Best of the Decade: 2009 // Best of the Year

Welcome back to You Don’t Read Comics Best of the Decade! Our daily retrospective of the best comics this decade had to offer in celebration for the new year. Please refer here to our post highlighting the criteria used to determine each year’s entry. We hope you enjoy today’s piece and encourage you to come back tomorrow.

When we began our search for the comic that would be the best in 2009, one name came scrambling to the top like the undead zombie-filled event that it was: Blackest Night.

This event comes to us from Geoff Johns’ writing and Ivan Reis’s pencils. Oclair Albert, Julio Ferreria, Joe Prado, and Robert Hunter inked the pages, Alex Sinclair colored, and Nick J. Napolitano lettered the event as well.

Geoff Johns began his run in comics with a chance meeting in the late 90s. After pitching a mini-series that would become Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., Johns would also start working on both the Justice Society of America and the Flash. From there, Geoff Johns would revive the Green Lantern comic line, beginning with 2005’s Green Lantern Rebirth and bringing Silver Age character Hal Jordan back into the title role.

Ivan Reis’ career began with the Dark Horse Comics character Ghost in 1996. After working with Marvel, Dark Horse, and Lightning Comics, he would premier with D.C. Comics in 2004 with various mini-series and specials. He would pick up Green Lantern alongside Johns starting in 2009 and would carry through Blackest Night.

For those who began reading comics after 2009, or skipped out on this gem, the concept is relatively simple. Green Lantern and his allies have been fighting a color war against the other colors of the emotional rainbow. And a new color has surfaced—Black. Rather than representing an emotion, however, these rings represent death and bring the dead back to life to consume the living for unknown reasons.

Ralph and Sue Dinby are back, but with horrible and murderous consequences.
Source: Blackest Night #1. Credits above.

What results is something out of a horror-comedy like Evil Dead, with loved ones returning from the grave to torment their living friends and family. The body count rises dramatically as minor and major characters both fall to the Black Lanterns on Earth. Meanwhile, the main Green Lantern cast is all stuck off-world fighting their own universal branch of the Black Lantern menace.

As the event unfolds, the core book even goes on to further expand upon the entire mythos if the D.C. Universe. Revived characters, notably the recently-revived Barry Allen, would also have some pathos involved with the dead coming back and coming to terms with so many having died while they were gone. Combine the expansion of the comic’s lore with actual character development, and the revivification of the fallen heroes and villains, and you have a rare compelling event despite being crammed from top to bottom with incredible action.

Hal Jordan shows Barry Allen just who has died since Barry originally died in 1986’s Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Source: Blackest Night #1. Credits above.

It should also be said that Blackest Night is one of the tidiest events on record. While the core event is self-contained, readers can also find out what happened to John Stewart and Hal Jordan in the pages of Green Lantern, while Kyle Rayner and Guy Gardener were found in the Green Lantern Corps book. Both were also self-contained aside from ending their coverage by asking the reader to go read the event. Furthermore, while some books did feature direct tie-in issues, other long-ended books would be “revived” to tie in with the event. These tie-ins would genuinely work to have character development for either the main characters involved or the revived undead. If the creative team couldn’t fit in a Blackest Night story, the characters in question would receive a 3 issue mini-series instead. While these books weren’t needed to understand the overall story, the tales helped expand the main story without making it feel bloated.

Adventure Comics, for example, was a stroke of genius, using issues 4 and 5 to feature Superboy-Prime being genuinely fleshed out into a more human character via Black Lantern torment. As it took place in the real world, writers Geoff Johns and Sterling Gates would play with the meta and have Superboy-Prime know he’s in a comic being told by writers. This involved the actual D.C. headquarters at the time being invaded by the Black Lanterns, and the book ends on a rare unanswered cliffhanger.

Superboy Prime is forced to run the emotional rainbow after putting on a Black Lantern Ring.
Source: Adventure Comics #5 (2010). Geoff Johns & Sterling Gates (writing), Jerry Ordway (art), Bob Wiacek (inking assist), Brian Buccellato (colors), Ken Lopez (letters).

Honestly, the most prominent note about Blackest Night is that above all else, it was fun. It is all too common for event books to take themselves too seriously, and sabotage themselves in the deed. Blackest Night straddles the line between black comedy and serious drama and utterly nails it every time.

While there were dozens of great comics in 2009, only one could climb its way to the top. This time, it just happened to be one of the most ambitious events D.C. had tried to pull off in years, and it worked.

Honorable Mentions for 2009:
Scott Pilgrim vs The Universe
Chew
Batman & Robin
Asterios Polyp