I haven't really been interested in Green Lantern comics for a few years now. This coincides directly with the end of the Geoff Johns run and the beginning of Robert Venditti's. Venditti had some really interesting ideas, but by the end he'd gone in a completely alienating new direction that bore no resemblance to anything I cared to read in a Green Lantern comic. It just never seemed relevant.
So I'm pretty darn happy about Green Lantern: Rebirth. (For those Venditti fans, he's got his own book, where he continues to write Hal Jordan comics however he sees fit.)
Finally, Johns' two Green Lanterns, Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz, will be featured in their own stories, on an ongoing basis. Both have been presented as more controversial than any previous human ring-bearer (that's saying something, Guy Gardner fans!), but Johns is around to guide Sam Humphries into introducing a reason why: because they're necessary.
Like Johns before him, Humphries has tapped into the past for inspiration, finding a Guardian with a secret weapon (hopefully better than the gauntlet Venditti trotted out to little mythology significance) and a desperate mission. He also brings the Red Lanterns back into the mix, after a New 52 era that saw them operating in an admittedly increasingly fruitful vacuum, even when they came to Earth. Well, they're coming again, and this time it will mean trouble.
Baz and Cruz are interesting characters. Humphries explains Baz's situation again (it was pretty well covered by Johns already), and then starts in with Cruz (Johns only ever got around to sketching hers out). This is a Green Lantern tradition. Those who aren't familiar with it will only see a lot of Green Lanterns. On the first page of the issue, we have the tradition spelled out. The best Green Lantern comics have always emphasized the troubled lives these ring-bearers tend to have. They have the greatest weapon in the universe, but that doesn't make their lives any easier, with or without the powers.
The New 52 was about giving people like Venditti an opportunity to do something new. He ended up telling his rogue gauntlet stories. And now Rebirth is putting things back into classic patterns. For Green Lantern? Absolutely a good thing.
Remember when there was just supposed to be one Green Lantern per sector? Now there are what 6 from Earth if you count Rayner as some kind of Lantern. It's pretty ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteBack when these shenanigans started, there was always a reason. Humphries seems to be addressing this, like I said in the review.
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