Green Lantern #39 – Review

By Geoff Johns (writer), Philip Tan (artist), Jonathan Clapion (inkers), Randy Mayor & Gabe Eltaeb (colors)

In the previous arc, Geoff Johns sprayed the pages with Red Lantern keywords such as, “RAGE” and “HATE.”  In this one, he does the same thing, except using only one word: “MINE.”  And along with using one word, Johns introduces something different, he make the Orange Lantern Corp an army of one.  Unfortunately, this and the ongoing debate of Hal Jordan and the Blue Lanterns– Will vs. Hope, make you wish that the Black Night came already.

Green Lantern has been so good for so long, it’s easy to expect that the next thing Geoff Johns cranks out is the best thing coming out of DC.  However, with a surprisingly uninteresting previous arc, and now a silly brand of Lantern introduced, it looks as though Johns’ preamble to the big blockbuster — Blackest Night, is starting to fizzle out.

Fans had reason to be excited for the ongoing War of Light in Green Lantern.  You had an assortment of Lantern Corps emerging, new oaths to secretly memorize, and new characters that you would hope would stay in the DC universe.  Yet, it’s all been pretty drab.  Hal Jordan going red and then blue, all seemed like cheap ploys.  The droning text and dialogue that accompany the new color Lantern Corps  have either been silly or unintentionally funny.  And the absence of Ethan Van Sciver haunts the pages with a lack of vivid emotion and code of conduct that each ring is attributed to.   We see this all again in the first part of Agent Orange.

In this issue, the Orange Lantern emerges within the Vega System after the wannabe Guardians (the Controllers) discover its location.  A secret that the the little blue men have kept is revealed, and violence and avarice ensue in the form of orange light.  Meanwhile, you get a few forgettable pages of Hal Jordan engaged in a conflict with the two rings he now holds: the blue and the green.  Encountering the new color introduced is inevitable, and their reason for getting caught up in the mix with the other Lantern Corps is easily set up in the first few pages.  There’s nothing complex or deep, here.  Just another all out battle between two Lantern Corps…

From the Red Lanterns puking out “RAGE” and “HATE” and “PAIN” to the Orange Lantern crying like a child, “It’s MINE…”  The battle of all these colors is turning out to be a silly event that fans will second-guess when they finish reading it for the first and last time.  But for some odd reason, Green Lantern is a book that’s still kinda worth getting.  Let’s just hope Johns is able to deliver just the way he did in Sinestro Corps and Rebirth, come Blackest Night.  Till then, I look forward to the Black Lanterns overshadowing these previous arcs.

Grade: C+

-Ray Hilario