Let Blackest Night Truly be the End

By Stephen Tramontana on February 2nd, 2010

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“All will be well.”

This seems to be the key takeaway from Geoff Johns’ historic “Blackest Night” maxiseries finishing up over at DC Comics. This series of books are destined to join the ranks of “The Dark Knight Returns,” “Watchmen,” and “Crisis on Infinite Earths” as a serious contribution to adventure comic books. By all measures it has been a success, and I couldn’t be happier for Johns or DC in general.

“Blackest Night” actually has the opportunity to be historic in an entirely different way. During the promotion of the event, Johns and DC Comics Editor Dan DiDio remarked that the series would examine the notion of the “revolving door of death in comic books.” Most thought this comment was actually discussing how comic book companies have started to lean on the “death” of a major character as an event to sell more books, only to have that character come back from the dead a short time later and resume their regular duties.

If “Blackest Night” truly does reset this bad habit, it will be the most respectful gesture to any set of fans a company has offered in a long time. Let me put it in perspective: Though comic book properties have had a banner run in the last decade on TV and film, comic books themselves haven’t really expanded in the same way. In fact it’s been flat for over a decade. For instance, in 1999, the best selling title was X-Men #97 at 117,500 copies. In 2009, Blackest Night #6 was number 1 with 100,651 copies. We’re at an all time high right now in terms of comic book popularity, and we’re still below 1999 numbers.

The reason is simple. In the 1990s, comic books surfed a huge popularity wave cause by the release of Tim Burton’s Batman. This period of expansive growth was capped by DC deciding to “kill off” Superman in 1993. It was an unheard of event, and got plenty of press. The actual issue that the death occurred, Superman #75, could only be found in some places for $100 or more. Several speculative buyers bought up to ten copies, hoping to offload them to desperate fans for a quick profit.

Not long after, DC crippled Bruce Wayne in another big event, Knightfall. Both were huge sellers. But then it happened. DC let the world in on the secret that both Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne were not gone for good, and in fact, would be back in their books in under two years. It was a slap in the face to comic fans; a stunt meant to milk the speculative buying frenzy also occurring in the decade. And with that admission, many fans left. The comic book market collapsed, and it’s a miracle that it survived to see today.

And now as comics are popular again, we find the publishers returning to that playbook. Last year Marvel “killed” Captain America and DC “killed” Batman. Both events came with numerous crossover issues and big media announcements, and yet again, both turned out to be lies — though I’m sure nobody thought they were serious in the first place.

But you know why Johns is considered one of the greatest? Because he understands the best way to reward the party faithful is to give them good storytelling, not milk them dry with gimmicks. He built up Green Lantern for five years before he unleashed his first major event. “Blackest Night” is successful because of that hard work. Sure there have been some colored ring gimmicks — they’re a business after all — but the storytelling itself has been serious and with real consequences.

Johns and DiDio have the opportunity to make right to the faithful comic book community that supports both publishers. Enough with the fake death events. Batman RIP should have never of happened unless they were really serious about taking Bruce Wayne away Barry Allen-style. In fact, seeing how much readers enjoy the new Bat-family dynamic they may want to consider it.

But at the end of the day, it would be nice if, in the history of comics, “Blackest Night” could be looked at as the event that cleansed not only the DC Universe, but the idea of publishers exploiting their party faithful to sell a few more issues; that this was the era where the gimmicks stopped, and good storytelling took the priority. Johns has proven this can work, now let the rest of the industry follow his lead.