The Green Lantern Corps is back. They’re not at full strength yet, but there are enough of them to protect children from space slavers.
A dozen Lanterns soon have longtime JLA bad guy Kanjar Ro and his gang under arrest, so it’s back to the space precinct on Oa.
Running the show is Jessica Cruz, voted in as chief by the rest of the officers. She calls her core team to the Great Hall and brings them up to speed on the business of the day.
John’s surprise partner is… Sinestro, once ‘the greatest Green Lantern’, then the Corps’ greatest enemy and currently…? Well, he helped them regain the Corps after it was taken over by a corrupt United Planets so he’s being given a chance to be a hero once more.
On Tamaran, another villain turned less-of-a-villain is fighting a massive fear construct in the shape of the deity X’hal.
Blackfire, Queen Komand’r, sister and onetime tormentor of New Titan Starfire. Who wouldn’t want to team up with her?
Find out what happens in this excellent spin-off from the current Green Lantern series and recently ended Green Lantern War Journal. The latter’s writer, Phillip Kennedy Johnson, isn’t here but we do have GL scribe Jeremy Adams, teamed with Cyborg writer Morgan Hampton. The latter is credited first so it’s fair to assume they did a lot of the heavy lifting on this debut issue. We get about three times as much story as in your average superhero comic but everything is crystal clear – there’s no random time jumping, no quirkily abstruse characters; we’re carried along by intriguing situations and smart dialogue. And while the likes of John, Jess, Teen Lantern Kelli, Simon Baz and the other familiar faces can’t necessarily hold a book on their own, together, I think they’ll be fine.
The art will certainly help. Fernando Pasarin, who only a fortnight ago drew the excellent, Adams-written Green Lantern #19, here pencils another great-looking comic. The action excites and convinces, the emotions feel real and the storytelling choices ease us from the beginning with Kanjar Ro to the final page, which brings in another hero who has John feeling very uncomfortable indeed. While the pages are packed with characters, backgrounds and props, in the second scene Pasarin finds room to tell a silent background story, presumably one put into the script by our writers… if it’s all Pasarin, I’m even more impressed. The artist also does a bang-up job populating panels with random Lanterns, my favourite being the little bug person.
The only thing I’d change would be the War Journal costume John is in, it’s not great; Sinestro, on the other hand, looks the business in his new Lantern duds.
I don’t know whether inker Oclair Albert did any of the background work; either way, he does a cracking job of embellishing throughout – the art really is beautiful.
The illustrations are enhanced by the colours of Arif Prianto, who manages to find enough different shades of green that the HQ on Oa, its green walls filled with Green Lanterns, doesn’t look entirely dull. Prianto really shows what he can do when it comes to skin tone, the colour blends are remarkable.
Dave Sharpe, as he does in every one of the many books he letters, produces stylish fonts aplenty, all super-suited to character and moment.
I’m really keen to see where this series goes, already we’re getting more storylines than the Sorrow business that’s been set up in recent Green Lantern stories. The mix of characters is good, with Jo Mullein from the Far Sector on particularly fine form, and Guy Gardner pleasantly peaceful. And while I groaned at the cliche that is Sinestro signing up, he does prove pretty useful.
I really do like the Gotham Central feel of the Oan precinct house and would love it if Hampton and Adams are planning a space version, a ‘Hill Street Greens’.
I’m hoping we see more of the (last?) two Guardians of the Universe who hang around offering advice; what’s their deal? If they’re so wise, why aren’t they telling the Lanterns not to be so free and easy when it comes to handing out rings (you’ll know when you get there!).
The cover by Pasarin, Albert and Prianto is a corker, showing a bit of everyone’s personality. And the logo is smart, too. Kyle Rayner isn’t in this issue, but he could show up any time; as this issue takes place he’s part of a team tracking down Sorrow in the aforementioned Green Lantern #19. You may not need that issue to enjoy this one, but I do recommend it.
All in all, this is a wonderful debut; if every issue is this good, it’ll run and run.
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 
I’m tempted… But I still feel there are far too many Green Lanterns from Earth. And while it’s nice to have a bunch of aliens drawn in the background, I’d rather have some of them take prominence over a few of our leads. There is nothing wrong with the push to diversify the Earth Green Lanterns over the last few decades with female and more Black/Brown representation. But sometimes even just 3 – Hal, John and Guy – seemed too much back in the old days. And while the extreme measure would be to kill a few off (which I can’t imagine would happen given the likely outcry) why not instead just assign them to other sectors and check in once in a while? Maybe that’s the ultimate plan. But cramming everyone into this book as leads leaves less time/space for the quirky aliens, which I feel like have always been THE MOST interesting thing about the Green Lantern Corps concept. – Brian
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You are so right, the inessentiality of Simon Baz for instance, created to reflect Geoff Johns’ own background and of no interest to any other writer. If we could get Salakk, Ch’p and some new or obscure Lanterns in this book, that would be great.
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Feel like I could give this a go. I’m a sucker for Hill Street style shenanigans and also a sucker for the corps dynamic. Top Ten is a big favourite in the Stu house! I agree with Brian on there being too many Earth lanterns and really wanting to see the aliens. It should really be a one in one out situation, although I’m not sure what would be the way forward at this point. I guess that’s why Jessica is chief. It’s a shame John is a marine now, as maybe he could be the group’s architect again.
Stu
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I think at this point John is an architect who went into the marines. Or vice versa. Certainly PKJ used the architect bit in his recent series.
I wish Jessica would get rid of that panda eye.
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The cover only having Earth GLs was a bad way to start. That no non-Earth GL got a speaking part was worse.
I’m glad Kanjar Ro got name checked since he was drawn so off model but that last page was lost on me since I have no clue who that was who was featured. Name checking would have at least let me Google her.
I have no idea why but Sinestro’s redemption bothers me much less than Luthor’s. I’d like to see Kyle (my favorite Lantern) react to it since Sinestro did have Kyle’s mother murdered because Kyle embarrassed him. I feel that was Sinestro’s biggest crime. BTW, has anyone ever written that Sinestro means something else in Korugar’s language than what it sounds like to English speakers? If they haven’t that would be fun to see. Blackfire after John’s body looks like it could be fun if it’s to be a thing.
Anyways, despite the book needing to be retitled Green Lantern Corps of Earth, I enjoyed the book and will be back. I could do with zero Jo since she’s the Earth GL that broke me completely of accepting the stupidity of the GLs of 2814 aall being from Earth. (And if they’re all on Oa, who’s guarding the sector?) At least there was no Hal.
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I think Kanjo Ro has been drawn like that previously in modern times, which is why I never moaned about the crapness of the design… he was so much more fun as a scrawny little fella.
‘Sinestro’ likely means ‘pink pillock’.
Maybe classic Maxima could show up and also take a shine to John.
Oh heck, if I knew about the business with Kyle’s lovely old Irish Mammy I’ve forgotten. How can Sinestro be allowed to be a GL after that? OK, he’s likely responsible for thousands of other deaths but this is so personal.
I tried reading the Far Sector series but couldn’t get into it. Jo seems cool, though.
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I liked this issue a fair bit and basically agree with your opinion of it. With that said, this issue brought up something about the DCU that’s been bugging me for a while now: what exactly is the status of Tamaran? It seemed for a while that it was implied to have been destroyed or at least left in a state devastated by war. Specifically, Blackfire seemed to imply that the planet and much of its population were dead in Justice League Odyssey. Now it seems like suddenly back to being a paradisical planet with an intact society that’s ruled over by Blackfire. When did this happen? I get that continuity can get wonky in comics, but even by comic book standards this is pretty confusing. I really wish DC would definitively clarify just what’s happened to Tamaran (side note: I would love to see DC do more stories featuring Tamaran and the Tamaraneans; they and the Kryptonians – including derivatives such as Daxamites and Phaelosians – are easily the most interesting alien species in the DCU).
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DC does have a habit of destroying some piece of important continuity for a one-off arc or single story without following up or considering the ramifications. The recent destruction of Thanagar is case in point. Tamaran was an earlier casualty. Until DC’s editors consistently consider long-term ramifications of something maaaybe cool in one story, we’re stuck with situations like this where future writers have to ignore the missteps in the past. DC has been screwing up continuity since Crisis so they have that out at least.
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I can only imagine Tamaran was restored in one of the more recent Crises. It’s definitely irritating that DC editors evidently don’t care for continuity these days. Surely someone could set up a shared file of characters and places, arranged alphabetically, showing the current status of them; every time they appear, someone spends a minute or two saying what happened and where.
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