Green Lantern #7

written by Geoff Johns
art by Doug Mahnke

"Forget your small life on this small world."

Sinestro is not one for subtlety (hence his name being "Sinestro," a name that came about long before General Grievous), and so a nugget of wisdom like that is fairly common, but it's far more important than it seems.

What he's telling Hal Jordan is that Earth is not the most important or best place for a Green Lantern. That's something Geoff Johns has understood longer than probably anyone else.

What's a Green Lantern doing on Earth, anyway, much less two or three or four (depending how many of the human Corpsmen are home at any given time)? There are thousands of other heroes. There's no reason for Green Lantern to be there, especially when he has a whole sector, let alone the whole galaxy he can patrol. Johns has been putting Hal into space since he started rolling in his momentum, first with the Sinestro Corps War, and then Blackest Night, and now here we go again, because the Guardians are looking to replace the Corps, and who knows what's going on? Sinestro, yeah, but also...the Indigo Tribe.

The Indigo Tribe has been among the most important and mysterious creations Johns has brought to the Green Lantern table, but until now they've remained in the background, looking after their own interests, which readers have been happy to assume have nothing much to do with ours.

Well, that's not true. That's the benefit of someone with a strong vision sticking around a mythology like this, because there's so much to explore, so many important stories to tell, and yeah, Johns still has some of those up his sleeve as far as Green Lantern goes. Reading an issue like this is learning that all over again, and this is what he's been doing since the New 52 restart, which is simply incredible. Plenty of creators can stick with a single property for long periods of time, but they almost never have a cohesive vision that extends from the beginning and just keeps continuing. That's what you've got here.

How Green Lantern is still not recognized as the best superhero comic of the modern era is beyond me. But we'll get there yet.