As part of the three miniseries that cover classic JSA characters while Geoff Johns’s “Justice Society of America” comes out every few months, “Alan Scott: The Green Lantern” split the difference between its sister books “Jay Garrick: The Flash” and “Wesley Dodds: The Sandman.” While the Sandman book was totally set in the past the the Flash book totally set in the present, “Alan Scott: The Green Lantern” has a framing device set ‘today’ while telling a story from the past. In this final issue, the present has to contextualize the past in a way that allows it all to make sense.
Written by Tim SheridanCover by David Talaski
Illustrated by Cian Tormey
Colored by Matt Herms
Lettered by Lucas GattoniAlan Scott’s final battle with the Red Lantern rages to a fever pitch! With Alan overcome with anger at his mortal enemy, will he cross a line he’s never thought he would? The explosive conclusion of one of the Green Lantern’s earliest adventures is here, and the fallout will affect Alan Scott forever!
It’s always hard to discuss a final issue of a mini series without taking in the context of the earlier issues, as, even more than an arc of an ongoing, the onus is really on the issue to close out the story in a satisfying way. “Alan Scott: The Green Lantern” #6 has an additional burden placed upon it, which is that it ‘needs’ to answer all the questions that readers who care about continuity have about Alan Scott’s homosexuality. A concept first introduced by James Robinson in his “Earth 2” series, the mainline DC version of Scott has been canonically gay for a few years now, but there hasn’t been a lot of on the page retconning of past relationships. For some people, this is no big deal; for others, it is tantamount to treason.
It is understandable that folks want their comics to make sense, and so Tim Sheridan does his damndest to recontextualize 70 years of hetero Alan Scott stories in a way that makes sense – at least comic book sense – to the reader. And, for the most part, Sheridan nails it. Part of that is due to Sheridan being a writer who really gets inside of his characters and knows what makes them tick, and so when he puts words in Scott’s mouth, they don’t ring false. Sure, there are some logical gymnastics that have to be done, but when the task requires so much history to be modified, it is always going to be a little messy. Sheridan limits the mess while imbuing the conversation between Scott and his son with real care and love, and so even if there are details that still don’t perfectly line up, they feel like they do.
That entire section only makes up four or five pages, but it seems like the part of the issue that took the most heavy lifting. That is because those are the pages where Cian Tormey has the least to do. One of Tormey’s gifts as an artist is the ability to take a script and illustrate it in such a way that you almost don’t notice the words on the page. That is about as high of a complement as can be conferred on an artist; while the words in comics are important, we don’t read comics to read prose, we read comics to see stories come to life.
Tormey’s art has an ease to it that makes the following of the action across panels and pages – the literal point of sequential art – as natural as can be. The composition of his pages are simple but effective, and he does a wonderful job of mixing panels sizes, shapes, and positions to draw the eye across the page in the intended order. This may sound simplistic, but read enough comics and it becomes clear that many artists can’t do this. Tormey’s pages unfold the story in front of the reader, allowing detail and creativity within individual panels or pages that don’t get lost in the traffic of poor layout.
There is a classicism to Tormey’s designs that fits a Golden Age story like a glove, but his work doesn’t really evoke the art of that era in any sort of homage. Instead, the work feels neither modern nor classic, but exists in a timelessness that is much harder to achieve than a simple pastiche of the 1940s. There is a lot of emotion just under the surface of this story, with Scott and the Red Lantern not able to fully express how they feel aloud, and so Tormey also has to do a lot of work with subtle glances, body language, and supposition.
Continued belowWithout any of the elements at play – the layout, the design work, or the emotional tenor – this issue would buckle under the weight of the retconning. But because Tormey is able to take what Sheridan offers in his script and delivers it in a way that makes the story digestible and satisfying, it all works.
Do I love that, like seemingly all Golden Age tales, there needs to be a historical figure at the heart of it? No, but I get it. The story has enough of what I do want out of a comic – real, earned emotion, good, dynamic art, and a respect for what stories paved the way for this one – that I’m able to look past J. Edgar Hoover’s appearance.
DC hasn’t really made clear what the JSA plan is going forward and who knows if any of these beats will ever be effectively touched upon again. But what Sheridan and Tormey do here is important and rare for three reasons: one, they told the best Alan Scott story in a decade, and the best in the ‘main’ continuity in Rao knows how many years. Two, they handled the change in Scott’s sexual orientation with grace and restraint that (won’t, but should) please folks who need reasons for such things. And finally, they told a damn good story, which is ultimately is all that matters.
Final Verdict: 8.3 – A classic, and classy, end to a very good miniseries.
