Green Lantern: New Guardians #25 – Review

By: Justin Jordan (writer), Brad Walker & Geraldo Borges (pencilers), Drew Hennessy & Cam Smith (inkers), Wil Quintana (colors)

The Story: For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For the want of a shoe, the knight was lost. For the want of a knight, the battle was lost. For the want of a battle, the kingdom was lost.

So…how badly do you want a nail?

The Review: The modern ‘space cop’ Green Lantern started as another Earth-bound hero, but within a matter of issues the tug-of-war between Lantern 2814’s homeworld and the rest of his sector began. Through its history, Green Lantern has waffled back and forth between superhero and cosmic comic, but even that changed when the Sinestro Corps War erupted. Ever since, Green Lantern has dealt primarily with in-house threats, whether they be the prophesies in the Book of Oa, other Lantern Corps, or even their own Guardians. Perhaps that’s why this issue feels so fresh.

Justin Jordan’s Kyle has always been charming, but now that he isn’t dealing with universal domination, he’s able to show it. His friendly demeanor, realistic self-doubt, and subdued sense of humor make it easy to feel at ease with this version of the Torchbearer, even if he doesn’t exactly break the mold of a comic book lead.

It’s also lovely to see Carol Ferris continue to come into her own in this series. I don’t know that we ever got an explanation for her rapid change from woman who sees rings as her ruin to enthusiastic member of the Star Sapphire Corps, but if she continues to bring so much to the title, I’m not sure I care.

Though it may grate on some ears or feel like poor-man’s Yoda-speak, the aliens’ speech remains limited enough to be endearing and displays just enough consideration to make it feel solid.

But more than any one character, Exuras is Jordan’s greatest accomplishment in this issue. The central conceit channels a number of sci-fi thought experiments of days gone by, but it possesses enough crucial differences to make it feel original. Better still, the self-awareness that the story displays never goes so far as to become trite but finds the sweet spot where it just complicates the morality of the aliens, avoiding the standard ‘two opposite extremes’ approach that often hamstrings these kinds of stories.

Green Lantern #6 – Review

By: Geoff Johns (writer), Mike Choi (artist), Alex Sinclair (colorist)

The Story: In which Sinestro finds prophecies to be heavy reading.

The Review: At some point in every superhero’s life there comes a time when they have to face the prospect of hanging up the cape/putting away the spandex outfit for a while, even for good.  You can understand why this is such a popular plotline in comics.  There’s a certain fascination in figuring out the person beneath the costume, and having our hero take out of it for a while is a huge opportunity to see exactly who we’ve been idolizing all this time.

And if any of you saw the Green Lantern movie, I think you understand for Hal especially it’s important to find out what the deal with this guy is.  Basically, when he’s not ruining planes left and right, he’s slinging energy blasts while in colorful wardrobe.  Clark writes, Bruce invests money, Diana’s royalty, Barry gets his CSI on, and all of them have non-vigilante people around to do it with.  Even Hal’s love interest slips into a hot pink number and exacts justice now and then.  If the life of Green Lantern isn’t available to him, how would Hal fare?

Actually, it seems like Hal takes to civilian life pretty well, despite being essentially homeless, unemployed, and broke.  Even more interesting, he doesn’t seem all that enamored with his piloting life either.  In fact, he’s so well-adjusted to being grounded that you might very well share Carol’s sentiment that “I’m not sure I can get used to this.”  Going from intergalactic cop/flying ace to house husband—or, more accurately, house live-in partner—seems too major a switch for him to act like everything’s fine and dandy.