Green Lantern Corps #60 – Review

By: Tony Bedard (writer), Tyler Kirkham (penciller), Batt (inker), Rod Reis & Nei Ruffino (colorists)

The Story: That’s it—I’m finishing this, Death Star in Star Wars: A New Hope style!

The Review: In my review of #58 of this title, I mentioned Bedard can usually be relied upon to write just about one character credibly, that character being Ganthet.  In #59, I suspected that while Geoff Johns will get to write all the truly impacting parts of this storyline, Bedard will be relegated to getting us through the background action with the secondary cast.  Both these points come into play to make this issue the weakest of this arc and this series overall.

What you get is the same event repeated over and over: Kyle and John try to make their new rings (Blue and Indigo respectively) do something productive, failing at every turn.  It definitely shows how under-developed the other corps’ powers are, none of them being nearly as productive as the GLC’s.  In fact, Kyle’s blue ring just makes everything worse, and John winds up a de facto Green Lantern anyway since that’s practically the only energy he channels.

Most of this issue really feels like Bedard trying out every idea he can think of to kill time before he can get to his big ending.  It almost feels as if he has such a limited idea of how the other corps’ powers work that he tries to play around with them through Kyle and John, which might explain the extraordinary leaps of logic they take in their experiments: “If blue rings can heal wounds, maybe mine can restore Mogo’s mind.”

Green Lantern Corps #59 – Review

By: Tony Bedard (writer), Tyler Kirkham (penciller), Batt (inker), Nei Ruffino & Rob Reis (colorists)

The Story: Things are getting crazy at the GLC—maybe it’s time for a job transfer?

The Review: The Green Lantern universe has really expanded its mythology in the last few years, with the pinnacle undoubtedly being the creation of six other colored, space-faring corps.  As fun and organic as the idea may have seemed at first, these new groups haven’t really sold themselves as equals to the Greens, with the possible exception of the Sinestro Corps.  Not only do they lack history, even the fundamental ideas of what they stand for are vague at best.

This issue points out these shortcomings even as it attempts to use the powers of the other corps to inject new energy into the plot.  Head honcho Hal takes the most useful yellow ring for himself while the others get the gimmicky remainders: Kyle finds himself involuntarily boosting the powers of the other Green Lanterns (who are trying to kill them); John unsuccessfully tries to siphon his pal’s energies; and Guy leaks corrosive blood all over the place.

If you’ve followed any of the GL titles at all recently, these tricks aren’t anything new, though there’s an endearingly pathetic humor in watching the guys try to figure their way through them.  Maybe Bedard will let them founder with their newly acquired powers for a while before letting them rip loose in the next issue—at least, that’s the only thing you can hope for, as this issue turns out a bust, substance-wise.

While this week’s Green Lantern features the actual moment where the guys induct themselves into their parallel corps, Bedard gets relegated to showing the growing pains of their new colors.  Nothing really pivotal happens in this title, except for the arrival of a planet-sized wrinkle to their plans in the final pages—and the fallout from that will play out in the next title in line for this crossover.