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In response to the popular Marvel Zombies franchise produced by their chief competitor Marvel Comics, DC Comics has begun Blackest Night, a crossover event and miniseries that features an old Green Lantern villain, the Black Hand, who is newly empowered to transform long-dead, freshly dead, formerly dead, or even undead heroes into evil zombie members of his Black Lantern Corps. These newly-minted super zombies, in turn, seek only to slaughter their former teammates and loved ones and transform them into Black Lanterns. –It functions as a sort of undead, superpowered pyramid scheme.

In issue #2 of Blackest Night, which hit stands this week, the stakes have been raised along with the recently departed, as the Black Hand (now an undead, as well) has added five notables to his ranks: two couples –Hawkman and Hawkgirl, Elongated Man and his wife Sue –as well as the almost-but-not-quite invincible Martian Manhunter. The latter was last seen in issue #1 giving a hard time to his former Justice League teammates the Flash and Green Lantern Hal Jordan. The fight won’t get any easier, and this issue tests whether these “Black Lantern Rings” that animate the fallen can protect them from any special weaknesses they possessed in life.

{pgomakase css="amazon"}The rings themselves appear to be connected, but function differently than those of Green Lantern or the legions of recently-created Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Indigo, or Violet Lanterns. For the past 50 years, the standard has been that as a Lantern Corps member creates energy beams, force bubbles, giant boxing gloves, cages, etc. his or her ring expends a little of its charge. Most of the time a ring’s charge lasts for 24 hours, but heavy or extended use can burn out its charge faster, at which time the hero returns to a hidden power battery for a recharge.

Instead, this new Black Lantern ring began in issue #0 with nearly no energy at all, and apparently expends nothing in the creation of new rings to reanimate the dead. Each victim killed by a zombie, however, increases the ring’s energy level incrementally. By the end of the current issue the undead number in the dozens (not including those appearing in tie-in issues of other titles), and the power level of the Black Hand’s ring has reached an unimpressive 3.43%. Horrifically, a great deal of killing will clearly have to take place if the ring is to reach its full capacity before the conclusion in the series’ final installment, Blackest Night #8.