Green Lantern Corps #9 – Review

By: Peter J. Tomasi (story), Fernando Pasarin (pencils), Scott Hanna (inks), Gabe Eltaeb (colors)

The Story: This is space law—you don’t get no Miranda rights out here!

The Review: After a year in law school, I’ve gained a greater appreciation for America’s judicial system, believe it or not.  My property professor made the best observation about our courts and the way they handle conflicts: it’s an everlasting struggle between efficiency and fairness.  Try too hard to be sensitive to the intricacies of each case, and you make bad precedent for everyone else.  Stick too hard to the rules of law and a lot of people will be unjustly punished or deprived.

We definitely have the latter problem in the case of Alpha Lanterns v. Stewart.  While last issue had one of the Alphas make note of the stressful circumstances which led to John’s damning choice, this time around they can’t seem to see beyond the simple facts, which John himself admits.  We know nothing about the corps’ penal code, particularly in how it’s enforced against their own, which makes it all too easy for this case to proceed unfavorably against John.