By: Geoff Johns (writer), Doug Mahnke (artist), Christian Alamy, Tom Nguyen, Keith Champagne, Doug Mahnke (inkers), Randy Mayor and Gabe Eltaeb (colorists)
The Story: The New Guardians, Chapter Two: Brightest Day creeps out of its shell. Atrocitus is on Earth, searching. Behind the scenes, an old force is assembling the entities for each color of the ring spectrum: Ion for will, Ophidian for Greed, and so on. In the process of acquiring Ion, the yellow Daxamite sun is turned back to red with disastrous consequences for Daxam (a lot of DCU suns are changing color in the last 30 days). And, working together, Hal Jordan, Sinestro and Carol Ferris peel open important information from the white power battery.
What’s Good: Brightest Day is really hitting its stride in Green Lantern. The pacing is quick and mysterious. The characters here really feel like they’re going to be the prime movers in the coming conflict (unlike the feeling that Captain Boomerang in the Brightest Day series gives me). And the menace is slowly cranking itself up. Johns hinted at the existence of an entity for each of the colors over in the last year, but now we see what they are shaping up to be. I’m absolutely loving the old Oan collecting the entities and admired the subtle character work that Johns did with Hal and Carol (the continuing innuendo, teasing and dodging of the hard questions), Sinestro (prancing around like a petulant dictator not getting his due and close to vomiting from observing the mating dance of Hal and Carol) and Atrocitus, who’s revealed to have a thing for Mera. On Atrocitus’s crush, this shows how far back Johns has been planning out his story, because now that I see this wrinkle, some events in Blackest Night take on an added meaning.
Mahnke, Alamy, Nguyen, Champagne, Mayor and Eltaeb delivered some first class visuals in this issue. The level of detail is just what I asked for and although I can’t point out everything I gawked at, I’ll drop a few examples: the red rage fire burning up the mugger, the blood bubbling from the cat’s mouth, the blinding haze around the white power battery, the sizzling green and white fire as Hal tries to lift it, Sinestro’s eyes, expression and posture while he covets the white battery, the decomposing Aquaman, the subtle color entities, the fall of Sodam Yat and Atrocitus’ necromancy. The art was great!
What’s Not So Good: Johns and company pulled off a pretty flawless issue.
Conclusion: This book should satisfy any reader looking for a dose of cosmic superhero adventure and mystery. The Brightest Day story arc is coming into its own and proving to be a fitting successor, and not an inglorious sequel, to Blackest Night. This is a visually delightful offering with an emotionally- and intellectually-engaging story that I recommend to friends.
Grade: A-
-DS Arsenault
Filed under: DC Comics Tagged: | Aquaman, Atrocitus, Brightest Day, Carol Ferris, Christian Alamy, Comic Book Reviews, comic books, comic reviews, Daxam, DC, DC Comics, Doug Mahnke, DS Arsenault, Gabe Eltaeb, Geoff Johns, Green Lantern, Green Lantern #54, Green Lantern #54 review, Hal Jordan, Keith Champagne, Larfleeze, Mera, New Guardians, Parallax, Randy Mayor, Sinestro, Sodam Yat, Star Sapphire, Tom Nguyen, Weekly Comic Book Review
