OFF WITH THAT OLD MAN YOU ONCE DATED?
Power Girl: Don’t you point at me unless you want me to break off your finger and fu…
Captain Marvel grabs Power Girl and leads her out of the room.
Captain Marvel: No more Pepsi Products for you. You know how soda makes you utterly insane and irrational. It’s worse than liquor on you.
Power Girl: YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME MR. WHITEBREAD!
The Flash, Sentinel, Jakeem, and Sand suddenly enter the room in a dejected manner.
Flash: I can’t believe we let Kobra blackmail us in order to get out of jail and teleport back to his secret lair!
Sand: I can’t believe Atom-Smasher and Black Adam quit the team in order to go off and reform Infinity Inc.
Sentinel: I can’t believe my daughter refuses to leave that two-bit MTV pseudo-celebrity. I mean, what the hell does she see in that man?
Sand: Just be thankful that she dumped that pathetic piece of crap that was Kyle Raynor for Mr. Real World.
Dr. Fate suddenly appears and tosses a skull at his comatose wife, The Fury.
Dr Fate: With this magic skull, I awake my beloved wife, the Fury from her slumber!
Dr. Midnight: Uh Hector, that’s not your wife Lyta. It’s Dawn Granger, AKA Dove II.
Dove gets out of bed, pulls off her wig, and starts reading a letter that has suddenly appears in her hand.
Dove: I have a letter to read to you: We have sole control over the character Lyta Hall, AKA Fury. We aren’t going to let you undo the fact that she was the ringleader in the plot to kill Neil Gaiman’s Sandman character during “The Kindly Ones†and is legally and morally to blame for Morpheus’s death. Go hunt down Hal Jordan if you want to coddle killers, since he was the one who sent Hank Hall to kill half of you guys several years back.
Captain Marvel returns and grabs a fifty-dollar bill from Sand’s hand.
Sand: Remind me to never make a bet with a man who has the Wisdom of Solomon as one of his super-powers.
Dove II: And it’s signed by the Vertigo Editor-In-Chief. Anyone want to read this and prove that I’m not joking?
Dr. Fate: D’oh!
Suddenly Fate pulls off his helmet, revealing Mordru under the helmet.
Dr. Fate: YES! I have control over the Dr. Fate powers again. My plan worked perfectly!
Jakeem: N—– please. Thunderbolt, I wish Mordru…..
Mordru (slicing Jakeem’s vocal chords with a gesture): SILENCE!
Sentinel: We stopped you before and we’ll stop you again Mordru!
Mordru reaches out and grabs the mystical Starheart from Sentinel’s chest. Then on cue, Obsidian appears out of no-where and like a snake, dislocates his jaw in order to eat Sentinel alive.
Obsidian: And while you’re in hell, say hello to the dismembered corpse of my abusive foster-father dad!
Captain Marvel: We have to do something!
Star Spangled Kid: I have a plan! Obsidian, we surrender. Please eat us too so that we can be spared the full wrath of you and Mordru.
Obsidian: OK!
Obsidian eats both Marvel and the Kid as Eclipso shows up out of the blue.
Eclipso: Remember me? I killed two of your kin, the female Wildcat and Dr. Midnight and I don’t get an invite to come back and get revenge inflicted onto me? What am I, chopped liver?
The JSA: YES!
Mordru: Let’s combine powers, my fellow Princes of Darkness!
Mordru, Obsidian, and Eclipso: STARHEART! BLACK DIOMAND! GENERIC SHADOW CASTING ABILITIES! DROWN THE WORLD IN DARKNESS SO THAT WE CAN KILL THESE PERVERT SUITS!
Power Girl flies by and hits all three villains.
Power Girl: I don’t like that word! Makes us all sound like we are a bunch of horny freaks who spends their days f—— and s—— each other off!
Obsidian (pulling himself off the ground): Excuse me for a moment.
Obsidian vomits up Star Spangled Kid, Captain Marvel, Sentinel, and Shade.
Eclipso: What the F— is he doing here? How the F— did he get a cameo appearance in this book? And why does he have shadow powers? You’re only supposed to have a vibrating cane for a weapon
Shade: Well, James Robinson reworked me as a generic shadow caster and put me in the pages of Starman to play the roll of Jack Knight’s sugar daddy. And I would have scored with Jack too if James hadn’t decided to introduce that infernal midget into the book!
Star Spangled Kid: I know. Culp sucked donkey balls.
Captain Marvel: Too much information guys. Next thing you know, you’ll be saying Kurt Angle and Brock Lesner are lovers.
Star Spangled Kid: Aren’t they? I mean, it’s pretty obvious Kurt Angle is the butch in the relationship and Brock is his big, muscular sex-toy.
Captain Marvel: You’re all wrong. Kurt Angle is straight. He slept with Stephanie McMahon for Christ’s sake, back when she was hot looking.
Star Spangled Kid: Actually, that was never proven. Plus he had a thing going on with Austin in 2001 when Austin lost his mind and became obsessed with Vince that obviously shows that at the very least Kurt swings both ways.
Captain Marvel: Like HHH?
Star Spangled Kid: No, HHH is definitely gay. I mean, look at him. Ridiculously long hair, extremely close “relationship†with “Mr. Playgirl†Shawn Michaels, butch girlfriend, a fiancé who you know he’s only marrying because she’s the boss’s daughter; all the signs of an obviously homosexual male who’s obscuring his sexual preference in order to get ahead in the WWE.
Suddenly Jade shows up.
Jade: Power Girl called me saying Todd resurfaced. What’s everyone talking about?
Mordru: The Stargirl and Shazam were debating if Kurt Angle swings both ways.
Jade: Whatever. Kurt’s not worth screwing now that he’s got a shaved head. He looks like a freak these days with the chrome-dome look.
Obsidian (while trying to strangle Wildcat with a shadow tentacle): WILL EVERYONE HERE SHUT THE F— UP?
Alex. The Lowly Museum Keeper sneaks up on Eclipso and steals his Black Diamond and absorbs Eclipso into his tattooed body.
Alex, The Lowly Museum Keeper: Yeah, some of us are trying to save the world here!
The Review Spoilers Ahead!
The penultimate issue of the current “Princes of Darkness†saga has everything come to a head. Eclipso and Obsidian make their final stand while Sand makes the ultimate sacrifice to save the world from Mordru and his evil scheme to cause Earth to explode.
The Good: The confrontation between Sentinel and Obsidian was excellently portrayed and it’s good that Obsidian survived the encounter and has the chance of redemption. Also it’s nice to see Johns have Alan Scott reclaim the Green Lantern name in this issue and to see Jakeem more worried that he’s bald than the fact that Mr. Terrific had Dr. Midnight put in an artificial voice-box inside of him.
As for this issues’ supposed big death, watching Sand enter the Earth and use his willpower to keep the Earth from exploding was certainly a unique way to kill the character off while still giving his death the proper drama to make it matter.
The Bad: A toss-up of how Eclipso is defeated (contained in the body of the JSA museum keeper via strategically placed tattoos) and the fact that we seem to have no real conclusion towards the Kobra subplot. Also, where are Atom-Smasher and Black Adam in this farce? Or what is with Hourman’s prediction of his own death?
The Not So Pretty: The revelation that Power Girl is not from Atlantis or the grand-daughter of the sorcerer Arion and the way Johns teases the “new†origin with references to Power Girl’s biological mother now being the one Kara will have to go to in order to get answers, without even having Arion telling her who her mom is.
