Green Lantern Corps #5 – Review

By: Peter J. Tomasi (writer), Fernando Pasarin (artist), Scott Hanna (inker), Gabe Eltaeb (colorist)

The Story: For fast, easy disposal of mortal enemies, send ‘em to the Mean Machine!

The Review: The best part about a piece of serial fiction, one that can go on indefinitely, is the opportunity to build and flesh out a world, letting it grow into something you can become nearly as intimate with as the life you live.  So it’s amazing how many comic book series I’ve read where a whole year passes and, aside from the random villains who wander in and occupy the hero for an issue or so, the writer does little to expand the title beyond its star.

Tomasi does not do this.  His opening story arc stretches across the vast playing field of the Green Lantern universe, involving handfuls of planets, a variety of organizations and races, and an ever-growing roster of characters.  It takes a deft hand to manage all these elements and integrates them into a cohesive story, one where each of them gets an important role, but Tomasi juggles them all, rarely missing a beat.

As if the pretty sizable cast isn’t enough, Tomasi brings in a fair number of beloved featured players, all of whom he writes as credibly as the leads.  Former regular Kilowog gets a brief yet fun appearance (him yelling at new recruits never gets old), and Salaak once again plays the crusty downer, hassling Guy for breaking protocols as he attempts to spirit away several Sinestro Corpsmen for his master plan to defeat the Keepers.

In this case, it doesn’t take too long for Guy to appeal to Salaak’s better self, since he brings up a topic the four-armed alien easily bristles at nowadays: the treachery of the Guardians.  In the last five years or so, we’ve learned about one dark secret of theirs after another, and now we have yet another one involving the Keepers, who devoted their lives under the Guardians’ employ for the sake of attaining prosperity for their homeworld, only to have it wrenched away for no apparent reason.  Seems like a pretty good reason for resentment to me.

That gives them no excuse for taking revenge on the Corps, however, particularly by torturing John Stewart and the other captive Lanterns for information to break through Oa’s defenses.  Guy has asserted himself so much into the story that it’s it’s nice to see him being a hero in his own, tight-jawed way.  Plus, the fact he and the other Lanterns withstand the Keepers’ torture so valiantly is a nice parallel to Guy’s futile attempts to make his own prisoner Keeper talk.

Stormwatch #5 – Review

By: Paul Cornell (writer), Miguel Sepulveda (artist), Allen Passalaqua (colorist)

The Story: You won’t believe what a liar he can be.

The Review: Sooner or later, Cornell had to address one of Stormwatch’s pet conceits: the premise that it’s been around since time immemorial, protecting Earth from all manner of threats from beyond the planet itself, resourced and funded by a mysterious, all-knowing group.  If Cornell really wants to sell this to us, he has to make the folks behind Stormwatch as impressive as he rumors them to be, otherwise Stormwatch as a whole loses credibility.

You see, the team itself is so chock-full of strong, take-no-nonsense personalities that whoever calls the shots on them has to be pretty powerful, both in ability and manner, to be taken seriously.  So it makes perfect sense when from out of nowhere, a supposed Cabinet man arrives, takes the team to task, and reorganizes them within the span of a few pages, with nary a care to their protests.

He doesn’t throw his weight around with just words, however.  Though we only get a glimpse of him in action, he seems capable of performing physics-bending feats almost negligently (“Let’s see, do I remember–?  Death pit, death pit…”), as when he sentences Adam One to death.  Don’t worry—as it turns out, death in the Stormwatch world is considered a kind of promotional stepping stone, a fact which tells you quite a lot about the exact nature of the Shadow Cabinet.

In assigning new leadership to the team, the Cabinet man spends some time musing over each member’s background.  While most of this is an annoying summation of everyone’s powers and abilities, which we’re pretty well-acquainted with by now, we do get some novel bits of info, some more useful (“[Jenny Quantum’s] father is a high-ranking military man, who still thinks she was murdered by terrorists.”) than others (“[Jack Hawksmoor] has sex with wells.”).

The most brilliant twist in the issue is the choice of who will ultimately be Stormwatch’s new leader: spoiler alert—Projectionist.  There’s poetry in this development for a lot of reasons.  Since #1, she’s bemoaned how no one appreciates her, and how all she wants is recognition, which may explain her rather dramatic past (“…there was the life of crime, the suicide attempts, the murders—”).  Now that she has all the attention she can hope for, it’s entertaining to see her overwhelmed in her new position (“…an emergency?!  Already?!”).  Great choice.

Green Lantern Corps #4 – Review

By: Peter J. Tomasi (writer), Fernando Pasarin (penciller), Scott Hanna (inker), Gabe Eltaeb (colorist)

The Story: Wanted: a suitable candidate to be good cop to Guy Gardner’s bad cop.

The Review: With all these different teams and organizations and forces running around the DCU, with all their various agendas and missions, you’d expect there to be a tremendous about of overlap among them, so it’s kind of a wonder that crossovers don’t happen more often in these comics.  It’s understandable, though; writers don’t always want to interfere with their peers’ projects or establish things their fellows will have to be responsible for.

But when a writer does make an effort to enforce a shared universe, the results can be quite thrilling, like Tomasi’s use of Martian Manhunter in this issue.  The green man’s appearance can’t come at a better time, as Guy Gardner makes little headway in interrogating his captive.  Even after stripping the enemy’s armor and getting some face-time, Guy and Salaak’s “good cop, bad cop routine” goes nowhere, as even the Guardians have zero data on their prisoner.

We don’t get to see how Guy plans to execute on that threat, but we do get the entrance of J’onn J’onzz instead.  Interestingly, Guy and J’onn act as strangers to each other (making you wonder what this means for J’onn’s League membership, as hinted in Stormwatch #1), and there’s even a simmering hostility between them.  Tomasi makes logical sense out this, however, as he has J’onn express his particular grudge against Green Lanterns.  Guy scoffs, “No one’s from Mars.”  J’onn replies, “It was not always that way.  Where was your…Corps when Mars needed you?”