By: Geoff Johns (writer), Doug Mahnke (pencils), Christian Alamy, Keith Champagne, Doug Mahnke (inkers), Randy Mayor (colors)
The Story: Hope Burns Bright: Atrocitus and Sinestro show up at a prison that has been set on fire by the Butcher. They take care of a bit of business. In the meantime, Hal is still having his ass handed to him in his relationship struggles with Carol (who is now Queen of Zamaron). And on Earth, a 14-year old girl has been abducted by a rapist and this triggers the rest of the story (I don’t want to spoil anything).
What’s Good: Green Lantern is up there with the best Gotham titles in my list of favorite books. Johns consistently puts Hal in the middle of the big stuff, has us curious and intrigued by the weird aliens he develops, keeps things personal with characters that are multi-dimensional and develops sympathy for Hal and Carol with their personal romantic struggles. Big pieces of my fascination for the book are Larfleeze, Atrocitus and Sinestro, characters I can’t really take my eyes off of while they’re on the page. At the same time, I’m aware as I read GL that I’m watching the Lantern mythos grow. Thirty years from now, writers are still going to be developing the characters, implications and plots that Johns has launched in the last few years. The kinds of creation he’s engaged in are really the kind of internally consistent quantum jump you see happening infrequently in comics. I would put Johns’ last three years of GL work up there in significance alongside the new X-Men of 1976 or the dramatic broadening of Miller’s Daredevil with Elektra, the Hand and the dimensionalization of Bullseye and the Kingpin. And, every bit of what I just said is to be found in this issue. I’m watching the DC Universe grow, this month.
On art, the Mahnke, Alamy, Champagne, Mayor team, cohesive and consistent for some time now, continues to deliver emotion, action, alien worlds, power batteries, strange constructs and energies, and especially aliens. Check out Larfleeze crouched in the moonlight trying to create a corps. Look at the close up on him. Mahnke and his team excel at aliens. I’m less whelmed (see, I’m expanding English, just like Johns is expanding the universe) by their work on faces, but this is an old niggle for me on this book, and doesn’t even rate going into the next section, given all the good art that’s on offer here.
What’s Not So Good: Nothing. Great fun.
Conclusion: The story is probably a bit far along for people to pick this book up cold (you pretty much have to have read Blackest Night and Brightest Day to get everything out of it), but I still recommend picking it up even if you haven’t. This book is where things are happening and you’ve got to start somewhere, right?
Grade: A-
-DS Arsenault
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