The third mini-series spinning out of Blackest Night launched this week with this month’s creepiest cover and perhaps some clue as to what might be able to stop the assault of the Black Lanterns.

First off, I have to admit right up front that I don’t follow the Titans on a monthly basis, so I don’t completely understand the history of the characters, in fact I’m not all that familiar with some of the characters at all. So for me I’m approaching this particular series from my interest in the Blackest Night event itself. So, while the emotional parts of the story don’t necessarily resonate for me, J.T. Krul does a good enough job of pulling me in so that I get what’s going on and why it’s important to the characters in the issue.

I’m not going to go blow by blow through the issue because I won’t do the issue justice due to my lack of familiarity with the characters, but I do want to point out what just may be a key element to the whole Blackest Night story. As we saw in Blackest Night #2, the Black Lantern ring was unable to resurrect Don Hall, the original Dove. We see a continuation of that here as the ring is kind of stuck in an endless loop at the site of his burial, next to the ominously desecrated grave of Hawk.

Jumping forward a little, Black Lantern Hawk lures the current Hawk and Dove into a trap and it’s here that a mysterious thing happens. As we’ve seen Black Lanterns can see the emotional spectrum and can identify the prevailing emotion of those around it. But when it comes to Dove, Black Lantern Hawk can’t identify the emotion in Dove as anything it understands. And he sees…… a white aura. I find it particularly interesting that her aura is white considering all the rumors about White Lanterns. And the puzzle is what is there about Dove, both the current one and Don Hall, that the Black Lanterns can either not comprehend or affect?

My own theory is that Dove is at peace and, while this isn’t necessarily an absence of emotion, to me that means that no one emotion is dominant. And since all the emotions in the spectrum are equal, you get a combination of them all. And we all know that white light is a combination of all the colors in the ROY G BIV spectrum that Geoff Johns has adopted. I think this is also why the Black Lanterns tend to provoke their targets so that at least one emotion is so much more dominant than another. And once we figure out how to harness the white energy of being at peace we may have a power capable of attacking the Black Lanterns since it is something they don’t comprehend and may not be able to defend against.

Just a hunch, but it’s fun speculating. I think I’m probably wrong since that’s a key element that should be revealed in the main series if DC is going to stick by their stance that people don’t have to buy anything but the main series to get the whole story…..unless this is expounded upon in the main story in upcoming issues. Time will tell.

We get the creepy moment of the week with Garth and Terra and some macabre foreshadowing for Donna Troy – plus the cliffhanger of a potential death. Ed Benes art is great as always if not a little cheeky (ba dum dum!). Nine out of ten lanterns.