Please help me "get into" blackest night

bit

First off -- I know next to nothing about comic books. I have The Watchmen on my bookshelf, which I did read and enjoy, but that's the extent of my experience. So any help is much appreciated.

So, with that out of the way, I really want to read the blackest night storyline. Dunno why, I guess I just saw some of the images and thought, "wow, that looks cool".

I wanted to "pick it up", but it looks like there are a bunch of trade paperbacks for this...event? series?

and I didn't know where to start. So...which one should I pick up first?

I'm not made of money (poor grad student) but I also saw there's a trade paperback called "secret origins" that came (I think) right before blackest night. I don't know how much this ties in with blackest night, but I thought it might be useful to know the background of the...main character? The green lantern?

Would this be for the best, or is it completely unnecessary? I really don't know anything about the green lantern's other than what's posted on wikipedia.

thoughts?

Lucascraft

You might want to check out our previous Blackest Night threads

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=99134&highlight=blackest

That's the most recent one, and the older one is linked from the OP of that thread.

In terms of trades and what to buy, I would suggest getting the core Blackest Night book, plus get the associated Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps tie-in trades. Everything else can be skipped.

Golden Yak

There's actually a thread specifically for Green Lantern related stuff here:

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=117031

Future questions can be posted there and are certain to be seen by plenty of GL fans who'll be happy to answer them.

With regards to Secret Origins, it was released specifically to get new comers up to speed with Green Lantern and the supporting cast, all of whom play a big role going into Blackest Night. Wikipedia itself has a section on Blackest Night which lists all the individual issues and the collected trades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackest_Night#Collected_editions

Blackest Night includes a lot of other characters from all over the DC universe, not just Green Lantern. The main Blackest Night series (1-8) and the Green Lantern main seires are the ones that stay mostly GL focused.

Another great series for Green Lantern is Sinestro Corps War, which takes place before Blackest Night and sets up a lot of the Blackest Night plot. It can also be read after Secret Origins.

DJ Eebs

Yep, you can also check the "help I'm new to comics" thread, that should be stickied up there.