Green Lantern #53 – Review

By: Geoff Johns (writer), Doug Mahnke (penciller), Christian Alamy, Keith Champagne, Mark Irwin and Doug Mahnke (inkers), Randy Mayor (colorist)

The Story: Brightest Day, The New Guardians Chapter One: This story sweeps slowly and deliberately over a wide cast of characters, from locations as diverse as a New Orleans prison, the planet Ryut, Coast City, Metropolis, Ysmault and beyond. Each character is surveyed for how they have reacted to the end of Blackest Night and where they will fit into the puzzle of Brightest Day.

What’s Good: Wow. Johns delivered absolutely top notch work on this issue. The slow pacing was perfect for the slowly-unfolding mystery. We didn’t get details, but we were tantalized with the scope of what will come, where the battle lines will be drawn and where the tense alliances may form. But as this is Johns, he made sure to also throw in romantic tension, the seeds of betrayal and conflict, and the deep, ancient roots of the Green Lantern mythos that he seems to effortlessly expand with every issue.

Johns was well served by Mahnke, the inkers, and Mayor on colors. Pages two through seven (the planet Ryut) had me completely fascinated with the level of detail, the texture, the mood, and the impending horror of the setting and the little bits of symbolism. Bones, old ones, are everywhere, as the sky is cut by lightning of every color of the ring spectrum. The sequence of the ground swallowing the narrator was simply awesome and perfectly reflected the sparse, creepy monologue. Even deeper, the foreground and background of chains and skeletons and symbols was breathtaking. Carol Ferris was lovely and expressive, and the sequence with fighter planes was an excellent visual to accompany the reaching, straining, wary conversation that Hal and Carol had.