Smallville: Lantern #1 (DC)

writer: Bryan Q. Miller
artist: Marcio Takara

via Dad's Big Plan

Smallville ran for ten seasons between 2001 and 2011, exploring the journey Clark Kent took to become Superman.  Famously, its credo was "No Flights, No Tights."  In later seasons, some exceptions were made as the series got to bring in various other DC characters such as the Justice Society (which was seriously cool).  The comics that've been published since then, echoing the Dark Horse Buffy series that explore additional "seasons" of material, have expanded the platform's ability to present, well, more flights 'n' tights.  This particular entry features the debut of the Green Lantern Corps.

As a lifelong fan of the GLC, I couldn't have been more excited to see this (the Smallville comics are initially serialized digitally, for the record).  I liked the Smallville TV series, sure, but I've never really been compelled to read the comics, so this was an excellent opportunity to see how they were going.  Long story short on that, pretty well.  Oddly enough, perhaps, but the Smallville Green Arrow is still thriving here.

Anyway, back to Green Lantern business.  I became keenly aware that as a mainstream commodity this particular DC franchise is completely nonexistent despite years of critically acclaimed comics from Geoff Johns, after the relative miserable failure of the 2011 movie.  No one thought there was a reason to care about Hal Jordan, and so they crapped all over the movie.  It certainly doesn't help that superhero fans who know them better from movies or TV shows still think of Green Lantern as John Stewart from the Justice League cartoons.  (Another reason: movie audiences love superheroes specifically to be in movie franchises.  Green Lantern was not part of a franchise that year.)  Comic book fans know it's Jordan who lies at the center of the mythos.

Still, I think the greater point of the public confusion is that Green Lantern isn't one superhero at all, but literally thousands of them, space cops who roam not even just Earth but throughout the galaxy.  What makes any one of them special? 

Cleverly, this Smallville story reminds us that even Krypton had a Green Lantern assigned to its sector.  Conveniently for those who at least remember the movie, that Green Lantern was the same one who introduces Hal Jordan to the basics, Tomar-Re (voiced in that incarnation by the great Geoffrey Rush).  

More conveniently still, for those who still consider John Stewart the human Green Lantern on record, he's the one accounted for in this story.

Tomar-Re, who is deceased in the story and present as an interactive recording, explains a lot of Green Lantern lore.  I loved reading this.  It even walks through the whole Parallax deal, which was also central to the movie, as well as what happened to Jordan in the comics (at least until he got better).  All of this happens at all, of course, because Clark has been drafted into the Corps.  The reasons have to do with events that have been developing in other stories from the comic, which involve Zod (always Zod!), but suffice to say, it's the cleverest move of the story to have Clark become a Green Lantern.  He hardly needs a power ring to have powers, and keeps fighting the ring's hold, but for anyone who doesn't know John Stewart from Hal Jordan, this is a completely ideal introduction to the whole concept.  Yes, it reduces Green Lantern to a story gimmick in one sense, but it also helps provide context to the idea.

I would recommend this to anyone who still doesn't "get" Green Lantern, whether they particularly care for Smallville (in whatever form) or not.