Mon Dec 5, 2016
For today’s post, we’ll look at the first issue of Geoff Johns’ run on Green Lantern.
As a new series, you might expect that the comic provides a lot of exposition & setup for the epic story to come. It doesn’t really do that much if at all.
The cover, painted by Alex Ross in his realistic style, features Green Lantern Hal Jordan flying among the clouds on a bright, sunny day, reaching out toward the reader. His power ring leaves a green trail behind him.
Green Lantern (2005) issue 001
The first five pages or so provide a brief retelling of the origin, tweaked just enough to suit Johns’ future purposes. The rest of the story requires pretty significant knowledge of the Green Lantern mythos published up to this point–most notably Hal Jordan’s tenure as Parallax, the personification of fear, who engaged in some genocide-level violence before Hal died (and was attached to the Spectre, the agent of God’s wrath) and was brought back to life.
Most of these details aren’t really covered at all, or at least not substantially or explicitly; there are moments where Johns almost gives the reader enough detail to understand everything. In particular, if a reader approaches this comic without having read the Green Lantern: Rebirth miniseries, I can’t imagine they comprehend much of what’s going on here.
Taken in the context of Johns’ ovverall epic story, this is a solid, slow beginning. As a standalone issue? It kind of sucks–at least for someone looking to get a full GL adventure. Hal and John Stewart investigate a satellite orbiting the planet, but the villain (a Manhunter, the robotic predecessor of the GL Corps) does not engage them–it’s off killing civilians in a quest to end all human life.
It’s ridiculous that I have to qualify the quality of the comic, but here we are nonetheless. Is it really so hard to write a complete 22-page story that’s also a component of a larger story that only Grant Morrison seems to be able to pull it off (shout-out to All-Star Superman!)?