While the current stories in Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps are building toward the Blackest Night event coming up later this year, artist Ivan Reis is already there.

As he sat in Artist’s Alley at New York Comic Con, the Green Lantern artist was in the midst of working on Blackest Night, which will kick off with issue #0 on Free Comic Book Day in May.

Reis started drawing comics professionally when he was only 14 years old, working in his home country of Brazil. Five years later, he debuted in American comics with Ghost for Dark Horse. Over his career since, he’s worked on comics for various publishers, including Marvel and DC, but really caught the attention of fans with the epic space battles he drew in the DC mini-series Rann-Thanagar War in 2005.

Since becoming the regular penciler on Green Lantern with issue #10 in 2006, Reis has been chronicling the saga of the Green Lanterns and other energy-wielding corps, teaming with writer Geoff Johns for the top-selling title.

After Reis drew 43 pages for Green Lantern #25, the much-anticipated final issue of Sinestro Corps War in 2007, the artist told Newsarama that it was the biggest and most important comic he’d ever drawn.

But as we spoke to him in New York, it became clear that he now believes his work on Blackest Night will become even more important. As the Brazilian artist talked to us at his table on the convention floor, his friend and fellow-DC-artist Joe Prado translated many of the questions and answers as Reis struggled to express just how excited he is to be working on Blackest Night. Click on the link above to read the whole story.