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.

Green Arrow #9 - A Review

There's a general rule of thumb I've developed after years of reading comics - any comic whose cover depicts an archer hero using guns will inevitably suck.  It was true years ago when I first read Green Arrow #84 and Green Arrow #85.  And it's just as true this week with Green Arrow #9.






  

The above image should tell you everything you need to know about just how far off the rails this book has run under the pen of Ann Nocenti.  It matters not one whit that once we get into the issue we see that the guns in question are apparently the six-shooter arrows we heard mentioned back in Green Arrow #7.  So the six-shooter arrows are... a gun?  It doesn't matter if the ammunition has pointy arrow-head shaped tips - they are still bullets, not arrows!

 

I hope you'll forgive me for singling out this one point.  I harp on the guns because to discuss the other problems with this issue in-depth would be repetitive in the face of my earlier review.  The King Lear metaphors are hammered even harder into our heads, as one of Leer's creations is called "The Fool".  There's talk about the environmental damage caused by mining randomly squeezed into Ollie's dialogue with some friendly natives that would be preachy even by the standards of Dennis O'Neil.  The nearby mining town, which is having its' wealth stolen by Leer, appears to have been taken from a stock Western, with the one woman we see dressed as a saloon girl!  I'll remind you all that this story is set in modern day Canada and that this all-in-one general store/inn doesn't seem to be a theme restaurant that would encourage its' employees to wear period dress.  And even if it were, it wouldn't explain the rest of the patrons dressing like refugees from a John Wayne movie.

In the end, three things have killed this book for me, the first being Oliver's inconsistent morality.  The man who refuses to use his weapons when facing down mutant wolves for fear of harming another living creature has no qualms with using dynamite to start an avalanche and bury the abominations unto nature Leer has been creating underground.  To say nothing of the damage an avalanche might do to the already perilous local environment! 

The second factor is the artwork, which continues to be among the worst I've seen in any professionally published comic.  Harvey Tolibao's work continues to be under-inked and badly shaded.  Colorist Mike Atiyeh, who worked on the majority of this book, manages to make it look somewhat better than the previous issues colored by Richard & Tanya Horie...but just barely.  The seperation between Leer and the background is much better, but Ollie's costume still looks like a muddy mess of run-together greens.







The final factor which killed this book for me is Noncenti's half-hearted plotting.  For the past three issues, she's seemed so busy trying to make a statement that she forgot to actually say anything.  For all the Shakespeare references, the symbolic intent of Skylark being a metaphor for how women in general are portrayed in comics and the environmental message, there is remarkably little content to this comic.  We don't even get a satisfying conclusion to the subplot of Emerson's attempt to steal Queen Enterprises, being informed on the last two pages in the thought balloons that Ollie has lost everything... even though Emerson's entire scheme is dependent on Ollie being dead for it to work!

 
  Though I suspect you've all had enough of pseudo intellectual Shakespeare quoting at this point, I cannot help but be reminded of a quote from The Bard in pondering how to best summarize this three-issue story arc -  "It is a tale...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."  And it has driven me off of Green Arrow for the foreseeable future.

Green Arrow #7-8

My hopes of Green Arrow having finally found a stable, quality creative team sank shortly after I read the first preview..  I wanted to like the new Green Arrow book.  I really did.   But while Ann Nocenti has written some wonderful works in the past, this is an excruciatingly painful read in many respects.

The above-linked preview sets the stage for Issue #7 well enough.  Green Arrow gets ambushed by three identical women using trick arrows.  They introduce themselves as Skylark and explain that they are inventors and major Green Arrow fans.  Naturally, this being a superhero story, they decided the best way to impress their crush and show off the special gear they designed for him ("...six-shooter arrows, pheromone arrows, flak arrows...") was to attack him.  GA is impressed enough to accept an invitation to their geneticist father's secret lab but he refuses their offer of a bus ticket in favor of a "borrowed jet".  Remember this point for later, kids.  It will be important.




After coming up with an excuse to get Oliver Queen out of the office for a week, Green Arrow flies north with Skylark in tow.  Sexy shenanigans ensue as part of the inflight entertainment and Ollie arrives in a most impressive underground lab, hidden away in the Yukon wilderness.  It is here that Skylark reveals their real intentions - adopting him as a pet.  They also reveal how they used one of their aforementioned pheromone arrows to make Green Arrow more agreeable to traveling with them.

A quick aside.  How quickly would this comic have been decried by the comics-reading public at large if the genders were reversed and it were a superheroine being drugged and taken advantage of by three male triplets?  I bring this up because the word rape is not used once in either of these issues and it really should be.  I find myself disturbed at how Green Arrow's being abducted and drugged by three crazed fangirls, attractive as they may be, is portrayed as a desirable thing.  Indeed, Ollie's response to the news that he was drugged before agreeing to a foursome is to decry it as overkill, pointing out that just one of the Skylarks should be able to convince your average heterosexual male of anything with their natural charm and good looks. 

The issue ends with the Skylarks blowing up Ollie's "borrowed jet" while describing the game they play with their father and how his favorite daughter among the three will inherit everything he owns.  If this rings some bells, I congratulate you on your knowledge of classic English Literature and apologize for the headache you will surely get later as the reference is repeatedly hammered into your head.

While all this is going on, there's a subplot which takes up four pages across two issues.  With the borrowed jet crashed, Emerson - the CFO of Queen Enterprises - starts wheeling and dealing to get Oliver Queen declared legally dead so that he can take over the company.  Meanwhile, Green Arrow's support team try to counter Emerson as best they can, all while conducting their own search for Ollie.

Issue #8 opens up in the middle of the action, with Ollie having somehow escaped from the base off-panel.  He is weaponless, coatless and being pursued through the Arctic wasteland by some breed of wolf with glowing red eyes.. Despite this, he refuses to use lethal force on the wolves, having too much respect for wild life... even hideous mutant wild life.  This decision earns Green Arrow the respect of Skylark's father, who watches the fight from afar on a monitor while disciplining the daughter who helped Ollie escape. 




Sensing a kindred spirit in the young hero, he sends the rebel Skylark out to retrieve Green Arrow.  On the ride back, she tells Ollie of her concern that her father might be going mad and that he has been doing strange experiments on the local wildlife.  Given that this is coming from a triplet who shares a hive mind with her sisters and was raised in an underground compound, one can only imagine what her standard for "strange" is..  Ollie agrees to do what he can to help shortly before being introduced to Daddy Dearest, who introduces himself as Leer.  (Gedit?  Gedit?)  

Leer says he'll show Green Arrow his lab in the morning but - getting the sense that he may shortly become an experiment - Ollie decides to break in with the rebel Skylark in the middle of the night.  Sure enough, Leer is cross-breeding genetic abominations better able to survive in the "Nozones" - areas of high pollution that are apparently springing up all around the Arctic.  He's also collecting the DNA of various historical figures, including Napoleon and Rasputin.  But the most damning evidence of all that Dear Old Dad has lost his marbles?  Leer has merged his own altered DNA (well, I assume he's altered - I'd hate to think he looks like an albino Dee Snyder naturally!) with that of a polar bear so that a part of him will live on after his death.. It's at this point that Daddy Dearest show up, a fight ensues and Ollie and the rebel Skylark escape in one of the most confusing sequences I've ever seen in any comic book.





Nocenti has a lot of great ideas here but most of them are rushed and poorly executed.  Perhaps the most maddening aspect of this story is that Nocenti doesn't even try to hide her sources and makes reference to King Lear on four separate occasions.  Whether she is convinced the average comic fan won't get the reference or whether she wants to make sure we know how clever she is, I'm not sure.  Regardless, basing a villain upon King Lear isn't a bad idea but with his environmentalist ways and loyal daughter Leer comes off as a poor man's Ra's Al Ghul. 

Her take on Ollie Queen as a character is much better, possessing far more personality than he did under J.T. Krul and Dan Jurgens.  True, that personality seems to belong to a third-year Theater Arts major but that's not a bad choice.  You have to have some sense of drama to go into battle dressed like Robin Hood, after all.  But while Ollie's always had a flair for the dramatic and is usually shown to be a fairly well-read fellow, his frequent soliloquizing out-loud when alone just seems off.  It also doesn't help most of Ollie's dialogue alternates between James Bond and a parody of Denny O'Neil's beatnik Green Arrow from 40 years ago. ("It's been the most wonderful kidnapping, angel.  But I still don't trust you.") 

The story itself is another point of aggravation. Because when you get right down to it, this is a tale of smart people who are forced to act like idiots because the plot says they have to.  Ollie disappears in a company jet (Secret Identity?  Bah!) instead of taking a bus, because they need the plane crash to get the subplot moving   It's fortunate that Ollie does decide to take the plane, because it turns out that Leer's home is a 12-hour walk from civilization... begging the question of why Skylark offered him a bus ticket to get there!  Ollie doesn't tell his support team where he is going because he needs them to hack into his personal journal and translate a King Lear reference ("flying north with the crows" ) so they can show up to rescue him.  Emerson, who up until now has been portrayed as more of a disappointed father figure to Ollie than the greedy Gordon Gecko type, goes full-blown Daffy Duck once he's offered a chance at taking over Queen Enterprises.  (Gold! Gold! Gold!  Mine! Mine! Mine!  BWAHAHA!)   And Ollie's support team forget that they have a tracking device installed on Ollie's costume because... uh, I've got nothing..



  
I've said nothing about what I think about the art team so far.  Perhaps that is because nothing is what I think of them.  And nothing will come of nothing.  (See!  I can quote Shakespeare too!)  In fact, I can't really call them an art team because that implies some level of working together.  Artist Harvey Tolibao seems to be at war with colorists Richard and Tanya Horie and he is losing badly.

Tolibao's pencil work is clear enough and finely detailed but it needs heavier inking and definition on most of its' pages.  The colorists do Tolibao a disservice by using colors that are too similar in close proximity, turning pages like the above splash page of Green Arrow into a muddy mess.  They also use the same intensity of palette on figures that are meant to be faded to suggest motion, making it appear that we have three Green Arrows of equal intensity on a single page or - as in the first image of this review - two pairs of goggles flying through the air!  This does not excuse Tolibao completely, for the man is one of the worst visual storytellers I've ever seen as I believe the above page depicting Ollie's fight with the Leer bear illustrates. 

It pains me to say this but I cannot recommend this new Green Arrow title to you all.  Perhaps we'll get lucky and the creative team will change again in three issues and we'll be offered something decent.