Well, I finally got around to Blackest Night, the must-read crossover event of the summer (of 2009)! I'm about 5 years behind on this, and I think there's two ways to look at this: either this hurt my overall experience with the story, or the story doesn't really hold up over time. Essentially this is Marvel Zombies, only they found a way to make it fit within continuity. Every superhero and villain DC has seemingly ever killed comes back to life to battle Earth's Mightiest Heroes and the various Lantern Corps in a free-for-all battle that will shake the very foundations of the universe! 
 Yeah, that's what happens. I just explained the entire book. You have now read Blackest Night. The plot setup is almost nonexistent, with stuff just starting out of nowhere. I imagine I would've had to have been reading many of the other series in the DC universe, specifically in the Green Lantern sector, to fully understand why any of this crazy zombie superhero stuff is actually happening, but unfortunately I didn't. So, thanks for making this a standalone story, Geoff Johns. If I'd known I was going to need to do 12 hours of research into the background of every minor hero to have ever died, I would've passed. 
 I guess I'm spoiled by many of Marvel's big crossover spectaculars, like Dark Reign and Civil War. These crossovers indicate a change in the Marvel Universe itself, making for interesting explorations of that change amongst all the various superhero franchises. They're typically fairly simple concepts, but played out in a multitude of ways. Blackest Night just didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, as someone who doesn't read a ton of DC. And I'm sorry, but that's not how this should work. I shouldn't HAVE to go back and figure out why everyone is acting the way they are, and where they are in their respective lives. Can you imagine if the Avengers movie just launched into its story without every even explaining WHO the heroes were? No one would have seen it! And this is what happens in Blackest Night. 
 Also, to be so convoluted on the surface, there isn't much underneath, either. This is just a blatant good vs. evil fight featuring essentially every superhero DC has ever thought of. It's too much and all over the place. Also, Superman and Wonder Woman don't show up in this book until about halfway through, which indicates they HAVE been around, but where the hell were they? He's Superman! She's Wonder Woman! They would probably be a pretty good pair to have around for this thing, but instead they're left out in interest of raising the stakes, then show up when the fight gets really big. This is just bad planning on Johns' part. 
 Also, whenever something big happens, the only indication is based on a gigantic splash page. I never had any idea who the new villains and such were that kept showing up, and Johns sure as hell didn't tell me. I kept having to go to Wikipedia to look up people like Nekron (who?) as they were just thrown into things as if everyone on earth must know who they are so let's just keep rolling. 
 Now, all those pretty major complaints aside, I'm still giving this 3 stars, and maybe that's generous. BUT, I did find Ivan Reis's artwork to be stunning, capturing the massiveness of this action incredibly well. Also, for all this story's faults, when you hold it up to something like Infinite Crisis or Shadowland, two of the worst crossovers of all time that also happen to have been published pretty recently, Blackest Night shines (no movie poster blurb intended). At least its weak plot movement is coherent and in line with each of the characters. Also, if you ARE caught up with all of the Green Lantern stuff, I bet this story is fantastic. 
 So, I'd say don't read this if you haven't also read a ton of Green Lantern/lead-up DC stories, unless you're just looking to gaze at some stellar pencils while every single hero ever invented fights each other (seriously, the pages are so crammed with heroes, Reis could've fit Spider-Man in there and Marvel never would've noticed).