Written by Geoff Johns
Illustrated by Doug Mahnke“War of the Green Lanterns” ignites with part 1 of the blockbuster event that’ll burn into the summer! A malevolent force has usurped control over all the power batteries, leaving the Corps powerless except for a select few members. Now it’s up to Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, Kyle Rayner, John Stewart and Sinestro to regain control — but can these warriors overcome their differences in time to save the universe?
It’s deja vu all over again as yet another title spanning Green Lantern-related crossover begins. However, with the glory days of The Sinestro Corps War behind him and his work demonstrating some severe downs as well as ups over the last year, does Geoff Johns still have that mini-event mojo that he used to? Click on down to find out!
My feelings on this issue are, to say the least, a mixed bag. Once I finished reading my initial reaction was “okay, I liked that!” But as I tried to find exactly why I liked it, some obvious issues came to mind. The first of which is the immensely basic plot. Gone are the days when a Johns’ script, packed with subtlety and nuance, took a few reads to fully understand. I could probably summarize the story in four or five sentences if I had to and not miss much. In fact? Watch me go:
Salak and a team of Green Lanterns, on the Guardians orders, begin their hunt for Hal Jordan. Meanwhile, Jordan and the other New Guardians are ambushed by Lyssa Drak and everyone but Hal Jordan is sucked into the Book of the Black (or something). Krona launches his attack on the Guardians, infecting each of them with an entity (including Ophidian who is inexplicably no longer inside of Hector Hammond) and sends Parallax back inside of the Central Power Battery, returning the yellow impurity that Johns himself so masterfully dealt with in Green Lantern: Rebirth. As a result, the team of Lanterns tracking down Jordan become infected by the entity of Fear just as they find their target, resulting in yet another “everybody against Hal who is now on the run… again” scenario.
While there are some exciting moments here it just seems, as EiC Matt put it, stunningly regressive. For years, this book was emblematic of everything a super hero book should be. Yet, following Blackest Night (and, not even remotely coincidentally, Johns’ promotion to DC Comics CCO), the book took a deep downward turn, relying on stale story telling techniques and ripping off its own past stories to produce so many more misses than hits. I still hold out hope as a fan, but I honestly don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do that if the book continues at this level.
That said, the art is major redeeming factor here. While still nowhere near as good as some of his past work (back before he became the book’s regular illustrator), Mahnke still manages to make a book about aliens, robots, alien robots, monstrous entities, and critically flawed human beings seem realistic. His downplayed, smooth imagery manages to convey the urgency the book attempts at getting across and his character designs really manage to capture the outlandish nature of these characters (although his Atrocitus really does fail to please).
Overall, I’m not quite sure what rating to give this book, since on the one hand it was not the worst issue this book has seen and yet it was still nowhere near the best. That said, I’m not quite sure that makes this one an absolute buy.
Final Verdict: 7.5 – Browse
