Why I'm Dropping Green Lantern - A Review of Green Lantern Annual #2

WARNING: This review will get spoilerly and rantish after the first paragraph.  Stop reading after that if you care about spoilers.

Ever since Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi left their respective books, I feared this moment might come.  And now it is here - the moment I can no longer justify supporting the Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps titles.  Understand this - the books by Robert Venditti and Van Jansen have been well-written and engaging.  This annual, too, has a good story and good artwork.  But after reading Green Lantern Annual #2, three things have become apparent to me.

1. You HAVE to read all the Green Lantern family of books now.

Despite being an annual for the Green Lantern book itself, this issue is really meant to cover all of the titles in the Green Lantern "family", including Red Lanterns and New Guardians.  This has become an increasing problem in many New 52 DC Comics titles.  Indeed, it's the reason I dropped Supergirl, which has become increasingly interdependent on a bunch of Superman books I have no interest in reading. 

I can't keep reading two good books if I also have to read two books I really don't care about to know what is going on in the books I enjoy.  I have no interest in The Red Lanterns as a group.  I hate that Guy Gardner - my favorite Lantern in the post-52 books under Tomasi's pen - is now attached to them.  And I really hate that Kyle Rayner has been turned into a Space Jesus messiah figure that has nothing in common with the character I loved 15 years ago.  On that note...


2.  There's No Point To Kyle Rayner Existing Except As Nostalgia Fodder.

And I say that as someone who got into comics BECAUSE of Kyle Rayner.

If you needed any proof that certain aspects of The New 52 universe were not planned at all, one need only look at The New Guardians title.  For the first year, it told the story of an attempt to build a team with one member of each of the various Lantern Corps.  It also showed a slightly different version of Kyle Rayner's original background, with Ganthet giving Kyle some basic instruction into how his ring worked in the wake of Emerald Twilight. 

Then suddenly the word came from on high - Emerald Twilight never happened and Hal Jordan never went crazy and destroyed the Green Lantern Corps.  So why was Kyle Rayner necessary?  Now the story was that he was chosen by Ganthet as part of an experiment to see if one being could harness the power of multiple spectrum energies at the same time. For some reason, this retcon also required them to establish that Kyle's girlfriend Alex did exist in the new reality and that she was stuffed in a fridge... even though Major Force - the villain who originally did the deed - didn't exist in the new reality! And then Kyle was assigned the task of looking after... The New Guardians - a group of the blue-skinned aliens who founded the Green Lantern Corps who had been in stasis while their brothers set about screwing up the universe. 

This issue seemed to give Kyle a heroic death and a point to the sudden 180 that The New Guardians title took.  That lasts a scant few pages before it reveals that - Psych! - Kyle Rayner is alive and an even greater destiny awaits him that The New Guardians have known of all this time, despite knowing very little of the universe and how things have changed until this point.

Kyle should have stayed dead.  And he'd be better off in limbo with Wally West, Donna Troy, Jenny-Lynn Hayden and most of the other heroes of his generation.  Literally none of his background and everything that made him interesting as a character remains.  Now he's just another generic cosmic hero with a destiny.
 


3.  The Wasting Of Relic and The Absolution of The Green Lantern Corps.

I liked the idea of Relic, the scientist from a previous universe who believed that his universe had been destroyed by "the lightsmiths" - his term for the Lantern Corps of his universe - slowly leaching away the energy that held the cosmos together.  It was a brilliant conceit and one that gave the various Corps a common enemy to unite against in the wake of the death of The Guardians.  More, there was the frightening idea - what if Relic was right?  What if it turned our our favorite heroes, good intentioned as they are, were truly causing the universe to become sick even as they were trying to save it?

It's the sort of idea Alan Moore might have spent years playing with, touching on issues of conservation and environmental responsibility vs. the belief in manifest destiny and the idea that such energy would not be there if it were not meant to be used.  Alas, Relic is now dead and his concerns have been rendered largely mute by the sacrifice of Kyle Rayner and the emotional entities.  The only real loss is that a number of the alien Green Lanterns who weren't getting any screen-time anyway have quit the Corps in disgust rather than contribute to the eventual destruction of all reality... which is no loss at all since we still have Hal Jordan calling the shots and he never really believed Relic in the first place.  So really, nothing has changed at all save the Green Lanterns are now based on Mogo instead of Oa and there's no Blue Lanterns anymore. 

The loss of the Blue Lanterns seems an apt metaphor for the Green Lantern books as a whole now  It is a universe without hope.  And that's a universe I want no part of. 

Green Lantern: New Guardians #13 - A Review

With this issue, Tony Bedard has exhausted my patience as well as what little credit I was able to extend to him.  Bedard's writing has missed with me more than it has hit but I was willing to give the man his due since his Green Lantern writing was largely good up until The New 52 relaunch.  Plus, he was the only writer working with Green Arrow (albeit it briefly, through Birds of Prey) who acknowledged that Oliver Queen was a rape victum that he had never cheated on Dinah Lance until after his return from the grave..

So why now?  Why has New Guardians #13 accomplished what an entire year of completely pointless meandering didn't and made me drop this title?    Because this issue, released over a year since we should have received a full backstory for Kyle Rayner, reveals that the only part of Kyle's backstory that has remained constant is the one part that honestly could have - no, should have been changed.  I speak, of course, of the incident that coined the phrase "Women in Refrigerators" - the death of Kyle's girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt.


I've written before about Alex as a character and the ramifications of her death, so I won't repeat those arguments here.  I will say that given that most of Kyle's previous love life is now impossible since three of his four ex-girlfriends never existed in the New 52 universe (Donna Troy, Jenny-Lynn Hayden-Scott and Soranik Natu, for those keeping track), it really adds nothing to Kyle's character to have Alex exist in this new reality only for her to die horribly again.  It's particularly vexing here since Major Force - the villain responsible for the death in the original universe - no longer exists in the New 52 universe and the flashback we see here just has Kyle refer to non-specific enemies that came with his job being responsible for Alex dying.

It may be unfair of me to blame Bedard for the decision to bring Alex back only to have her die again.  The decision may have been handed down by DC Editorial.  But I can blame Bedard for the poor execution of this story.  Say what you will about Ron Marz but while he freely admitted to creating Alex only so that she could be killed off, at least he spent a few issues building her as a character so that you cared when she was taken away. 

Bedard fails to do that and fails to make this issue, which apparently follows after the most recent issue of Red Lanterns, stand on its' own merits as a story on any level.  What is meant to be the first hard lesson Kyle learned as a hero and his defining tragedy is reduced to a footnote, revealed in the middle of a training montage as Acrocitus of the Red Lanterns tries to teach Kyle how to harness the power of Rage without a Red Lantern ring. 


You wouldn't think the artwork could possibly make this mess of a story any worse.  Somehow, Andrei Bressan and Amilcar Pinna manage it.  In reviewing the last issue, I compared Bressan's artwork to that of Frank Quietly, noting the similar detail-oriented styles while also noting that Bressarn was a poor visual storyteller.  Those problems continue throughout this issue, as well with the pages I think were drawn by Amilcar Pinna, which  resemble nothing less than a poor parody of Rob Liefeld, with tiny eyes and consantly gritted teeth. 

Do not buy this book.  Do not even read it in the shop.  Go spend your money on Green Lanterns Corps and leave this one to die.

Green Lantern: New Guardians #0 - A Review

The biggest problem Green Lantern: New Guardians #0 faces is that the story it tries to tell is nowhere near as interesting as stories it implies.  Unlike every other Zero Month issue thus far, this one does not give us an origin story.  Indeed, the events of the last year of this comic are largely ignored and most of this issue is based on events occurring in the main Green Lantern title.     


Tony Bedard is a competent comic writer but there is little interest in yet another story where the Black Lanterns have to be fought.  Better to have devoted an issue to Kyle's life as a Green Lantern and some explanation as to how Emerald Twilight and the collapse of the Green Lantern Corps occurred -assuming they still did - and how Kyle became known as The Torchbearer.  This is doubly true given some of the clues we receive during this issue that indicate either some major changes in the Green Lantern mythology or some whopping big continuity errors.

To name a few...Why does Kyle call Hal a Colonel when his rank has always been listed before as Captain?  How does Carol know Kyle Rayner's secret identity?  For that matter, why does Hal still have a locker at Ferris Air when - as the new series opened - Hal was fresh off being drummed out of the Air Force?  And why did Hal have an engagement ring hidden in his locker when he seemed utterly shocked that Carol expected him to propose as the new Green Lantern series started?  Why is Carol just now developing a sense of modesty regarding her costume or just now getting the ability to alter her costume so her boobs aren't falling out?  And why the heck was Ganthet trying to find someone capable of channeling all the Lantern energies at once in the first place?    


The artwork this time around is all over the place.  With the pencils handled by two different artists and two different inkers, there's very little consistency to the visual aesthetics of this issue.  The principal penciler, Aaron Kuder, appears to be aping David Finch's style.  By contrast, Andrei Bressan appears to be a disciple of Frank Quietly though with none of that artist's eye for storytelling.  There are a lot of awkward poses throughout the issue and everything looks odd and off-kilter as a result.    

All in all, New Guardians continues to be the most disappointing of the Green Lantern family of books.  Apart from Kyle's newfound ability to channel multiple ring energies, Bedard isn't continuing any of his storylines from the past year of this title.  The artwork here seems phoney and lifeless.  Still, if you really feel the need to be reading all the Green Lantern books heading into Rise of The Third Army, this issue would serve as an adequate jumping-on point for those who haven't been reading it.

Green Lantern: Prelude To The Third Army

Having little to say about this past month's Green Lantern comics that I have not said before, I thought perhaps it might be best to look at each issue and how it is contributing to the upcoming Rise of The Third Army crossover.



The main contribution of Green Lantern #12 is a rehash of the events of Blackest Night and The Guardians discussing their recent revelation that the greatest problem facing universal order is free will and how they will cope with everyone who has a decent chance of stopping them. It also establishes that Black Hand will have a role to play in the coming action and that Hal Jordan may soon be wearing another color ring yet again.




Green Lantern Corps #12 is primarily concerned with continuing the action sequence involving the jail break that became a prison riot in the wake of John Stewart's conviction of murdering a fellow Lantern several issues ago. Good stuff, as always. There's a lot of good action here and Tomasi does a good job balancing the protagonist time between Guy Gardner and John Sewart.



Our primary interest here lies in two points. First, the Green Lanterns all getting the same distress call through their rings from some being saying "Let Me Out!" The other is a scene toward the end, where The Guardians congratulate themselves on eliminating all of the Alpha Lanterns without having to get their own hands dirty, thus eliminating the one body in the Green Lantern Corps devoted toward rooting out corruption from within.


As usual, Green Lantern New Guardians #12 is the weakest of the pack. The plotline involving the need to stop the being Inviticus from destroying the Vega system is concluded and we finally get an explanation for how these "new Guardians" were brought together and who was responsible for stealing the various rings and manipulating everyone from the start.

It turns out to have been the enslaved Guardian Sayd, who now claims that Ganthet foresaw that one day they would need someone capable of channeling all the various Lantern energies and THAT was why he chose Kyle Rayner to become the last Green Lantern when Hal Jordan went nuts. My response to this is best summed up by the collected contents of the bull pens at the Fort Worth Stockyard.


As in Green Lantern Corps, all the various lanterns assembled receive the same distress call from someone demanding to be let out. Based on some dialogue from War Of The Green Lanterns, I believe this call to have been from the imprisoned First Lantern.



The issue concludes with The Guardians breaking up, but the preview ads for the upcoming storyline suggest that some of them will return and that Carol Ferris will be replacing Fatality, in a new costume that actually covers her body!

Green Lantern: New Guardians #11 - A Review

A FEW WORDS OF WARNING: This review doesn't really do much to talk about the book for those of you who haven't been reading the series before now. I apologize for that, as I usually try and sum up the story thus far for potential new readers. But honestly - I can't do that this time. If you haven't been reading this book before now, you'll be totally lost. So if you're really interested in learning about New Guardians, read this review instead. Thank you.


I want to love New Guardians. I really do. But it occurs to me with this penultimate chapter of the opening arc that the story is entirely dependent on established characters acting counter to their usual motivations and personalities. And I'm not talking about Red Lantern Bleez suddenly being more than a mad-dog murderer. That's all down to stuff that happened in other books affecting this one, which is a whole other problem. In this case, I'm talking specifically about Kyle Rayner.

For the entire run of this book, I've let a few things slide, figuring they were due to desperation and idealism. As wary as he'd be about it, I can buy that Kyle would put aside his differences to work alongside a woman (i.e. The Star Sapphire Formerly Known As Fatality) who was, for a while back in the Ron Marz days, his arch-enemy. He was a Blue Lantern for a while after all and believes in the power of hope and redemption.

I was able to accept that Kyle would bargain with an angelic being who said his ultimate goal was to destroy an evil-aligned star-system for the sake of recreating paradise for his chosen people and agree to become an assassin for said being, after having previously agreed to kill the angel. Much as Kyle hates killing, it's not like there was much he could do to fight Inviticus and it looked like he was going to have to kill Larfleeze anyway.




However, I cannot believe Kyle being as outright stupid as he's been portrayed in the previous few issues. Last time, what set me off was his not showing up in-person to aid the Blue Lanterns during the invasion of their homeworld. As I noted then, Kyle should know damn well from personal experience that Blue Lanterns can only access the offensive potential of their rings if a Green Lantern is present. This time, we have Kyle forgetting that the Orange Lantern constructs - though they may act like independent personalities - are still just constructs. So if you say something in front of a construct and the ring-wielder is focusing on listening through said construct...




To my mind, a superhero should not ever sound like a schoolboy who just discovered that people will pretend to be your friend in order to get something they want. At the very least, Kyle Rayner shouldn't.

At least the artwork by Tyler Kirkham is as good as ever. But that's cold comfort for a long-time Kyle Rayner fan like me who is sick of seeing the Green Lantern that got me into comics being portrayed as a green rookie (no pun intended) instead of the Torchbearer who kept the Green Lanterns going when nobody else could. I'll give this one more issue to try and make sense of it all since it looks like the storyline is finally going somewhere. But after that... I'm probably dropping it.

Friday Comic Con News Round Up - Part One

All news from the DC Comics Justice League & Green Lantern panel.


* Justice League #12 will bring big changes to the team. New people will join. Old people will quit. Tony Daniel will take over writing after Issue #12.

# The relationship between Billy Batson and the wizard Shazam will be antagonistic once they finally meet. According to Geoff Johns, "Shazam is weirded out that a kid is visiting him, whereas Billy doesn't like Shazam telling him what to do. Johns says that Billy will be joining the Justice League." An empowered Billy Batson will be part of the new Justice League.

* Again, the Green Lantern on the cover of Green Lantern #0 is an original character, who carries a gun as a back-up weapon in case his ring runs out of power at a bad moment.

* Again, the upcoming "Third Army" the Guardians create will come about because of their conclusion that emotion and fear aren't the cause of the universe's problems - it's free will.

* Johns also made reference to "The Fall Of Guy Gardner" in the coming months.

* By Issue #12, we will learn how and why a ring from each Corps wound up going to Kyle Rayner. More, Kyle will wind up with one of each ring again and apparently have to learn how to use and master each color of the spectrum heading into "The Third Army".

* Tony Bedard also said that upcoming stories will spell out more of Kyle Rayner's past - a neccesity given, as Geoff Johns pointed out, that over half of his girlfriends may not exist in the new continuity. Jade definitely doesn't. The fate of Donna Troy and Soranik is still in question. No word on if Major Force still fridged Alexandra DeWitt.

* There probably won't be any resolution to the dangling plot-thread of Lobo getting a Red Lantern ring.

* The Dex-Starr Valentine's Day special is coming. They just need to bring Krypto back before it can happen.

Green Lantern: New Guardians #10 - A Review

Green Lantern: New Guardians #10 continues the invasion of the Blue Lantern homeworld by the sinister alien menace known as The Reach. Seemingly abandoned by their Red, Orange and Indigo allies, it falls to Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, Star Sapphire Fatality and Sinestro Corps drillmaster Arkillo to aid Saint Walker in the defense of his Corps' central power battery.



This issue is heavy on action and light on characterization, but it well-paced action. My only problem with it is that Tony Bedard does throw logic to the wind in order to build the drama in one rather important respect. In the middle of the battle, Kyle Rayner stays in sky to battle the Reach spaceships, sending Fatality on to aid the Blue Lanterns. This despite Kyle (who wielded a Blue Lantern ring himself during War of the Green Lanterns) knowing from personal experience that Blue Lanterns need a Green Lantern nearby in order to activate the offensive capabilities of their rings. By the time Kyle gets there, the battle is already all but lost. I know Kyle may be the most inexperienced of the Earthling Green Lanterns... but this just makes him look incompetent.

The artwork by guest artist Tomas Giorello is competent, but too heavily inked for my tastes. The artwork in a Green Lantern title should be bright and vibrant. There is a lot of color here (no pun intended) but it seems that the only reason the color stands out is because everything around it is so dark. Perhaps this was a stylistic choice given the rather bleak ending? If so, it was not a great choice.

Green Lantern: The New Guardians - 52 Catch-Up

I haven't written anything about New Guardians since my review of the first book because this title is very difficult to review in a monthly format.  To say the story here is decompressed would be putting it mildly as most of the series thus far has seemed like one big extended fight scene, with a plot twist at the end of each issue changing the dance card for the next fight.

I'm not convinced this is entirely the fault of writer Tony Bedard, who has written many great character-analyzing stories in the past  Indeed, his first issue focuses upon Green Lantern Kyle Rayner and retells his origin within the context of the New 52 universe.  The problem is that the vast majority of our protagonists early on are either one-dimensional (the vengeful Sinestro Corps drill-sergeant Arkillo, the ever-optimistic Saint Walker) or largely incapable of normal speech (the Orange Lantern Glomulus, the Red Lantern Bleez).  There's not much for the readers, particularly new ones,  to latch onto in terms of personality and this series lacks a lot of the emotional punch of the other Green Lantern titles as a result.




The plot kicks off as Kyle Rayner is attacked - first by a series of rings belong to the other Lantern Corps then by various members of the other Corps who have come seeking the stolen rings.  Unable to convince Bleez (Red Lantern), Munk (Indigo Tribe), Arkillo (Sinestro Corps) or Fatality of the Star Sapphires (a.k.a. Yrra Cynri, though this name is never used, though she says she is no longer Fatality) that he is not responsible for the theft, things are looking grim for Kyle until the arrival of Saint Walker - first of the Blue Lanterns.  The two of them escape and plot a course to Oa, hoping that the Guardian Ganthet - who helped to start the Blue Lanterns and chose Kyle Rayner to be a Green Lantern - might have some answers.





A quick note about the art.  Regular penciller Tyler Kirkman is joined on issues #2-4 by current Green Arrow penciler Harvey Tolibao and the cohesion of the book suffers for it.  Ignoring my own personal dislike for Toliabo's style which has already been discussed in some detail in my Green Arrow reviews, the two artist's styles do not mesh at all and the designs for various characters look completely dissimilar from page to page.  Consider Kyle Rayner in the above scan (Tolibao) and in the one below (Kirkman).


Issue #3 opens with Kyle having been possessed by the rings and suddenly lashing out at The Guardians.  The rest of the Corps members arrive shortly thereafter and another fight ensues between the Lanterns and the Guardians.  This continues until the arrival of the one party conspicuous in his absence - Larlfleeze, a.k.a. Agent Orange.



He joins the fight in opening half of Issue #4, claiming  that someone tried to steal his ring too.  Having disguised one of his Orange Lanterns - the Slimer-like Glomulus - as a power ring, Agent Orange let it follow the other captured rings while his slave - the former Guardian Sayd - tracked the power that was stealing the rings in the first place to a gigantic orrery in space.





Reluctantly, the assemble band of "New Guardians" as Agent Orange calls them agrees to investigate the orrery, as the party splits up to investigate the differing worlds making up the gigantic solar system model.  They discover several amazing things, such as an entire planet of Tamaranians (i.e. Starfire's race) and another world claiming to be Okaara - the world where Fatality trained as a hunter and warrior years earlier.  Perhaps most astonishing, however, is a temple depicting Larfleeze as a monster called "The Beast" - sworn enemy of The Archangel Invictus, whom the temple is devoted to.




In Issue #6, Invictus himself shows up and begins beating seven kinds of hell out of the team.  For a moment, it looks as if Saint Walker's desperate attempt to use his ring to relieve Invictus of whatever burdens he has might prove effective.  Alas, it turns out that whatever Invictus is, he is far beyond the ability of a Blue Lantern ring to manipulate.




Thankfully, he is all too eager to tell his story to our heroes before they die.  Thus Issue #7 opens with Invictus explaining his own history with Agent Orange and how - millions of years ago - Agent Orange was responsible for undoing all of the good works his people attempted to bring about in the Vega Star System.  If that sounds vaguely familiar, it should - Vega is one of the few systems Green Lanterns are not allowed to enter and the place has become a wretched hive of scum and villany as a result.




Trapped outside the universe after Agent Orange turned his own followers against him, Invictus is newly returned and constructed the gigantic orrery as a means of restoring Vega to its' former glory... as soon as he is done destroying the current inhabitants and Agent Orange himself.  In the middle of all this discussion, it is revealed that for all of his power Invictus is unable to take a power ring away from it's wielder.  This too leads our team to realize what most of the readers had already guessed - Agent Orange was lying his crooked yellow teeth off.  Eventually a truce is reached and Invictus agrees to let the group live if they will accomplish one task - Kill Agent Orange.

As Issue #8 begins, the team is split once more, as everyone parts ways to head to their respective homeworlds and recharge their rings.  The rest of the issue is not as action heavy as previous ones, mostly focusing on plot details as it sums up what we already know of the plot in this book and explains recent intergalactic events to those few people who are reading this book but aren't reading the main Green Lantern title. 





Chief among these events are Sinestro's rejoining the Green Lanterns and shutting down the fear-empowered army that bore his name.  These events are recanted to Arkillo by The Weaponer of Qward, who gives Arkillo a new yellow power ring and battery that will act independently of the old Sinestro Corps Central Power Battery.  We also learn from the Star Sapphire commanders that someone in this universe had to be working to help Inviticus escape... but they have no idea who.   




Issue #9 primarily focuses upon Saint Walker and the Blue Lanterns as they defend their home base from an invasion of Breach soldiers, a.k.a. The Outer-Space baddies responsible for creating Jamie Reyes' armor in Blue Beetle and for the first time in months, Bedard seems to be writing up to his usual standard.  The action sequences of The Blue Lanterns are excellent but what really sells the story is Bedard clarifying the powers of the Blue Lanterns as the story progresses.  The Breach, for instance, take the Blue Lanterns seriously as a threat even though they are thought to be the weakest of the various Lantern Corps.  While it is true that they lack the overt offensive capabilities of most of the other Corps, The Blues are far from helpless as Saint Walker demonstrates.




Kirkman's prowess as an artist is proven in this issue as is the skill of the coloring team.  It would have been all too easy for this issue to become a muddy mess of blues, since the Blue Lantern uniforms and the Breach Soldiers uniforms look fairly similar.  Still, inker Batt manages to keep things separated and Kirkman's designs are distinctive enough to be differentiated  from a distance despite having the exact same palette.  Thankfully, carefully applied glow effects mark the Lanterns easily enough.

Can I recommend this comic?  Yes, but only if you are already a fan of the Green Lantern mythos.  Ironically, this book is not newbie friendly despite the amount of pages Bedard's devotes toward trying to explain everything to new readers.  Bedard's also at his best when he is focusing on individual character conflicts rather than on epic action sequences, as the two most recent issues have shown.  This book has taken its' time getting warmed up but it's finally turned into something worth reading.  And Kirmna's pencils, as ever, make it something exciting to look at.

52 Pick-Up - Week Four

AQUAMAN #2 - Another solid issue, which gives a little more development to Aquaman's wife Mera, reestablished as a fiery redhead with water-control powers for those new readers who missed her star-making appearance in Blackest Night. While Johns' cracks about how Aquaman is perceived by the public at large in the DC Universe are starting to become wearying, the action of this issue - in which Cthulhuian horrors from the deep come to the surface looking for food - is well-executed and amazingly drawn by Ivan Reis. This is going on the pull list.


GREEN LANTERN: NEW GUARDIANS #2 -The plot thickens as Kyle Rayner escapes Earth and heads to Oa, taking with him six rings he doesn't want. He goes to seek the console of the Guardian Ganthet, who it seems has been radically changed by the other Guardians, his old personality having been entirely erased! Bedard does a great job pacing this issue, delivering some good action scenes while explaining away the special relationship between Kyle, Ganthet and The Blue Lanterns for new readers. The one stumbling block is that while Bedard has a good grasp on the character relationships, he fails to explain some of the special ring powers - such as the presence of a Blue Lantern super-charging nearby Green Lantern rings. This too, is going on the pull list.


JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #2 - This issue wouldn't be so bad if I at least had the sense that it was building toward something. As it is, we get a lot of random scenes as our team STILL hasn't come together and isn't showing any signs of doing so anytime soon. The two pages with John Constantine, for instance, seem to have been accidentally pasted into this issue from this month's issue of Hellblazer, having no relation to anything else in the issue! Even the art - supposedly by Mikel Janin throughout the comic, looks totally different on those two pages. This one is off the list. Not even going to pick up the trades.

Green Lantern: The New Guardians #1 - A Review

Regular readers know that I first got into comics during the days when Kyle Rayner was “The Last Green Lantern” and Ron Marz writing of the character had a hand in turning me from a casual reader into the graphic novel guru I am today. While I like all of the Green Lanterns as characters, I’d probably choose Kyle as my favorite for sentimental reasons, having been a artsy, smart-aleck twenty-something with too much imagination when I first was introduced to the character. You can imagine then how much I was anticipating New Guardians #1, which promised to update Kyle for the new DC Universe.

Thankfully, Tony Bedard does not disappoint in this first issue. The flashback detailing how Kyle became Green Lantern is true to the original story and Kyle is quickly established as a creative, good-hearted young man. In fact, I think Bedard improved on this origin by having Ganthet (usually portrayed as the most kind-hearted of the Guardians who created the Green Lantern Corps) stick around long enough to give Kyle some basic instruction in using his ring rather than abandoning him to his own devices as per the original Emerald Twilight.

The rest of the issue establishes Kyle in his current position as the Green Lantern’s agent on Earth, while introducing new readers to the concept of the seven Color Corps – groups like the Green Lanterns, who draw their power from other emotion forces than willpower, such as hope, compassion or greed. While Bedard doesn’t profile all of The Corps in this first issue, he gives enough of a taste for new readers to get a feel for the Rage-empowered Red Lanterns, the fear-empowered Sinestro Corps and the love-empowered Star Sapphires. Old-time readers will be glad to see the Violet Lanterns being represented by The Villainess Formerly Known As Fatality, who was perhaps the most interesting new villain to come out of the original Ron Marz run on Green Lantern. Her inclusion here promises some interesting drama in the issues to come.

Tyler Kirkham is probably better known for his work on Witchblade, but he’s no stranger to drawing Green Lantern adventures, having been a regular penciler on Green Lantern Corps for much of the past year. Kirkham is a master at drawing weird-looking aliens that look like real, living beings as well as imaginative constructs – a must for any artist drawing a Kyle Rayner story. The inks by Batt are unusually thin but this only serves to emphasize the bright, vibrant coloring Nei Ruffino. This is a gorgeous book in every department.

I can’t say this is the best book of the new Green Lantern line as Green Lantern Corps was just a little bit more accommodating of new readers. That’s not to say that this book is bad – far from it! Bedard’s script does a wonderful job of introducing new readers to Kyle Rayner but falters a little on explaining all of the other Lantern Corps. Still, the artwork is gorgeous and I believe future issues (and the inevitable trade paperback collection) may help alleviate any confusion this first issue causes.