Zenith's backstory begins in World War Two, where British scientists have created a superhuman called Maximan to combat the Nazi menace and their evil creation, Masterman. The two are killed when the US drops an A-bomb on Berlin (sparking a hilarious letter from a po-faced reader correcting Tharg on his facts about which cities actually got flattened by atomic bombs), but the British government continues its research into eugenics, and seven babies are born after the war who grow up to become the supergroup Cloud Nine.

Indie comics auteur and Silverfish creator David Lapham hasn

Between writer Geoff Johns's Blackest Night and Blackest Night: Green Lantern hardcovers, the former is obviously the "parent" volume. Blackest Night has a handful of holes where events happen in other titles, but can more or less be read as a complete story beginning to end;