Green Lantern #19 – Review

By: Geoff Johns (story), Szymon Kudranski (art), Ardian Syaf (pencils), Mark Irwin & Guillermo Ortego (inks), Alex Sinclair & Tony Avina (colors)

The Story: Now Sinestro can join Superman’s support group for sole planetary survivors.

The Review: As Johns winds down on what has been an impressive eight-year run on his most popular series, he’s clearly aiming to give as loving a send-off as he can to all the characters he’s given new life to.  He’s made Hal Jordan the centerpiece of the Green Lantern franchise again; he’s turned Sinestro from a villain you took for granted to one you fear, respect, and even sympathize with; and he’s given us Simon Baz, the most unpretentious and human of Lanterns.

I expressed some concern last month that Simon has lately lost the spotlight in this series and was even in danger of becoming an extraneous character in the presence of Hal and Sinestro.  Now, however, I understand that this is Johns indulging in nostalgia, coming up with the most fitting and resonant coda to the two characters he’s developed the longest.  Both Hal and Sinestro have had long, personal evolutions, and now’s the time to examine what has come out of that.

Green Lantern #18 – Review

By: Geoff Johns (story), Szymon Kudranski (art), Ardian Syaf (pencils), Mark Irwin (inks), Alex Sinclair & Tony Avina (colors)

The Story: Hey, we may be dead, but at least we’re all in this together.

The Review: Anyone who watches How I Met Your Mother should be very familiar with the many nonsensical rules of Barney Stinson, the most shortsighted of which has to be, “Newer is always better.”  If common sense and New Coke didn’t already tell you otherwise, you can quickly learn from experience that just because something’s new doesn’t mean it’s going to beat what’s already around.

That said, no one’s going to deny the fun of trying new things, and there’s every chance you actually will like it better than what you’re used to.  I must admit that personally, it was easy for me to get on board with Simon Baz because I never got all that attached to Hal Jordan anyway.  But even if you prefer ol’ Hal in the green suit, you can’t really hate Simon.  He manages to strike a balance between asserting himself, while still seeming well-intentioned and trusting.

Green Lantern #16 – Review

By: Geoff Johns (story), Doug Mahnke (art), Christian Alamy, Keith Champagne, Tom Nguyen, Mark Irwin (inks), Tony Avina & Alex Sinclair (colors)

The Story: It’s a rough day when you get talked down on by an overgrown chipmunk.

The Review: If there’s a reason to be skeptical about Simon Baz as the new Green Lantern, it’s the natural assumption that he’ll prove meaningless and redundant once Hal Jordan returns and retakes his ring.  Let’s be frank, here.  For decades, it looked as if Kyle Rayner and Wally West would be the default Green Lantern and Flash forever, and then over a few years, both got dethroned by their predecessors.  What makes us think Simon will fare any better?

Perhaps because the architect of Kyle and Wally’s dethroning is the same guy who created Simon.  And this issue makes it pretty clear that whatever happens when Hal inevitably returns, the hand of fate is on our rookie Lantern.  By allowing Simon to accomplish something neither Hal nor even Sinestro (and I do find it interesting that B’dg considers it more amazing Simon can one-up Sinestro rather than Hal), Johns encourages us to put our confidence in the new guy.

Green Lantern – Movie Review

The Review: Green Lantern isn’t really a property that opens itself up to particularly provocative themes or questions, or at least, most people don’t tend to view it as such.  As a space opera with a whole universe for its setting, its spirit is almost purely adventurous.  Even when its ideas reach dizzying heights of creativity, they rarely attain a level of sophistication or intellectual thought as many other comic book mythoi have done.

With that in mind, the film adaptation achieves great success in the action department.  Warner Bros. has invested a lot of money into the imagery of the movie, and it shows.  The effects are wildly dazzling and, rest assured, do credit to the most imaginative, potent weapon in the universe.  Every fight scene runs at a high pace, occasionally moving a little too fast, cutting the sequence short before the tension reaches a satisfying climax.

You’ll also find it fairly easy to get caught up in the film’s events, as you rarely dwell in any one scene for very long.  The stream of back-and-forth cutting between what’s happening with Hal Jordan and what’s happening elsewhere (Sinestro and the Guardians’ concern over Parallax, Hector Hammond’s encounter with Abin Sur’s dead body and his subsequent transforming infection), keep you mostly intent and engaged.

But the film immediately does itself a disservice by trying to include both a more accessible, ground-based villain in Hector and the world-endangering, more conceptual Parallax.  As a result, you’re forced to constantly switch your attention from one to the other, never sticking with either long enough to really feel their threat to the characters.

It’s hard to tell which villain would’ve made the better focus.  Hector has the most relevance to Hal’s personal conflicts, but his connections to Hal and Carol get revealed rather late in the film, and never get explored beyond a predictable, futile love triangle among the three.  On the other hand, Parallax has the most potential to give Hal a reason to work with the Corps and a truly epic first mission, which also get grievously truncated.  In movie time, Hal spends all of ten minutes training with Tomar-Re, Kilowog, and Sinestro, scenes which sold so well in spite of their briefness that they should have been expanded and made more integral to the story at large.

Instead, the film unwisely grounds Hal by concentrating almost obsessively on his inner fears, a theme emphasized ad infinitum until you feel almost insulted by the underestimation of your intelligence.  Certainly there’s a lot of drama to be had in his childhood trauma watching his father perish in a piloting accident, or his commitment-phobia with old friend Carol.  But the script never seems to take the time to explore these issues with any serious thought.