green lantern corps

Here’s a comic chosen at random from my collection.

GLCRecharge 5

Green Lantern Corps: Recharge #5 by Dave Gibbons, Geoff Johns, Patrick Gleason, Prentis Rollins, Travis Lanham, Moose Baumann, Michael Siglain, Peter Tomasi, and Gleason, Rollins, and Baumann (cover)

“Stardeath”

After the success of Green Lantern: Rebirth, DC Comics decided to relaunch the Green Lantern Corps. The Guardians are back and are recruiting (to have a total corps of 7200), which is a good thing because Lanterns across the universe were being murdered in previous issues. Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner investigate, meeting several new recruits along the way, and eventually battle the Spider Guild from the Vega system.

In this issue, the Spiders have attacked Oa and Kilowog calls all Lanterns to the Central Power Battery where Guy leads the Corps in reciting their oath and recharging their rings. Using their collective power, they negate the Spider Guild’s plan of destroying Oa’s sun by shoving it down a wormhole to destroy the Guild in Vega. The Guardians reward Guy’s leadership by promoting him to Lantern Number One of the Corps Honor Guard. The issue ends with new recruit Soranik Natu telling the others that while the Corps is wounded, it will heal and will be “stronger than ever”.

One of the ways I judge a successful Green Lantern book is how deftly the color artist deals with all the green. While Baumann does a decent enough job, especially the space-based scenes where he got a chance to use more of the color palette. However, Gleason’s and Rollins’ use of thick blacks detracted somewhat from the colors. Speaking of the inker, I would later prefer Mick Gray’s inks with Gleason’s pencils.

The story in this issue is pretty stock, meaning that the heroes rally and defeat the villains without much sacrifice. But I did really like that two-page spread where the Corps recharge their rings while citing the oath. But the ending came off as abrupt to me, almost as if this was an ongoing series and issue 6 would continue where this issue left off. Overall, this is one of the weaker issues of the series, and the strength of this mini-series is in the introduction of the new recruits in the previous issues, especially Soranik Natu. If you’re a Green Lantern Corps fan and completist, then I suggest you read this to see the introductions of several Lanterns who would appear in later series.

There is an overpriced trade of this collection available, as well as a much more affordable digital version at Comixology.

Here’s a comic chosen at random from my collection.

GLC 39

Green Lantern Corps (2006) #39 by Peter Tomasi (story & words), Patrick Gleason (penciller), Rebecca Buchman & Tom Nguyen (inkers), Randy Mayor (colorist), Steve Wands (letterer), Adam Schlagman (editor), and Gleason, Christian Alamy, & Mayor (cover)

This is how much I loved Blackest Night: after the event was over I searched for and bought all of the BN tie-in issues of this comic so that I could have a more complete story. It was kind of weird to read these issues after having read all the others stuff from the other titles, but it was quite worth it, and it made me take notice of Patrick Gleason.

This issue is the start of the Blackest Night event (if you don’t count the Prelude from the previous issue) in this title, and after a few pages of Guy and Kyle catching up and talking about their love lives, a swarm of black rings fly past them, heading towards Oa. Once there, the rings break into the caskets (tombs?) of dead Green Lanterns, and that’s when the Corps realizes things are really bad. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Kyle’s former love, Jade, is one of the newly turned Black Lanterns.

I really wished I would have been reading this book as BN was going on. There are some good emotional beats to this story (if a little too obvious), and Tomasi and Gleason certainly have the characters’ voices down. Plus, Mayor’s colors, as I have said before, are outstanding, especially in a book where green is the dominant color.