FOREVER EVIL: BLIGHT Parts 11-14

TRINITY OF SIN: THE PHANTOM STRANGER #16: Part 11 of FOREVER EVIL: BLIGHT
The issue begins with Constantine in a straight jacket at the House of Mystery, suffering from the Blackmare Curse he used previously. To help relieve the curse faster and allow them to find the Missing Justice Leagues, Phantom Stranger places himself and Nightmare Nurse into one of Constantine's memories of himself as a child, which is a pretty scary place. The Stranger convinces John to use the light within him and that cures him of the demons he faces. Alert again,  Constantine and Pandora combine their magic and discover that the rest of the team is being held in Nanda Parbat. When they arrive, Deadman, who is still in the dead Sea King's body, fights his way into the entrance to the temples and discovers that Felix Faust and Nick Necro are behind this. With an invisibility spell concealing them, the rest of the group enters.

J. M. DeMatteis and Fernando Blanco bring us the next chapter of The Blight Saga and, despite a really slow start, reveals a whole bunch of information. What I was creeped out by was Nightmare Nurse trying to seduce The Phantom Stranger. Really? We really don’t know a whole lot about her and we know that Stranger…well, he used to be Judas and …eww! Just saying! Once we got past that and the deep dive into Constantine’s head, the plot picked up and off we go to Nanda Parbat, which is where the team finds themselves in the next entry.

CONSTANTINE #11: Part 12 of FOREVER EVIL: BLIGHT.  As soon as the team enters the temple area where Zatanna and the others are being held, they trigger a magical trap rigged up by Nick Necro that makes the team disappear. Constantine and Nightmare Nurse get separated from the rest of the group and come across the Constantine and Nightmare Nurse travel further through the temple, where they eventually come across the Thaumaton Wheel. Attached to the wheel are all the other mystics being used to power this project: Black Orchid, Cassandra Craft, Shade, the Changing Man, Enchantress, Blackbriar Thorn, Blue Devil, Papa Midnite, and Sargon. John realizes that Nightmare Nurse is actually Necro and the pair fight. But he gets captured by Faust and is strapped to the wheel with the rest of the team, finding himself across from the woman he loves: Zatanna.

Ray Fawkes brings us the next chapter in this saga with art from Aco. The story is typical Fawkes and Aco’s art is a little on the sketchy side-not a lot of detail and you have to do a little squinting to make it look REALLY GOOD. Okay, so we now know that we have moved from The Blight Saga to the next chapter where we see that Felix Faust and Nick Necro are channeling almost all of the mystics in the NEW 52 to build the ultimate weapon for the Crime Syndicate. That tends to beg the question: what does the Crime Syndicate need a magical weapon for? When last we saw, they were concerned that the being that destroyed their world was coming here. Is that being magical?

TRINITY OF SIN: PANDORA #8: Part 13 of FOREVER EVIL: BLIGHT This issue tells a story parallel to CONSTANTINE #11. Deadman, in the body of the Sea King, is shown around by Nick Necro and Felix Faust and learns what their project is all about. But Necro realizes that Sea King is not who he seems and that Deadman is in his body, allowing Faust to take him out. Faust activates security measures that take out the rest of Justice League Dark that had entered with Deadman. Pandora surrenders and allows herself to be put in the Crime Syndicate’s Thaumaton Wheel. They test fire the Wheel and it fries Nightmare Nurse, who is badly burned and slowly starts to regenerate. On the second test, Pandora begs Necro to use her and he does, overloading the machine and transforming Pandora into a being of Light. She teleports The Phantom Stranger and Cassandra Craft and herself to an island somewhere in the South Pacific but then she tells them they must go back because there is a chance that the temple may collapse and kill everyone in the process.

Ray Fawkes is back again, as he fleshes out the story he started in CONSTANTINE #11. Actually, it’s the same story, but told from a different perspective. We now understand how everyone got into the predicament they were in. And we see how they get loose. Well, not everyone is loose. Looks to only be Stranger, Cassandra Craft and Pandora. And what is with the sudden change from her red clothes to a Zauriel like attire? She becomes a being of Light like Chris did when he was purged from the Blight? So, how NASTY a weapon is this thing? If it can fry Nightmare Nurse, a certified demon, how mean is this thing? And what the heck is it supposed to stop? Great looking art by Francis Portella makes this a winning chapter.

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #28: Part 14 of FOREVER EVIL: BLIGHT We pick up where Part 13 left off with Pandora, The Stranger and Cassandra Craft on a South Pacific island. Meanwhile, Necro and Faust take Zauriel off the wheel, bring him outside, and manage to use him to drain off the energy threatening to blow up the machine. As a thank you, Faust rips the wings off Zauriel before they drag him back inside. We discover that Constantine and Zatanna are on another plane where he confesses that if he had to choose between the world and her, he would choose her. And this makes her very upset. She tries to call up her team but they end up being caught between reality and Limbo, so she lets them go. Nekros shows up and tries to convince them to join him in defeating the Crime Syndicate, but Constantine rejects him which means he and Zatanna get roasted in the machine over and over again until Faust stops him. Meanwhile, the trio leaves the island and head back to New York, where the Stranger seems to think Chris can help their cause. That was before the Spectre interfered.

J.M. DeMatteis brings us the concluding chapter, for this month, in this saga. And while we still don’t know what the purpose of the Wheel is, we do know that it is nasty and is looking to use the mystic energy to create a weapon of mass destruction. But the question still needs to be asked-what is so horrible that this kind of weapon needs to be built? Vicente Cifuentes does a killer job on the art and the Mikel Janin cover is the equally awesome and reminds me how much I MISS his work on a regular basis. So the countdown is on to the end of this saga, which I wonder can even be called FOREVER EVIL: BLIGHT anymore as the Blight piece has been resolved and it’s even missing from the covers of these titles. Either way, the end is near.