Review: Green Lantern #67

Written by Geoff Johns
Illustrated by Doug Mahnke

The blockbuster “War of the Green Lanterns” comes to a universe-shattering conclusion! How will Krona’s rampage ultimately affect the Green Lantern Corps? All we can say is it will change EVERYTHING!

I’ve been very hard on the War of Green Lanterns in reviews, seemingly unable to get past my ability to just allow a comic to be fun anymore. I don’t know why I’m being such a grump. So I grabbed the final issue of Green Lantern/the War of Green Lanterns and told myself, “Well, hopefully this will be fun!” I mean, that’s the redeeming factor of Flashpoint essentially; it’s a very surface value comic, but it has it’s moments in it’s fun-ness.

Was it fun? Or did my inner grumpy fan win out again?

Find out after the cut.

This is the final issue of Green Lantern, and it really doesn’t feel like a big deal. That’s probably not how I’m supposed to be feeling after the issue ends, but given that Johns’ Green Lantern is what truly brought me into the DCU it stands as something mildly noteworthy that 67 some-odd issues later, when “everything changes”, I feel nothing. I suppose that’s just generally what happens when you bog down what was once a fantastic book with a concept that has an expiration date and jam it down our throats until we can only taste the rainbow.

So here we are. Everything that Johns has slowly been building since he took over the reigns of Hal Jordan’s destiny comes to a head with this issue as Krona and the entities battle against Jordan and the Corps. It’s the logical conclusion to everything Johns has worked on since the beginning of his run, but it still feels a tad bit uninspired. It’s just the ending that the book kind of has to have at this point, not one that feels effectively emotionally relevant. It’s just that this title has been so oversaturated with this nonsense to the extent that the book doesn’t feel interesting anymore. It’s just various Lanterns everywhere, all times at every second. In three short words: We get it.

That’s not to say the issue is ostensibly bad; it really isn’t. All things considered, it’s a pretty fun ending – which is what I wanted. Some ridiculous stuff happens, Hal Jordan is impulsive, there is unnecessary exposition and people yell at each other. War of the Green Lanterns was promised as a blockbuster arc, and there is no difference from this and a random Jason Statham movie I might see in theaters this year. But as much as that is an “ok” element of the book, it’s not a positive element; I don’t want the book to just be fun. I can enjoy fun (can’t wait for Crank 3), but I want Geoff Johns to write like Geoff Johns, not Mark Millar. I want some form of character and real story development that matters, not just a bunch of fists being thrown around as a means to an end (let alone fists being thrown around in a way that makes absolutely zero sense).

It’s hard to get past that sticking point: this was a means to an end. The big Flashpoint change is coming around the corner, and with it that means Green Lantern will see a shake-up. However, the shake-up doesn’t feel like the natural and progressive change the book needs as much as it does the last ditch effort of a book grasping at straws. Sinestro is a Green Lantern again? Well, alright. Even with the spoiler being put on the internet before anyone has a chance to read the book, it’s just not that interesting of a twist. In the context of the story it plays out well, and it “makes sense,” but it still feels uninspired. Ok, maybe a tad ballsy given the Green Lantern film starring Hal Jordan, but who cares about new fans who will be confused by the change, right?

It’s not a terrible issue, I suppose. A lot is jam packed into the 20 pages of the book; at least, more than usual. Doug Mahnke gets to go a bit crazy with the art, giving us a ton of totally sweet splash pages, really proving that the only reason to stick with Green Lantern post-relaunchboot is his artwork. Johns does write a nice mindless action comic, and it’s not like I was completely unentertained by reading the comic. Maybe the standards for entertainment have lowered in my mind, but it is still fun to watch people punch the crap out of each other and get yelled at over flawed logic (it’s like Thanksgiving at your parent’s house!). You just can’t expect much more than that.

On those grounds, you’ve got an ok comic. It’s an interesting way to “close out” a series, to say the least. Johns went out of his way to resurrect Hal Jordan in Day of Judgement and bring him back as Green Lantern along with the Corps, only to end the book with him no longer being a Green Lantern. It’s almost poetic, in a crappy highschool kind of way. I could sit and whine like a fanboy all day about how flawed the logic of the book is, how the defeat of Krona makes no sense, and how most of the ending is just a big tease for stuff that will probably never come to fruition (Thanks for Indigo’s real name! Oh, so Larfleeze hates the Orange Lantern? Cool!), but it seems pointless at this point. You get it. I get it. It is what it is: Green Lantern is just no longer cool.

It’s time to deal with that and move on as best we can.

Final Verdict: 5.5 – Pass, but that Doug Mahnke certainly draws the crap out of the book, so that’s something. …right?