GREEN LANTERN: NEW GUARDIANS #2 REVIEW

Writer: Tony Bedard

Artist: Tyler Kirkham

New Guardians picks up right where the last issue left off with Kyle Rayner surrounded by members of the Red, Indigo, Violet, and Sinestro Corps. And that’s not even covering all the RINGS. One from each Corps. The other lanterns, intent on killing Rayner, fight Kyle and each other to the death. Saint Walker arrives and manages to help Kyle escape and get to OA where he seeks out Ganthet for advice. Upon entering the Guardians chambers he finds that there’s something rotten on the planet OA. Meanwhile back on Earth the other lanterns have decided to team up and go after him, even though that means breaking the ban that The Guardians seem to have put on their planet. The issue ends with The Guardians attacking Kyle to seize the rings, and interrogate him. Somehow the rings make their way onto Kyle’s fingers and we are treated to a pretty awesome splash page.

One thing that I’m starting to wonder about is, what’s Kyle’s motivation in all this. Not the New Guardians, but as a Green Lantern. He tells Saint Walker that he sees Ganthet as a mentor/ father figure, but so far we haven’t really glimpsed much of Kyle’s character.

The art by Kirkham continues to be solid, and his respective splash pages are fairly impressive. The aforementioned splash page with Kyle wearing all the rings is ranked up there on my most favorite comic art.

The story is getting pretty heavy, and I’m loving it! At the outset I didn’t know what they meant by New Guardians. I’d heard that Rayner was going to be leading a team of Lanterns from each Corps, but it seems like they might be usurping The Guardians! Only time will tell.

4.5 out of 5

Michael Knoll is a contributing writer at Champion City Comics 

GREEN LANTERN CORPS #2 REVIEW

Written By: Peter J Tomasi

Pencils: Fernando Pasarin

Inks: Scott Hanna

This issue picks up where Green Lantern Corps #1 ended. We return to a planet that has had its entire water source removed, an entire amphibious race killed, plus several Green Lanterns were impaled in the process.  If you read my first review, you know I could have sworn that the Sportsmaster was behind this.  Well, surprise, he's not.  This is disappointing in so many levels but now is not the time, nor the platform for me to vent my frustration at this Golden Age villain.

A mysterious force is at work in this issue, in what I had assumed was a sole conspirator, but turns out to actually be a whole army.  After the Lantern team visit the planet Nerro and find it devoid of water, they find fellow members of the Corp impaled, and their ring fingers removed.  After some heated, heartfelt words the story takes us to an undisclosed location where we find a black figure surrounded by four oddly shaped Lantern power batteries.  Being that they are all the same, I can't quite put a finger on how this guy would have these batteries, but I keep going back to the whole green eye's thing.  In this issue, and the first there seemed to be an emphasis.  

Turns out this mysterious man is harvesting the resources of other planets in an effort to revitalize his own, barren wasteland world, and there's still one more target left named Xabas, a planet inhabited by awesome looking squirrel folk.  The Lanterns receive a message that there is a problem on the planet and go to investigate, when they arrive, they find a huge wormhole vacuuming the planet of it's awesome squirrel people.  When they get there, they are able to seal the wormhole and stop the suction, but something on the other side is trying to get through.

The giant seal the Lanterns have used suddenly erupts and then it's a free-for-all slug fest with the Green Lanterns taking on some black garbed minions wielding green lightsabers.  Someone please kill me.  I was thinking that if we were going to have such epic bad assery happening that if it wasn't going to be the Sportsmaster, it would at least be some lone super being doing this.  It's not.  It's an army of bad guys wielding green light sabers. Light sabers? 

Allow me a moment to rant, a Jedi Consular would never use their awesome powers of the force for this kind of crap.  What is happening here has nothing to do with spreading peace and harmony through diplomatic measures and studying the secrets of the force. In my time at the academy I decided that Consulars were in fact pussy's regardless if that's the path Luke undertook.  That's why I decided to be a Guardian, and wield the blue crystal in my saber. But that's just me. George Lucas is phoning his lawyers as we speak.

So the interesting thing about these baddies is that they are somehow able to overcome the Green Lanterns energy and level the playing field.  This results in a more physical confrontation which I actually enjoyed, but the bummer is what happens to Isamot Kol.  The raptor bad ass reseals the wormhole but in doing so finds himself on the other side, and that is not a good place to be.  After finally capturing the wannabe Jedi’s the Lanterns find out that the squirrel people exhale a source of element that was vital in sustaining life on their dead planet.  Before more questions could get answered Isamot Kol erupts through the wormhole, and he's missing his arms and legs.  This saddens me greatly.  Not only do you have a Raptor, but you have a Raptor Green Lantern, and now he's reduced to this.  More baddies swarm through the wormhole and we are left wondering what is going to happen now that the Lanterns are about to face a whole army of these guys.

I can not give this issue a great score.  I was really let down that this was not going to be the premier of a super hard ass villain, just another version of Sinestro and his corps.  The artwork was again fantastic, but damn this story went somewhere were I didn't think it would.  The Jedi Enclave.  George Lucas is so pissed right now.

            

3.0 out of 5.0

Bret Kinsey is a contributing writer at Champion City Comics            

           

GREEN LANTERN #2 REVIEW

Writer Geoff Johns

Art: Doug Mahnke

When last we left our fallen Lantern, Hal Jordan, his life was generally in shambles and he’d just been confronted by his long time nemesis Sinestro, who is now in possession of a Green Lantern Ring and is the Green Lantern of Sector 2814. Jordan was told that if he wants his ring back, then he must do exactly as Sinestro says. I made my disappointment in the first issue no secret, but this issue rewards my faith that it would get better. Hal decides the best course of action is to attack Sinestro by, you guessed it, tackling him out a window. Sinestro does some pretty impressive talking down to Hal before giving him a Green Lantern ring that he (Sinestro) can turn on and off at will. When Hal turns his attention to a bridge that was destroyed by something falling from the sky, Sinestro decides it’s time he learn a lesson. Cutting the power to Hal’s ring he not only stops him from saving the people, but then saves EVERYONE and rebuilds the bridge himself. Then he chastises Hal for having a ring for so long and always thinking so small, for not working to better the WHOLE planet, like he did for his planet before subsequently ruling it like a dictator. It turns out the thing that destroyed the bridge was a member of the Sinestro Corps, looking to kill Sinestro so as to take his place as leader, and Sinestro kills him. Then he tells Hal that the Sinestro Corps have enslaved his planet and that Hal is going to help him destroy them.

I’m really digging the story, and Sinestro’s long talking sprees make for an interesting philosophical read and musing on Green Lantern in general. I like the idea of Sinestro destroying his corps for giving in to their “sadistic urges” and running wild. It evokes a whole Noah’s Flood vibe of cleansing your creation from existence. I’m wildly confused as to if the ring he gave Hal is a light construct of a ring that can itself create constructs, or if it is the whole deputization protocols we saw in Blackest Night.

The art by Mahnke is pretty solid in this, I’m still digging it, and I was really amused by the three faced alien on the cover. It's the alien that brings up my only negative for the art. The cover has absolutely NOTHING to do with the story inside. I know that covers rarely, if ever, depict a panel in the book, but this cover doesn’t even show the alien they are fighting. It shows four Sinestro Corps members fighting Sinestro in space. But that doesn’t ever happen. I don’t know but it just sort of sits oddly with me.

Overall a good read and I’m looking forward to more from this story. I think when it’s done Hal and Sinestro are going to have more of a grudging respect for each other and that they will probably kick ass as a Sinestro Corps Buster team.

4.8 out of 5

Michael Knoll is a contributing writer at Champion City Comics

GREEN LANTERN NEW GUARDIANS #1 REVIEW

Writer: Tony Bedard

Pencils: Tyler Kirkman

Tony Bedard introduces us to The New 52’s Kyle Rayner, a down-and-out art student who is selected by the Guardian Ganthet to become the newest Green Lantern. Ganthet travels to Earth after rising from a pile of dead Guardians, surrounded by dead Corpsmen, on what appears to be a destroyed Oa. No explanation is given. Kyle immediately takes to the ring and begins saving the day all over Earth. The focus quickly shifts all across space as members of the Sinestro, Red Lantern, and Star Sapphire Corps’ are suddenly rejected by their rings, resulting in the deaths of all but the Star Sapphire. Back on Earth, Kyle has just saved a group of construction workers and stopped their crane from destroying the street below. All of the sudden, one of every color ring appears, offering themselves to him. They are all closely followed by members of their respective corps all threatening to kill Kyle, thinking he is behind the mysterious occurrence.

The art by Tyler Kirkman is pretty cool. It reminds me of the art in The Walking Dead, but it's colored and a sort of a muted color at that. It gives the book a really cool feel.

To be honest, I’ve been looking forward to a book like this for a long time. The various corps playing off each other with their different, and sometimes contradicting, disciplines means some awesome character interactions and development. I’m not sure about Kyle being the leader of this new group, but I’m open to it. The art is solid, and the story is promising.


5 out of 5.


Michael Knoll is a contributing writer at Champion City Comics.

GREEN LANTERN CORPS #1 REVIEW

Written Peter J Tomasi

Pencils by Fernando Pasarin 

Inked by Scott Hanna

Synopsis.  Can a Green Lantern have a life outside of the Corp?

           

First off, I like this book.  The art was just fantastic, it was tight, detailed and very well colored, unlike Green Lantern. The Green Lantern Corps focuses more on the other two human lanterns, John Stewart, and Guy Gardner.  Having some down-time, the two decide to embark on a life outside of their Corps only to find that it's not really what it's cracked up to be.  Apparently being a lantern means not having a day job because both Guy and John have a terrible time at finding work.

Meanwhile, something bad is happening in Space Sector 3599 which is  home to the creepiest Sinestro Corp Member, Kryb. You remember Kryb? He's the vile kidnapping alien Quasimodo.  Well he's not in this, but I found the information relevant.

So, two lanterns are sitting in a space station in Sector 3599 with an inmate when a hidden, or incredibly fast entity, slaughters them both with what appears to be telekinesis, or a super fast sword.  The only hint we get on who this is, are these lanterns dying words,  

            “It's not possible..how are you...”

            We then see some enigmatic green eyes and the following cryptic rebuttal,

            “Where there is a force of will..there is a force of destiny!”

Then he slices the lantern in half.  It shows no weapons, no nothing, but just a bustle of air.  I'm going to go ahead and say that my money is on the Sportsmaster, in this era of bringing villainous obscurities to the spotlight because who else could have a better reason to come back as a serious bad ass?  I think it's time we all knelt before the power of the Sportsmaster. I seriously hope that this is not Cyborg Superman.  How many times are they going to torture this hesitant, but seriously demented bad guy?  Can't a guy just commit harakiri in peace?

       

Guy and John get a call to go to the planet of Nerro, which is a water world that Kevin Costner would admire, to see why some lanterns have turned up dead.  When they get there, they find the planet devoid of water, and some impaled lanterns to boot!

Joking aside, I'm interested in the book.  The artwork was amazing and I especially like the part when John and Guy depart with the other four lanterns, which was some serious artwork.  I want to know who this bad guy is that can single-handedly overpower lanterns.  I can see it being the Cyborg Superman, but something tells me Sportsmaster is making a comeback.

Overall?  I give it a 4 outta 5 because  it kept my interest, the art really sold me, and I seriously hope Sportsmaster is coming back.

Bret Kinsey is a contributing writer at Champion City Comics.