Here is the latest in our year-long look at one cool comic (whether it be a self-contained work, an ongoing comic or a run on a long-running title that featured multiple creative teams on it over the years) a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here's the archive of the comics posted so far!

Today we look at the DC Universe Halloween Special '09 #1!

Enjoy!

The whole comic is wrapped around a cute framing device of a Bizarro World Halloween, courtesy of Jake Black and Ibraim Roberson...

There are thirteen stories in all, and of course, like all anthologies, some are better than others, but the good ones are good enough to sell the book as a whole.

I'll spotlight a few of the standout tales...

First off, Adam Schlagman, Mark Bagley and Ray McCarthy give us this impressive piece of characterization on Guy Gardner (especially in the small amount of pages).

Guy is stood up by Ice for Halloween, so he decides instead to throw a big Halloween party at his bar at Oa!

While the party goes on, Schlagman shows us Guy's ten rules for having a good Halloween, interspersed with the truth behind his bluster...

and, of course, something to make the story not so much a downer...

I won't spoil the ending, but I must say, I found it a BIT out of Ice's character, but not majorly so, I suppose. The rest of the story was certainly good enough to make up for one slightly off kilter moment at the end.

Art Baltazar, Franco Aureliani and Sergio Carrera do a strong piece of work on this tale set in the mid-60s era of the Bat-books.

The ending is a big twist, especially who Dick is dressed up as. I won't spoil it for ya.

Billy Tucci does a story that's really clever, with the only slight downside is that it then makes his two-pager in Superman/Batman #75 seem not so clever, seeing as how he is just doing the same bit there as he did here.

There is, of course, a major twist...but I won't spoil it for you.

Joshua Williamson, Peter Nguyen and Mario Alquiza close out the volume (not counting the framing story, natch) with this cute Superman tale...

There's a twist here, too, but, of course, I won't spoil it, either.

That I just spotlighted these four tales is not to say that the ones I did not mention were not neat, too, it's just that there were 13 stories. I can't very well spotlight them all! I was especially pleased by how well regular inker Derek Fridolfs did writing his story with Dustin Nguyen on pencils. That pair did a whole issue together this week (as part of Bruce Wayne The Road Home)!

DC has been doing a really strong job with these Halloween specials, and the 2009 edition was no exception!