Green Lantern: New Guardians #1

As I mentioned, the Green Lantern books have been mostly spared from the reboots and re-imaginings that the rest of the DC lineup got. Hell, most of the Lanterns didn't even get the eye-cancer-inducing new outfits that every other superhero got. So this book, featuring Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, picks up in the middle of everything that was going on last month. Which is good news if you like having 6 other types of Lantern Corps, each with their own color and emotion. But it's bad news if you don't like ideas that Geoff Johns came up with after losing a bet or after he realized he needed royalties from more GL-related books to pay off his coke dealer or whatever the situation may be.

The GL books, when done right, should be a good blend of sci-fi, superheroes, and police procedural. Writer Tony Bedard has a couple of really great science fiction comics, some of them even at DC, using superheroes, so he really has no excuse for not writing a great comic. What we got instead was an okay comic with some real structural flaws. Simple stuff like, indicating that a flashback is indeed a flashback, doesn't get done. There's a retard-tacular scene where our hero explains to a little kid that he's not the Hal Jordan Green Lantern. A) Why would this kid care B) Why would Kyle bother explaining anything? C) Why even make the comparison between the two GLs? Let each GL shine in their own book.

Tyler Kirkham's pencils are pretty good. The color work, which is pretty important in any book called GREEN Lantern, is mostly solid. It is weird that he colors Kyle's hair, which should be black, as gray. Is Kyle now a silver fox, in the grand tradition of George Clooney and Anderson Cooper? Here's hoping.

Green Lantern Corps #1

This was a tough comic to review. Positives: good character work, solid art, an attempt at social relevance, and a clever way to get new readers up to speed. Writer Pete Tomasi and artist Fernando Pasarin should be proud of all that. I don't want to minimize that. These guys crafted a good comic that they should be pretty proud of. But...

The title of this story is "Triumph of the Will", for those of you who don't know (and that includes whatever ignorant turds were in charge of editing this comic), the name comes from a documentary. Said documentary was a piece of the Nazi propaganda effort back in 1930s Germany. It stars Hitler and his right-hand man, Heinrich Himmler. I'm gonna assume you know about Hitler, but his buddy Himmler was the man most directly involved in the mechanics of the Holocaust. This guy drove around to concentration camps and made sure they were running as smoothly as possible. And when I say smoothly, I mean, this guy was pleased when Jews/gays/Gypsies/Eastern Europeans/the mentally retarded/etc. were BURNED OR GASSED TO DEATH. To think that making use of the title of a film glorifying sick pieces of shit like Hitler and Himmler is okay is just mind boggling. I'm honestly a little surprised this didn't become a one-day story on some in at least one major news outlet.

But hey, what's a little Nazi-glorification among friends, right? Everything else is smooth sailing? Not so much. The first four pages of this comic feature three violent deaths. We see an evil alien get bisected, a heroic Green Lantern get decapitated and then another bisection, this time a different GL. By the end of the comic, we have two more dead GLs, this time left to rot on pikes, and the genocide of a whole planet. And we see the corpses left over from said genocide being picked at by alien vultures. I've seen less pointless violence at WWE cage matches. I've been to orgies at Dan Didio's house that featured less gore to feed his murder boner. This is really over the top savagery that doesn't enhance the storytelling in the slightest.

Tomasi did himself no favors, because the gore distracts from a good story. He's a writer with a good command of how to use character to jump start a story. Lanterns Guy Gardner and John Stewart return to Earth to try and reconnect with normal life, only to realize that duty calls and you can't always go home again. The art really works, especially the coloring. Even the cover, which wasn't drawn by the guy that did the interiors, really looks great.

Buy again: Despite some reservations with the blood/guts/idiocy, yes.

New reader friendly: Yeah, a scene where Guy Gardner is mobbed by groupies and has to explain what the rings can and can't do, how many GLs there are, etc., was a clever-as-fuck way to bring new readers up to speed.

Green Lantern #1

Finally, Geoff Johns gets it. The long-time Green Lantern writer finally figured out that Hal Jordan is the least interesting GL out there. Finally, he's seen the (emerald) light. His bosses on the planet Oa stripped him of his ring and banished him back to Earth. In his place, we have Guy Gardner. Wait, nope, not him. John Stewart, must be John Stewart. Whoops, wrong. Kyle Rayner? Not him either. Alan Scott? Abin Sur? G'nort? Hell, at this point, I'd even take Ch'p, the sentient squirrel Green Lantern. But it's not him. Surely there's no crazier choice than a frigging rodent with a power ring. So who'd they go with?

YUP. Sinestro. The rogue ex-Green Lantern. The guy who was kicked out for being a space fascist. Who created an army of evil ring wielders to depose the Guardians and kill Green Lanterns. Yep, he's a GL again.

Admittedly, Johns tries his best to write-around how sillybones this idea is. He has some fanfiction-y sounding explanation, but it doesn't stand up to any actual thought.

But hey, if you can get past that, the comic is fun. It's Sinestro being a badass, Hal Jordan being a dumbass, and amazing art from artist Doug Mahnke.

Buying the next issue: It may cost me a couple IQ points, but yes. I'm a genius (I assume), I can spare them.

New reader friendly: Yes, casting Sinestro in the lead puts the reader in his shoes, as he starts up as a GL again.