Green Lantern: New Guardians Annual #2 – Review

By: Justin Jordan (writer); Stephen Segovia, Edgar Salazar, and Jed Dougherty (pencils); Stephen Segovia, Jason Paz, Jason Gorder, and Jed Dougherty (inks); Andrew Dalhouse and Hi-Fi (colors)

The Story: Kyle finds himself drawn back to Earth when a mysterious artist starts trying to ‘put things right’.

The Review: Green Lantern: New Guardians Annual #2 gets off to a strange start, and I mean strange. One of the major themes of the issue is the feeling that things are just wrong and, while it never gets to quite that point, the early pages of this issue summon up some of that feeling, for better or worse.

The major problem with this issue is that it’s a little hard to get your feet. The transition from the last issue of the series to this story is extremely abrupt and Justin Jordan’s absolute focus on the here and now over the first nine pages doesn’t help at all.

It seems as though Jordan’s script is fighting his page limit a bit. Despite the extra storytelling power of an additional sixteen pages, things are kind of rushed. Part of that is a lack of economy that had been very much present in Jordan’s previous New Guardians work, but it would be dishonest to think that the scope of the story wasn’t a large factor in it. So even after the opening pages on Earth, Kyle is Deus ex Machina’d back to Earth and finds himself at an extremely important location to the torchbearer Lantern.

Action Comics #30 – Review

By: Greg Pak (story), Aaron Kuder, Jed Dougherty, Karl Kerschl (art), Wil Quintana (colors)

The Story: Clark is haunted by the ghosts of not-home-for-Christmas past.

The Review: I’ve made my opinion about Doomsday very clear, and nothing that’s been done with the character since the relaunch has given me reason to change my mind. And as far as Death of Superman goes, its prominence in comic book history is far out of proportion to its actual quality. So, yeah, I’m not looking forward to a new Doomsday story, no matter how much the writers insist, almost desperately, this is not DoS,
redux.

That insistence comes through clearly in this issue’s opening pages, when Pak claims (via Tower Control), “This may not be the same old Doomsday after all…” What? Just because he killed two innocent civilians indirectly instead of with his own bare hands? Had Pak left it at just that, you definitely wouldn’t have much reason to put too much stock in the upcoming Doomed. The last page reveal of a mutated, probably evolved Doomsday is more promising, but solely eye-candy at this point.