By: Tony Bedard (writer), Tyler Kirkham (penciller), Batt (inker), Rod Reis & Nei Ruffino (colorists)
The Story: That’s it—I’m finishing this, Death Star in Star Wars: A New Hope style!
The Review: In my review of #58 of this title, I mentioned Bedard can usually be relied upon to write just about one character credibly, that character being Ganthet. In #59, I suspected that while Geoff Johns will get to write all the truly impacting parts of this storyline, Bedard will be relegated to getting us through the background action with the secondary cast. Both these points come into play to make this issue the weakest of this arc and this series overall.
What you get is the same event repeated over and over: Kyle and John try to make their new rings (Blue and Indigo respectively) do something productive, failing at every turn. It definitely shows how under-developed the other corps’ powers are, none of them being nearly as productive as the GLC’s. In fact, Kyle’s blue ring just makes everything worse, and John winds up a de facto Green Lantern anyway since that’s practically the only energy he channels.
Most of this issue really feels like Bedard trying out every idea he can think of to kill time before he can get to his big ending. It almost feels as if he has such a limited idea of how the other corps’ powers work that he tries to play around with them through Kyle and John, which might explain the extraordinary leaps of logic they take in their experiments: “If blue rings can heal wounds, maybe mine can restore Mogo’s mind.”
Bedard goes for way too much chatter in general, having the characters explain every little thing that’s happening, often before it happens. There are plenty of moments where even when the action is obvious, he still feels the need to tell it to you: “Krona knows we’re in here and he’s sent the Corps to root us out!” And then you have the always fun expository lines: “How could I forget, John? Mogo sucked them all in with his gravity, like a vacuum cleaner.”
And even if the dialogue avoids over-exposition, it still has that space opera corniness that Bedard still can’t shake from his writing. Here are a few samples: “Pol, my love! Is that you?!” (a line which makes you hope Bedard never gets an assignment to write a romantic scene) “You can’t be thinking straight!” “John, please! There has to be another way–!”
I won’t spoil the final scene for you (although it’s probably all over the DC news wires by now), but it is undeniably a game-changer for this storyline and for the GLC as a whole. That said, Bedard sells it rather poorly, as for such an epic moment, he skims through it a little too quickly. It also doesn’t quite make sense that John can channel that much power to accomplish what he does, considering how incapable he was at using the Green Lantern energy earlier.
Kirkham delivers the solid action stuff he has always done (that’s pretty much all he gets to do, anyhow), but somehow—maybe it’s the uninspired writing—his stuff looks much more generic than it has before. Even Batt’s inks and the colors from Reis and Ruffino seem unusually messy. There’s definitely a rushed quality to the art that matches that of the script.
Conclusion: Though I haven’t read Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors, I still suspect this title is the weakest link of all the GL series. I can hardly imagine EW could be a less engaging read.
Grade: C-
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – I don’t usually like to reharp on lines I find ridiculous, but seriously? “If blue rings can heal wounds, maybe mine can restore Mogo’s mind.” Yeah, because healing one person’s injuries is the same as purifying an entire planet’s consciousness. Come on, Kyle, that’s a little too hopeful.
Grade
Conclusion