Previously in Blackest Night: Heroes, villains, innocents and monsters died during the attack of Nekron and his Black Lanterns. Tempest, Damage, Firestorm, Gehenna and more were destroyed by the onslaught of monsters with familiar faces but extradimensional power sources. At the end of the chaos, The Entity (source of the pure white light of creation) empowered Sinestro to be the first (and possibly the only) White Lantern, and one dozen of the fallen were brought back: The Martian Manhunter. The Hawk. Professor Zoom. Captain Boomerang. Osiris. Aquaman. Hawkman. Hawkwoman. Deadman. Maxwell Lord. Jade. Firestorm. But even as they come back to life, these individuals have to wonder what exactly to do NOW?

This opening issue concerns itself with all 12 resurrected characters, with a handful of others like Hal Jordan and Barry Allen also playing small roles. The character most central to the narrative is Deadman. Boston Brand is quickly established as the most interesting of these 12 players. Throughout the issue, we follow Deadman as he visits one character after another. Brightest Day #0 only really offers brief glimpses of what is to come over the next 12 months, but what we're given is extremely enjoyable.

The first sequence of this issue is an odd one, stylistically, as a baby bird falls from it’s nest to bash it’s brains open on a tombstone, while a voiceover talks about it being a new day. The revenant who spent the most time dead, Boston Brand (aka Deadman) has come to visit his own graveside, reveling in the irony that his life was pretty awful, and it was his death that gave him meaning. Boston smashes his headstone to bits with a sledgehammer, then reaches out to heal the fatal injuries suffered by the falling chick before his ring flares to life. “Boston Brand of Earth. HELP ME,” cries a voice as he teleports away.

An issue #0 is a prologue. It has to lay the groundwork to effectively launch the first issue. You don’t always need one, if the plot is more compelling, but I think DC made the right choice in posing the major event question in this issue. I’ll be around for this series and probably most of the cross-overs to see why these twelve were resurrected.

Put simply, if Brightest Day #0 is an indication of the overall quality of this series, we have a clear contender for best new series of the year. The fact that this story will return every two weeks only makes the idea that much sweeter. At the very least, I'd say 52 finally has some real competition when it comes to being DC's best yearlong maxi-series.

Brightest Day #0 is definitely an auspicious start for DC's latest line wide initiative. Whether or not this project will manage to succeed in all the areas in which Countdown failed is obviously impossible to tell this early in the game. Despite a few shortcomings and one cringe-worthy development regarding Star City (and I call it that not because of its connection to Cry for Justice, but because the idea is so literal it's stupid), the issue starts the series off on mostly the right foot. And really, what else could you ask of any zero issue such as this?

It seems like a too-easy criticism, but Brightest Day and Generation Lost almost mirrored each other in the twists their final issues took. Brightest Day was a series plagued with pacing problems; it juggled too many balls and had a hard time keeping them all moving fluidly. Generation Lost, on the other hand, proceeded at a sharp clip, and other than a couple flashback/flash forward issues kept building momentum towards a conclusion that could only be exciting. Yet in the last two installments of each book something changed: Brightest Day‘s plotlines converged into an incredibly compelling story, while Generation Lost‘s big finale fell kind of flat.