Unbeatable Comics: Earth 2 #3

writer: James Robinson
artist: Nicola Scott

The dude on the cover of this issue is Alan Scott, which is ironic, because it's the previous issue that most observers will associate with the character, in which this incarnation is revealed to be gay.  That was big news for the media, but not so surprising for James Robinson as a writer, who's started making a career of revealing characters to have different sexual orientations than previously assumed.

Anyway, this issue is more significant as far as the storyline goes, since Alan emerges from the wreckage of the explosion from last issue, scarred and approached by a green flame, which rehabilitates and recruits him to be Green Lantern, which as before (since the Guardians had not yet been invented) has nothing to do with the space corps most people now associate with the name.  Like Jay Garrick before him, Alan converses with his unlikely benefactor, trying to understand what exactly is going on, but unlike Jay, it's likely we'll have more chances to uncover the mystery of this new origin.

The new (old) Flash, meanwhile, has an interesting encounter with Hawkgirl, who impresses on him the importance of knowing how the fight above and beyond his spectacular new abilities.  Robinson has been making a fine serial of this series, and Jay and Alan have both been beneficiaries so far.  Perhaps this is necessary because both of the characters he's been putting at front and center were in a previous lifetime very much old and experienced, whereas now, with nothing to take for granted, everything needs to be built back up again from the ground up.  From an objective standpoint, I can't imagine anyone really having a problem with this.  I haven't been reading the New 52 Flash series, so this is the most I've had from anyone able to identify themselves as the fastest man alive, and I'm liking it.