Green Lantern #20 – Review

By: Too many to list—check out the review.

The Story: Dim the Lanterns, folks; it’s closing time.

The Review: All good things must come to an end, and nowhere does that cliché have more truth than in fiction.  With comics, where writers infrequently last on a title for longer than a year or so at a time, for one to carry a title over nine years is an impressive feat.  But Geoff Johns really did more than that; he revitalized a long-stagnant franchise which in turn shocked the entire DCU back into wakefulness, the first step on its long road to being competitive once more.

So it’s entirely appropriate for DC to honor Johns by giving him as much space as he needs for his final issue on the series which made his name.  And it’s entirely appropriate for Johns to use that space to play with every single character and concept he’s ever revived or created during the series’ run.  As you can imagine, it gets pretty insane, what with every single colored corps leaping into the fray, along with—spoiler alert—a league of Black Lanterns, a Parallax-possessed Sinestro, and a newly freed Nekron.

Green Lantern Corps #19 – Review

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

The Story: It would be embarrassing to lose a battle to yourself, wouldn’t it?

The Review: I might have said this before at some point—in fact, I’m sure I have—but when a comic basically boils down to all action and little plot, that gives a reviewer very little material to work with, no?  You can’t very well analyze a battle sequence for deep meaning or symbolism, nor can you offer much more of an evaluation other than it’s simply good or bad, which is more of a reflection on the art than the story.

This issue is essentially all action, and little plot—or at least plot that makes much sense.  As we get closer and closer to the final battle with the First Lantern, it becomes clearer that the central players are going to be Hal, Sinestro, and possibly Simon, while the rest of the Corps once again get relegated to important but minor back-up status.  Guy and John will no doubt carry out some crucial task along the way, and their fans can take solace in that, but the fact that neither of them have every been the ultimate hero in a Green Lantern crossover speaks volumes about their actual place in that franchise.

Green Lantern Corps #18 – Review

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

The Story: John displays a tradition of planets dying on his watch.

The Review: No one who works in a creative field can produce greatness all the time.  We all know that, and yet it’s still a little shocking how someone can produce a masterpiece one day, then deliver a total dud another day.  It’s even more baffling when someone actually does both in the very same day.  A couple days ago, with Batman and Robin #18, Tomasi delivered what is now widely regarded to be one of the finest Batman issues of his or anyone’s career.

That same day saw the release of this issue of Green Lantern Corps, which presents Tomasi at his absolute worst.  This is unfortunate on a lot of levels, not the least being that it reinforces John Stewart’s status as DC’s least-favored Green Lantern.  In a title where he’s ostensibly co-leading with Guy Gardner, he already has a tough time competing with the more flamboyant and memorable antics of his partner.  This was an opportunity to give readers an idea of what makes him tick, and Tomasi almost completely fails in that regard.

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 Corps #17 – Review

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

The Story: The downside of a do-over is there’s always a chance you’ll screw it up even more.

The Review: If you’ve read Tomasi’s work for any good bit of time, you’ll have realized by now that he is definitely a character-driven, rather than plot-driven, writer.  To him, plot is more of a framework for revealing something about his characters or developing their personalities.  I’m not saying he considers a logical, gripping plot as unimportant in any way, only that it isn’t the source main source of what makes his writing compelling.

This may explain why for this issue, he simply skips over the details as to how Volthoom manages to get his hands on Guy in the first place.  Instead, we open on Guy already in the First Lantern’s clutches, with no explanation as to how we got here, and we dive right into Guy’s “life constellation” as Volthoom so picturesquely put it in Green Lantern #17.  This issue acts more as a character study, with no advancement of the plot in any way, but this plays right into Tomasi’s strengths anyway.

Green Lantern #17 – Review

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

The Story: Like any good mentor, Volthoom points out every mistake Ganthet has ever made.

The Review: So, after nearly ten years of dedicated work, the reign of Geoff Johns on Green Lantern ends at last.  Can you believe that he’s been working on the series for so long that you’ve forgotten what it was like for it not to be written by Johns?  I don’t know that we can accurately call this the end of an era—he is after all still going strong on Aquaman, Justice League, JLA, and Vibe—but it has all the bittersweetness of a finale.

The timing couldn’t be better, either.  Green Lantern remains near the top of the heap in DC’s offerings, and it’s always great to go out on a high note.  Besides, while I’m sure Johns still has more ideas left in his brain, I think we can safely say that he peaked somewhere during Blackest Night and has been stretching further and further for new arcs since.  If you think about it, the emotional spectrum has been the basis of Green Lantern’s stories for a long time, and I think we’ve started scraping the bottom of the barrel where that concept is concerned.