2. Geoff Johns' Green Lantern
What Geoff Johns did with Green Lantern is still so recent that its a fair bet that Im going to get lots of blowback for putting it so high on this list, but lets look at what Johns accomplished within the space of a decade. Prior to Johns arrival with the prophetically-titled Rebirth limited series, the popularity of the Hal Jordan Green Lantern had fallen so far that DC felt comfortable enough to kill the Silver Age mainstay. Ouch! The Barry Allen version of the Flash got the same treatment in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but Flash, in all of his retcons and revamps (even with his own Johns-scripted Rebirth), has never enjoyed the level of success Johns brought to Green Lantern. He did this by not only bringing back Hal Jordan (and, more importantly, what made the character work), but engaging in the kind cosmic world building we rarely see outside of Roddenberry, Lucas and their ilk. Before Johns there was only the Green Lantern Corps, after him there were seven corps (Larfleeze would no doubt preen smugly at my describing him and his constructs as an entire corps) and all of them populated with memorable characters embracing distinctly different ideologies. Whatever your feelings about Johns handling of the character and his expansion of the GL mythology, it cant be denied that Johns iteration was far and away the most popular, prompting not only a feature film, but laying the foundation down for four monthly comic books. Prior to Johns arrival there was one Green Lantern comic book with a Corps mini-series here and there; after Johns, Green Lantern became a franchise.