Green Lantern Corps #53 – Review

By: Tony Bedard (writer), Tyler Kirkham (penciller), Batt (inker), Nei Ruffino (colorist)

The Story: The Weaponer, Part One: The story opens on a flashback of the Weaponer of Qward, building Sinestro his yellow ring as well as holding his secrets. Fast forward to today, where Kyle is on Korugar, trying to help with general problems, but he runs into three of Sinestro’s thugs. Things aren’t going badly, until the Weaponer shows up, with an axe to grind against Sinestro. Things go down hill from there.

What’s Good: I really enjoyed the new art team. Batt appears to be generous with his inks, giving a thick, darkened, textured feel to the people, the aliens and the environment, slightly reminiscent of Cascioli’s stuff. However, Kirkham’s lines tend to be more stylized and the figures *just slightly* exaggerated (check out the fingers). There are also a lot of extra lines that added a scratchy feel to the artwork, a bit like Sylvestri’s work. This style worked for me. At the same time, the postures and expressions were dynamic, evoking movement. In fact, if you want movement, check out the three thugs bearing down on Rayner, or the double splash page (pun intended) entrance of the Weaponer. Nice visuals all around.

Bedard’s writing, plotwise and dialoguewise, was good. Right off the bat, we get the Sinestro-Weaponer connection, then an exciting slap-down start to a new arc. The Weaponer is weird and tough and shows Kyle the goods. Sinestro is arrogant, badass, but interesting enough for me to wish he’d had more pages in this book. His thugs are even better. I’d love to say more about the writing, but I don’t want to spoil.