Green Lantern #12 review

Ooh, soppy cover alert! Still, Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris are one of my favourite comic book couples. I’ve followed their deeply weird relationship since I was a little kid reading Silver Age Green Lantern comics. Hal loved Carol but Carol loved Green Lantern and he couldn’t possibly just let her know how convenient that was because it would be far too easy – he wanted to win her heart as Hal Jordan, ordinary test pilot. Things got more complicated when Carol began being regularly taken over by the Star Sapphire personality belonging to the alien Zamoran race. Carol and Hal got together, split up, Carol got engaged to another man, temporarily lost the use of her legs… that gets us to about 1972. Let’s just say Carol and Hal were the original ‘It’s complicated’.

Anyway, last issue Carol was getting married to her current boyfriend and didn’t look as into it as you might expect. Happily for her, the delightfully tacky Vegas ceremony was interrupted by the arrival of a Star Sapphire ring, presumably a dying gift from a Zamoran we saw being attacked at the start of that issue. To be honest, things should’ve been a lot clearer… we could have seen the ring fly off the Zamoran’s finger and travel down the book, between the panels, finally reaching Carol at the altar, say.

Anyway, as this issue begins there’s trouble for Kyle Rayner and some fellow longtime Lanterns as they find themselves under the cosh of the new United Planets loyalist Corps. Instinctively, he strikes back.

And with that, the new Lanterns are stripped of their power.

Elsewhere, Hal Jordan and other GLs who have figured out that UP President Thaaros has been destroying planetary power batteries and killing Lanterns are also under attack. Having gone to the UP Council with their revelations, it’s turned out that, like Thaaros, they’re all Durlans, and very much in on the act.

As Thaaros’ guard, the Ring Hunters, gain ground, stopping GLs Jo Mullein and Simon Baz, Hal decides a strategic withdrawal is needed, but some strange, new figures stop him in his tracks

With immense power, they quickly have Hal trapped. Will anyone save him? You betcha!

Star Sapphire is back, and Carol is fully in control of her gem’s power. She’s able to whisk Hal back to Earth, where they have a conversation.

Of course, they’re rudely interrupted…

Now, we have been here previously.

Maybe that never happened now, but a huge amount of Hal’s pre-Crisis history comes up again and again, so who knows? Anyway, if Clark and Lois as a married couple can happen, why can’t Hal and Carol stick too? They’ve always seemed so right together. I don’t care whether Carol stays as Star Sapphire (but if she does could she please dump the current costume, she looks like a saveloy?) or not, let’s just have her around as Hal’s partner.

I liked her power burst moment. Kyle’s too. At this rate Hal will be having power burst envy, although his regular GL energy is enough to have Thaaros green with jealousy. Do we know what Hal’s power source is these days? I’ve either missed something, forgotten or we’ve not been told. I know it’s connected to a Manhunter suit he encountered at the start of this series, but other than that, I got nuthin’.

It’s probably a mystery, writer Jeremy Adams is good at dropping in interesting story elements, and he doesn’t tend to ignore them thereafter, as do some writers. So I shall wait and see. Adams is doing a great job of keeping Hal likeable – brave, stoic, loyal, smart – and I’m delighted that his onetime replacement as Earth’s Green Lantern, Kyle, is getting some spotlight time.

Something I like this time is that the narration swaps from Hal to Carol when the former is knocked out, and later we get a bit of Thaaros’ POV; it keeps things interesting.

There’s also a page or two tying into the upcoming Absolute Waller, or whatever, storyline, but we don’t need to dwell on that.

We get a whole issue of art by Xermanico, and the pages look great. The storytelling, with its use of angles, compositions and layouts, is terrific – there’s a two-page tussle using repeated and reversing panel shapes that pleases my love of symmetry. The facial expressions, too, are tip top, and the fight scenes fun.

The colours of Romulo Fajardo Jr light the way through the issue, with plenty of attractive combinations on the page. I particularly like the sickly pinks given to Thaaros.

Dave Sharpe’s lettering choices emphasise the script’s dramatic beats, and there are some lovely display effects.

The Guy Gardner House of Brainiac back-up concludes, sort of, as he teams up with Faux Lobo in a bid to escape the Bottle City of Czarnia. It’s a lot of fun as Guy goes undercover.

The story ends on a cliffhanger but dovetails into the Superman HoB story… and Guy finds an interesting bit of kit which I don’t doubt will show up in this book’s main storyline soon. Kevin Maguire remains my favourite Guy artist, and the colours of Rosemary Cheetham work nicely with the linework. And that man Sharpe is back, doing what he does so well.

As for the issue’s cover, it’s a full-colour piece by Xermanico and very nice. But very soppy.