Reading Comics 187 "Catching up on Atomic Robo, Batman & Robin Eternal, Empress, Huck, Klaus, Nameless, Star Trek, and Tuki"

Free Comic Book Day this year was pretty good for me, and not just for the reasons I've already discussed, but because of the way I justified loitering to see how others were enjoying it at my local haunt: namely, by shopping.

There's a whole bookshelf of titles not published by DC or Marvel, or classified as mature reader material (in this place, that stuff is kept in glass cases by the register), which I haven't really explored before as it's chaotically managed.  I spent half the time I browsed it trying to help bring about some order (yeah, I'm that kind of shopper).  It was cool, too, because spending that time helped me think up stuff I should be thinking about.  There were a couple of people there who stumbled on Chris Burnham's E for Extinction mini-series from Secret Wars, and they mistakenly identified Burnham as Frank Quitely.  I corrected them, but it's an easy mistake to make.  I mean, Grant Morrison worked with Burnham because he evokes Quitely.  Eventually, this made me remember Nameless, and the fact that I never read its final issue, which was released late last year.  But more on that later.  Here's the stuff I found:

Atomic Robo and the Ring of Fire #5 (IDW)
The conclusion of IDW's first Atomic Robo mini-series (the character was previously published by Red 5, who used to feature him in all its FCBD releases) features his gang of action scientists confronting the notion of science becoming too big for its britches, working for the greater good at the expense of good public relations.  You know, the classic Bond Villain dilemma.  I love that IDW allows the comic a letters page, in which I am constantly humbled by how much better other fans keep track of Atomic Robo's adventures.

Batman & Robin Eternal #26 (DC)
The conclusion of this half-year weekly was something I wanted to read despite not having read any issue of it since, ah, the first one.  The late 2015 attempt at emphasizing the Robin legacy was a welcome one in my books, what with "Robin War" and this series that featured basically every Batman sidekick ever, including most of the ones from the New 52 (Duke Thomas is featured on the cover but absent from the interior, although he ended up playing a key role in Scott Snyder's final Batman arc).  Harper Row/Bluebird seemed to be the biggest beneficiary of this story, even as she was easily, otherwise, Snyder's least-utilized creation except in the alternate Eternal adventures.  Also featured are Stephanie Brown/Spoiler and Cassandra Cain, a much-loved one-time Batgirl who assumes the identity of the Orphan and thusly becoming the other big beneficiary of the series.  Also in the spotlight: Dick Grayson, the first Robin, who also receives some nifty character work.  It was nice seeing him, Jason, Tim, and Damian getting along, too, and the whole concept of what brings all of them together, the character of Mother, who provides an alternative to Batman, was a good one, too.  So I can say this was a pretty worthwhile affair.

Empress #2 (Icon)
Mark Millar and Stuart Immonen's space opera of a distant past (kind of like Star Wars, or the reimagining of Battlestar Galactica) ramps up.  It's hard not to find comparisons with Saga, but I can't help gush over Immonen's return to his more simplistic, evocative style, which for me is the obvious, easy draw of the series.

Huck #6 (Image)
The conclusion of Millar and Rafael Albuquerque's Superman analogy (akin to Tom de Haven's It's Superman! novel featuring a simple-minded Midwesterner) has his mother save the day, but Huck proving to be the kind of hero everyone wants Superman to be in the movies.  (Although, folks, we did see that Superman, as portrayed by Christopher Reeve.  Four times.)

Klaus #2, 3, 4 (Boom!)
I bugged the owner of the shop I was frequenting in Maine about this title, pronouncing it like "mouse" instead of "claws," Grant Morrison's Santa origin, but kind of drifted away from it after the break I took from being a full-time reader.  (And by the way, I'm still on that break, and things may grow sparse here to reflect that, in the coming months.)  Yet coming across the second, third, and fourth issues (the covers reflect that the mini-series expanded from six to seven issues somewhere along the line) had me back in the mood.  This is very much a fairy tale, or even a superhero kind of story.  You can be a fan of Frozen and find much to love about it.  Morrison has written few romances, but this is one of them.  More and more, I like it a lot.

Nameless #6 (Image)
Morrison's reunion with Burnham (after Batman Incorporated) baffled me as a kind of regression on Morrison's part, horror kind of for the sake of horror.  He's not normally so one-dimensional.  But I guess that was kind of the point, tapping back into his black magic bag to present a portrait of true human depravity.  This will never be one of my favorite Morrison works, but at least I understand it a little better now.

Star Trek/Green Lantern: The Spectrum War #6 (IDW)
The conclusion of this crossover proves once again that it was basically a love letter to the Geoff Johns era in the Green Lantern franchise, which is something I could totally embrace.  It's also one of the more readable Star Trek comics I've read from IDW in recent years.  After a spectacular start when it acquired the rights, IDW's efforts started to slide.  This was set in the 2009 continuity, which worked well for the concept, including its use of Chang (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country), who was unlikely to show up in this continuity otherwise.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy #2 (IDW)
Taking a chance, I also snapped this up.  Like a lot of IDW's Star Trek comics (including the above), it's written by Mike Johnson, but it's Johnson in excellent mode.  While the parts largely borrowing directly from the 2009 film are fairly routine, the ones featuring new cadets are lively, showing what it's like to live in Star Trek, filled with insightful and amusing culture clash material.  Honestly, I don't know why there hasn't been more stuff like this, whether from IDW, other comics publishers, or the ongoing series of Pocket Books novels.  Also of note is artist Derek Charm, whose blog I have technically been following for years, and although I don't remember now how that started, it's nice to be able to say that I've now bought some of his work.

Tuki #4 (Cartoon)
This latest collection of material Jeff Smith previously serialized on the Internet features the main character and his quirky companions coming closer to facing their destiny: being the first humanoid to leave Africa.  The weird ways the group interacts with one another, and Smith's vision of the world at that time continues to be fascinating.  I was glad the shop had this.  I'd caught another printed issue there, but didn't know if I'd ever see another.  Well, now I know.

Reading Comics 178 "Tom King, the Breakout Talent of 2015"

I've been chattering a lot about Tom King lately.  Well, it's official: he's my favorite breakout talent this year.

After lavishing his Omega Men with repeated praise, it felt like time to check out more of his recent work.  The first came by accident, looking inside the Justice League: Darkseid War - Green Lantern special and realizing that he was the writer.  With all due apologies to Robert Venditti and IDW's Star Trek/Green Lantern, this is now my favorite 2015 Green Lantern.  King handles Hal Jordan like a pro.  He's the first writer since Geoff Johns to get him so clearly.  Which is to say, if you loved Johns' Hal, you'll love King's.

I've been reading good stuff about King's Vision over at Marvel (don't you let him get away, DC!), and so had a look at its first two issues.  Very literate, more like sci-fi prose than superhero comic.  It's the latest version of comics evolving past their stereotype (which will of course always have hopeless devotees, as these things tend to go).  DC (and Brad Meltzer, in the pages of Justice League of America...several volumes ago) tried doing this sort of thing with Red Tornado.  But bringing out a true "other" perspective from the Vision is exactly what you can expect to find here.

Lastly, King's Sheriff of Baghdad from Vertigo, which draws on the writer's own background, flashing back to the chaotic early days of the Iraq War.  As Eastwood's immensely popular film American Sniper did before it, Sheriff imagines a Western vibe to the events.  Like his Omega Men, you might need a few issues to get your bearing, but it's another example of King separating from the rest of the pack with vital writing that is among comics' best.

This guy will be one of the biggest names among a lot of fans soon enough...

Reading Comics 168 "7/8/15 - One of the Best Weeks of the Year"

Covered this edition: Batman #42, Bloodshot Reborn #4, Civil War #1, Descender #5, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency #2, Earth 2: Society #2, Providence #2, Saga #30, Spider-Verse #3, Star Trek/Green Lantern #1, Star Wars: Lando #1, and Strange Fruit #1.

To say last week was disappointing for a comic book addict like me would be an understatement.  This is not to say that there nothing worth reading, but nothing that interested me, nothing from my pull list and, well, nothing else that I wanted to read.

So this week was an embarrassment of riches.  Very good (or very bad) for a comics addict.  I ended up reading a bunch of stuff I hadn't read previously, or continuing to read stuff that I don't typically read, or enjoyed a bunch of new stuff, and of course a bunch of stuff I've been reading all along.

Kicking off is Batman #42 (DC), the second issue of the Bat Gordon era.  Visually the costume in full armor still looks and will always look ridiculous, and Gordon's military haircut looks ridiculous, but...this is still the best Batman Snyder has ever written.  It's the first time he's allowed himself full control, and it shows.  The fact that astute readers knew Bruce Wayne was never dead, and Snyder has shown every willingness to play along, keeping him in every issue "post-death," including the issue with "his death" after "his death," this is what I've been waiting for.  This is an exercise in patience.  Obviously this is an exception, and if it hadn't been hugely popular from the start, DC would never have stuck around this long.  But thankfully this is an instance where popularity eventually gives way to material justifying the hype.  I don't know how popular this material will be, in the short- or long-term, but I have to imagine, however much longer Snyder sticks around, he will be back to writing Bruce Wayne as Batman, and will be the better for having this experience under his belt.

It's also clear that the villain concept was in part an excuse for Capullo to do a version of Clayface after discovering how well he does it visually in Batman #20 (excellent cover).  I would have maybe capitalized on the horn concept and named the villain Horn (although I guess there are other members of the gang, so there's always a chance, right?).

Bloodshot Reborn #4 (Valiant), meanwhile, is something I picked up because I just read The Valiant, and thought it was pretty brilliant, and because of the timing, which was even better than I thought, I realized this series existed and I should probably start reading it.  It's the first of two Jeff Lemire comics from this week (just as there are two from Charles Soule), and both are winners (just like Soule's).  Bloodshot, as I've explained elsewhere, is a kind of Wolverine, and in this iteration without any of the baggage and written in the full knowledge that it's perhaps is best to just concentrate on what makes him interesting, which is his background and how it continues to impact him.  In The Valiant, Bloodshot lost his powers, and so Reborn is the journey of getting them back.  In this instance, picking up the narrative four issues in (I wanted to try and catch up with whatever was available, but when that meant the latest issue as it was released and only one other plus a few of the preceding series, I opted just for this one) proved no problem at all.  Whatever else has been done in Reborn to date, this issue captures the journey perfectly, exactly as I hoped it'd be from The Valiant.

And even with surprises, such as Bloodsquirt.  Kind of like Bloodshot's Bat-Mite, Bloodsquirt is part of the hallucinations Bloodshot is experiencing as he tries to deal with his situation (the other person he sees is the woman responsible for taking away his powers, but in this scenario, unlike House of M's Scarlet Witch, the late Geomancer was a good guy who was very much Bloodshot's friend, which is why she did what she did, right before she died).  The nanites, meanwhile, that previously gave Bloodshot his powers have been infecting other people, and he's able to absorb them back when he finds these people.  Anyway, the whole thing is pretty fascinating, and executed perfectly.  I'm once again glad that Valiant exists, and that I've found my way in.

 Civil War #1 (Marvel) is one of the many, many Secret Wars spin-offs featuring past notable Marvel stories, whether standalone events or arcs within a given series.  Civil War ought to be polarizing.  Originally, it concluded with Captain America's assassination, but in this version that never happened, and things degenerated to a certain extent as the "Old Man Logan" arc did in Wolverine (which has become another Secret Wars spin-off, not to mention one of the titles announced as becoming an ongoing once Secret Wars ends, and Hugh Jackman's vision for his last performance as Wolverine).

This is written by Charles Soule.  When his exclusive contract with Marvel was originally announced, I conceived of it as a nightmare scenario, not because I had enjoyed his DC work so much, but because I feared Marvel wouldn't know what to do with him.  But as it turns out, that wasn't really the case at all.  If anything, he might be perfectly suited at Marvel, where he can use his best instincts to bring out Marvel's best instincts.  This is in fact a best case scenario.  At DC he was for the most part marginalized.  At Marvel he has the opportunity to become the company's next signature writer, succeeding Brian Michael Bendis and Jonathan Hickman.  I would be very happy to see that happen.

Civil War, then, is a kind of audition.  I mean, arguably all of these Secret Wars spin-offs are auditions, either for talent or for the continuing viability of old concepts.  In that, Marvel again has an edge over DC.  With Convergence, DC was letting fans know once again (and I do mean once again) that it hasn't forgotten its own history, but it was never going to revive anything.  DC is always looking forward, aggressively, often to the detriment of fans who want desperately to cling to the past.  Marvel isn't like that.  It's often just as merciless as DC when it chooses to change things, but it usually goes out of its way to assure fans that things are going to be okay (unless you're a mutant).  Anyway, it's always trying to do things organically, whereas DC is that pesky genetic engineering that everyone has such a passive-aggressive relationship with.

All that's to say, Civil War, and Soule along with it, is once again a fascinating concept.  The problem Marvel has, despite all its virtues (and I'm convinced Marvel fans celebrate the virtues and ignore everything else, on the whole), is that most of the time, once it's come up with an idea it really has no idea what to do with it.  The idea eventually, inevitably, peters out, or mutates so many times that it become irrelevant.

What Soule accomplishes here, as he usually does, is succeed in once again grounding the original idea without losing sight of how to once again progress it.  The original hook of the original Civil War is played out to its logical conclusions, going full American Civil War by creating separate nations: The Iron, which obviously is led by Tony Stark, and The Blue, which is led by Steve Rogers.  Perhaps with the less comic booky version of Captain America's assassination (otherwise, the opposite of what Brubaker chose to do) in the original in mind, Soule has an attempt by Stark and Rogers to negotiate sabotaged by a gunshot.  This Civil War is not dominated by meaningless battles between superheroes, but as a true war of ideology (which is what Kingdom Come was so good at depicting, but more on Mark Waid later).

It's also nice to see Leinil Francis Yu at work again.  He's been a signature Marvel artist for years.  Linking Yu and Soule is hopefully symbolic of past and future.  Although they could certainly continue working together.

Descender #5 (Image) features one of my favorite story tropes, the exposure of a fraud.  Back in the second Harry Potter book/film, The Chamber of Secrets, I was inordinately fascinated by the character of Gilderoy Lockhart in large part because he was exposed as a fraud.  I mention all this because this issue of Descender answers what I was looking for after the previous issue: Why should I care about Dr. Quon, erstwhile creator of adorable boy robot Tim?  Well, as it turns out, because he's a fraud.

And we learn this through the most grisly means possible.  I guess I haven't read enough Lemire to know how typical this is for him, but as far as Dustin Nguyen goes, I wouldn't have expected it, certainly not in his current mode of looking about as innocent as a comic book can, especially with killer robots running amok (although Driller, who is a Killer, can run amok as much as he wants, as far as I am concerned).

Which is to say, Dr. Quon is tortured, in the most direct way possible: a buzz saw is used to amputate his left hand.  Without no warning, mind you!

So Descender continues to surprise, and this is a very good thing, for a series that is proving more and more that what Saga started, other can and might actually do better.  Which is something fans of Saga probably never expected in a million years, let alone less than a handful of them.  (Luckily, ah, Dr. Quon still has a hand to grab things with.  But he won't be clapping again any time soon...)

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency #2 (IDW) continues to be the most improbably comic book ever (probably), and just as interesting a read for it, featuring the obscure Douglas Adams creation featured in two and a half books and nary a holiday to his credit.  Interestingly, the issue doesn't really try to advance the story at all, but merely let the chaos unleashed in the first one continue.  Although we do get introduced to Kate Schechter, from the second and better Dirk Gently book, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, this time with far less Norse mythology surrounding her.

One has the sense that IDW, and Chris Ryall, totally got that Adams was always a guy interested in nutty concepts and great dialogue, because that's what's to be found here, unabashedly.

And for those keeping score, I offered the theory in my review of the previous issue, which had never occurred to me before (because I hadn't given much thought to Adams's past) that Dirk Gently is another Doctor Who figure for his creator.  And the guys behind the comic seem to think so, too, because (and I can't name which one, because I'm not nearly as big a fan of Doctor Who as I am Douglas Adams) at one point Dirk dons a hat and looks the spitting image of one of the regenerations of Doctor Who.

So there's that.

Earth 2: Society #2 (DC) continues this pocket universe's hot streak.  Conceptually, I've loved the concept since it debuted as one of the second-wave titles in the New 52, because creatively it offered so much potential, which a number of writers at this point have capitalized on.  Convergence gave it the best possible spotlight, but the best possible storytelling has apparently saved for Society itself.

Traditionalists, purists, and other such individuals would probably have preferred the Justice Society of America concept to remain exactly as it was originally conceived, which is what the Justice League continues to represent.  And I think Geoff Johns pushed the original vision as far as it could go.  So, much like the Silver Age gave birth to a new Green Lantern and a new Flash, the same has been done for the Justice Society.

Here's where it truly begins to pay off, because now there is a society, and it's as literal as you can possibly get (in a good way), a whole society defined by the superheroes at its heart, survivors of an obliterated Earth.  And now we see what transpires next.  Terry Sloan, the original Mr. Terrific, has been transformed into a leader of questionable ethics manipulating events to his benefit.  I think there was some resistance to this previously, but at any rate I wasn't reading that material, and as presented here it works wonderfully, and he's in a situation that fully exploits his potential.  The same, hopefully, will be true of all the characters, including Dick Grayson as Batman.  This is a series that is going to take its time unfolding the story, and two issues in that's definitely what's been happening.  There are more introductions this issue, oddly enough, which might as well mean anyone who was reluctant to give it a try before has another opportunity to come aboard.

Because this is suddenly some of the best comics around.  Good storytelling, great art (and I liked Jorge Jimenez's work instantly last issue), and builds on a concept that is becoming better and better all the time.

Providence #2 (Avatar) is part of my continuing efforts to get a handle on Alan Moore.  His reputation has Moore out to be the best writer comics have ever seen, but my own views have been more contentious.  The last time I have him a shot was Avatar's own Crossed  +100, a spin-off of the Garth Ennis series, which to my mind embodied all Moore's worst instincts.

This time, however, Moore seems to be interested in what might actually be his true legacy: creating comics that attempt to be as literally the embodiment of the term "graphic novel" as you can get.  While fans might know him for Watchmen or Batman: The Killing Joke, Moore is also known for V for Vendetta and From Hell, both of which are very much relevant to any discussion of Providence.  When he tells a superhero story, Moore is able to disguise or even distort his best instincts.  But elsewhere he can't.  Even the Guy Fawkes mask can't obscure his real interests.  I have this theory that Moore is actually ambivalent about the comic book medium, or at least superheroes, whatever possibilities they might have, because for him they're nothing but memories he formed decades ago.  When he tells a story about superheroes, it is about them, not with them.  Later, with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, he did tell stories with them, but superheroes of a different kind.  The difference is often hard to reconcile.

Anyway, Moore is interested in telling stories about characters interested in what he is.  Providence is a story of the occult, but in the way Stoker's original Dracula was, as something that's stumbled into like The Blair Witch Project.  This is the second issue, mind you, and I didn't read the first, but I'm not sure how much story I missed because of that.  The Alan Moore that exists today will never again have the impact he did in the '80s.  I don't know how he feels about that, but I think he's becoming comfortable with that.  In the '90s he was still trying to recapture what he'd lost by abandoning DC.  Providence might be the first time he's tried to move past that, return to what he once was, before superheroes dominated his legacy.  So if you're interested in that, you might be interested in Providence.

As for me, I found it interested if sedate.  If there must be irreconcilable differences between fans of Alan Moore and fans of Grant Morrison, this is what you would compare, say, Annihilator against.  And as different as the approaches are, for me there is no comparison.  Give me Morrison and Annihilator any day of the week.  Providence, meanwhile, glimpses for a moment the world Morrison's Nameless exists in.  Considering that I wish Nameless were a little less lunatic, maybe Providence actually represents the bridge that might still exist between them...

Saga #30 (Image) is the issue before a hiatus.  Vaughan and Staples have been taking these throughout Saga's run.  As far as I know, it's the first time a comic book has deliberately done this, and it's probably a smart idea.  I mean, other than tradition, there is no inherent reason why an ongoing series  has to publish continuously month after month for the duration of its existence.

The issue also presents a "season finale," which is something I hope future trades will help distinguish (ideally, I guess I'm arguing, there would be distinct collections for each "season," which is to say the material that exists between hiatuses).  For some time now, the story of Alana and Marko has been defined by their being apart.  They finally stumble back into each other's company.

The other major thing is that our helpful narrator Hazel once again reveals something major about what the future looks like, which in this instance (it hasn't always been as artful) is a very good thing, with excellent timing (which is another reason why I think the "season finale" concept should be better emphasized): she won't be returning to mommy and daddy any time soon.

In a way, Saga is taking on the feel of Lost (which Vaughan worked on), recognizing the inherent drama of reunions between characters who have complicated relationships with each other.  For me, this is another very good thing.  Sometimes I struggle to see what exactly Saga hopes to accomplish.  As of now, this is my conclusion, and I'm happy with that.

Spider-Verse #3 (Marvel) is one of the many, many Secret Wars spin-off releases, which I finally decided to be interested in because it's written by Mike Costa.  I was previously reluctant to embrace Costa's Spider-Man material because I feared he'd ultimately amount to about as much as Wasteland's Antony Johnston when he waded into Daredevil material a few years back.  Sometimes my favorite comic book writers don't write for DC or Marvel, and when they do, the results are less than favorable.  But Costa (responsible for so many excellent Cobra stories for IDW's G.I. Joe comics) has been doing his Spider-Man stories for a few years now, and apparently Spider-Verse is becoming an ongoing (as Web Warriors) in the fall, so I decided to quit fighting it.

I want Costa to do the kind of material I love Costa doing, but that's just not happening with G.I. Joe.  I liked Avengers: Millennium, saw the potential to get close to what I wanted, so I decided to give Spider-Verse a shot.  And it seems to be even closer than Avengers: Millennium.  As you may or may not know, Spider-Verse means the Spider-Man version of DC's multiverse, endless variations of the character.  The most famous one recently isn't of Spider-Man himself, but his dead lover Gwen Stacy, who is officially known as Spider-Gwen, and apparently wildly popular.  She's more or less the lead of this issue, too.  Costa has figured out how to present these characters in a group the way he normally does individually in his Cobra stories, focusing on their varying perspectives.  This I was glad to see.

Star Trek/Green Lantern #1 (IDW) is something that could very easily be a bad gimmick, as comics that mix different properties with different timelines must inevitably be (the Star Trek/X-Men crossover, I still have no idea how anyone could ever take that seriously), but as of this first issue, makes perfect sense.  I have no idea what the second issue will have to say about that, but let's focus on the positive!

What's great is that it also gives me a chance to read a good issue of two properties that aren't currently giving me much in that regard.  (As always, I provide the John Byrne caveat; because my local shop doesn't regularly stock his work, I don't have  a chance to read it regularly, unless I wanted to go the digital route.)  I haven't read IDW's Star Trek work with any regularity in a few years, and more often than not discover that I'm not missing much.  Robert Venditti's Green Lantern, meanwhile, is much the same.

This issue takes place in IDW's favorite Star Trek sandbox at the moment, stories set in the Abrams reboot era.  I think it's a mistake to routinely feature Kirk's Enterprise adventures at a time when new movies are still being produced.  Once in a while is fine.  I think there's much more valuable opportunity looking around the corners, which is what IDW used to do, even in the Abrams era.  Anyway, but that's exactly what this comic is doing, too, except with Green Lantern.

Or more accurately, the corpse of Ganthet.  That's a wonderful image.  With all the times the Guardians have been slaughtered over the years, I never imagined such an image would be so impactful, but there you are.  Until Hal Jordan (presumably) shows up on the final page, there isn't even anything to worry about time-wise.  Ganthet could easily have lived to Kirk's time (the Guardian's are the universe's oldest beings in DC speak).  He brought the last rings across the whole spectrum (red, yellow, blue, violet, orange, and indigo) created or embellished by Geoff Johns, and as Kirk's crew examines the corpse and the rings, the comic has ample opportunity to let the reader enjoy the Abrams era for what it is, a distinct version of familiar Star Trek.

Again, I have no idea what the next issue does to affect the continuing viability of the concept, but so far so good...

Star Wars: Lando #1 (Marvel) is unquestionably the one I've been dying to read since I had first heard about the series.  I've loved Lando since he first sauntered into Star Wars in The Empire Strikes Back, and this comic is written by Charles Soule.

As I've mentioned repeatedly, I had great misgivings when Soule went exclusive to Marvel.  His Red Lanterns was the work that made me a fan of Soule, and I didn't want to see it end.  (Well, DC ended it anyway, in the end.)  When I saw Lando announced, with Soule as writer, I saw it as the best chance to see Soule in the mode I knew best from him.

Turns out it's better than that.  Never mind what I already said about Soule above, this one's better than I could have imagined.  It not only features Lando, which is obvious, but takes him in new and unexpected directions.  Now, I'm about to reference Lost again.  Unlike a lot of fans, my affection for it not only didn't go away after the way it ended, but was actually amplified by it.  I loved the whole final season, in fact.  This is relevant, because in Soule's mind, Lando is something of a Sawyer, a con man who given the chance could absolutely go straight.  When we meet Lando in Empire Strikes Back, that's exactly what happened to him, but the Lando we meet is difficult to imagine as anything else.  I read and enjoyed the L. Neil Smith books, too, but they were part of the whole thing that suggested if Lando had ever been any different, he was basically Han Solo.

Which is not very imaginative.  Given a chance, Han would never have become an administrator.  But Lando loves a good con, because a con is basically an opportunity, and that's what con men love.  As a con man, Lando suddenly makes perfect sense.  And his Cloud City buddy Lobot becomes fully alive in the comic, too, plus a number of nefarious associates that make it seem just as if Star Wars: Lando is the first time anyone really tried to do additional Star Wars material.  Because this is exactly what Star Wars was always meant to be.

And so why care about Lando at all?  I liked him because he really wasn't involved in Luke's adventures.  Other than snatching Luke from that weathervane, if you think about it Lando really has nothing to do with him in his two movie appearances.  But this doesn't stop him from being, arguably the most confident man in the room, even when he quickly realizes he's got to switch allegiances.  That deal he strikes with Vader turned out to be a bad idea.  So he flips.  He's the only character to do that, too.  Han, if you'll remember, spends most of his time actively trying to avoid entanglements.  That's what he had in common with the old Lando.  He didn't see the opportunity Luke represented even though it was staring him in the face.  He came back because he grew to care about the boy.  Not Lando.

All of which is to say there was always unexplored potential in Lando.  As of now, there's less.  Or, more.

Strange Fruit #1 (Boom!) is the first installment in the Mark Waid story fans have been waiting for since Kingdom Come.

Whereas Alex Ross has been trying to recapture his Kingdom Come glory ever since (just as the project itself was originally embraced as "the next Alex Ross project" after Marvels, which Kurt Busiek followed up with the similar Astro City), Waid seems to have been incredibly reluctant, which is probably because initially he didn't understand what he'd accomplished.  Before Kingdom Come, Waid was a fan who became an editor who got to write The Flash and then anything else he wanted.  But along the way, he had the opportunity to do something big, Kingdom Come.  Even though fans (like me) claim the best of his Flash was incredibly hard to surpass, that's exactly what he did.  He set the bar higher than anyone could have imagined, and I think like Waid himself, everyone has been struggling to catch up with it.

This was transcendent material, for Waid, for superheroes, and in some ways, comic books in general.  Snooty fans won't even take superhero writers seriously, will try and create mainstream credentials by being anything but.  What Waid realized was that this wasn't by any means necessary.  But having someone like Alex Ross around to make it visually distinctive would probably help.

Here he was J.G. Jones, whose most visually distinctive work previously was on the landmark covers of the weekly series 52, which are among the rare covers to get their own collection.  Jones has gone to some trouble to evoke Alex Ross, but where Ross tends to be minimalist, Jones sketches in the rest.

Otherwise the rest is entirely Waid.  The only other times he's invoked Kingdom Come was to try and recapture the scope of superhero storytelling, which resulted in lesser works like The Kingdom and the Irredeemable/Incorruptible universe.  Strange Fruit is nothing like that.  And considering the charged nature of race relations, and even the status of the Confederate flag (interested observers can make much of the issue's final image on that score), it's beyond timely.  It's timeless in the best Kingdom Come manner.  It's Waid coming home to Boom!, yes, but it's also Waid coming to terms with a part of his legacy he has finally come to embrace, a challenge he set aside and has returned to at last.

At its heart, Strange Fruit is a variation on Superman.  It even evokes Django Unchained.  But it is distinctly its own, too.  It looks at politics, too, by the way, but at its heart is a social landscape at turmoil with itself, trying to come up with easy answers and finding that to be a difficult task.  And suddenly, there's this black man standing there, tearing the whole scene asunder, come to Earth like Superman, in a rocket that crashes in a field, but this is a full-grown man.

Who and what he is are matters for the three remaining issues.  I highly recommend you investigate the results for yourself.  And welcome back, Mark Waid.  It's been a long time.

Green Lantern Annual #3 (DC)

via Comic Vine

writer: Robert Venditti

artist: Billy Tan

The conclusion of Venditti's longest Green Lantern crossover arc to date, "Godhead," after three months of the whole ring spectrum battling the New Gods, it comes down to the matter of Kyle Rayner's status as the White Lantern to resolve things.

Geoff Johns was the one who established the stream of cosmic crises as the defining element of Green Lantern storytelling, and Venditti was likely handpicked to succeed him on his ability to maintain the trend.  "Godhead" is the one with the same Johns scope fans know best, so it's a good sign for Venditti's continued reign as head writer of this franchise.

(Will, this, ah, change after March's sweeping cancellations of Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: New Guardians, and Red Lanterns?  Time will tell, after the Convergence two-month layover that follows!)

It's Rayner who sticks out in the issue, along with Saint Walker, the Blue Lantern who lost faith at the start of the crossover.  Everyone else is basically along for the ride.  There's an ironic turn of events involving Black Hand, and Venditti's first big idea (literally), Relic, is temporarily unleashed again, from the Source Wall, only to turn full Metron (although Metron himself does not) and become a scientist studying curiosities.  

At some point in the pages of New Guardians, Rayner and Carol Ferris, first of the Star Sapphires and erstwhile perennial girlfriend of Hal Jordan, seem to have become an item.  There's a moment where Hal and Kyle talk about that.  Johns had tried to respark the Hal/Carol flame.  It's interesting.

The whole Venditti era is like "Godhead."  It's not quite the dire playground Johns had.  Big events can still happen, but there's more interest in keeping the mythology squarely defined.  Maybe that's a good thing, given that Johns never did manage to make Green Lantern as popular as the concept became important.  

Oh, and the next big threat is teased on the last page.  Is it Relic again?  I guess we'll see...

Green Lantern/New Gods: Godhead #1 (DC)

writer: Van Jensen, Justin Jordan, Robert Venditti, Charles Soule, Cullen Bunn (script: Jensen and Jordan)
artist: Ethan Van Sciver, Martin Coccolo, Goran Sudzuka, Chris Cross, Pete Woods

The biggest thing Geoff Johns did for Green Lantern, other than greatly expand the mythos and it importance to the DC publishing schedule, was establish the event trend, from "Sinestro Corps War" to Blackest Night.  When Robert Venditti replaced him as torchbearer, clearly this trend was retained as the common denominator between them.  

Venditti's latest is also his biggest.  This time the New Gods are involved.  Jack Kirby's iconic if popularly-challenged creations were immediately cast as intrinsic to the New 52 thanks to Johns' own opening arc in Justice League, and they've been working their way back to the forefront thanks to the "Robin Rises" arc in Batman and Robin.  The second and more prominent salvo in this campaign likely to end with next year's Crisis event is Godhead.

It's a great way to go, too.  Venditti and the whole crop of current Green Lantern writers (although the script is from Green Lantern Corps and Green Lantern: New Guardians writers Van Jensen and Justin Jordan specifically) have figured out a way to reimagine one of Johns' major contributions to the mythos: the idea of the White Lantern.  

Now, Johns created a whole spectrum, but for the purposes of Blackest Night and its followup Brightest Day he posited that the combined might of all the rings created the White Lantern (the Green Lantern version of "one ring to rule them all").  The current holder of this title is Kyle Rayner in New Guardians.  I haven't been keeping tabs on any of the series besides Charles Soule's Red Lanterns, so I had no idea that Kyle's been missing from action, as far as everyone else is concerned, for a year (the last writer, Cullen Bunn, is responsible for Sinestro).

But the thing about the White Lantern is that he's in possession of the Life Equation.  For as long as Darkseid's been rampaging through comics, he's obsessed over the Anti-Life Equation.  So it's interesting to see the good gods led by Highfather pursuing its opposite number for a change.  Except this is hardly good news for the Lanterns!  (I also had no idea what was happening with Saint Walker these days.  Apparently he's lost hope, which is a bad thing for a Blue Lantern!  More complications for him, as well as the perennially-hapless Mogo.)

It's good for the New Gods to be approached from a fresh perspective, and Godhead does exactly that.  Highfather has likely never been this vital (except maybe under Kirby himself), and he's surrounded by familiar and new figures who are equally compelling.

The good news is that if you have no real experience with Green Lantern or the New Gods, this issue serves as an excellent primer, too, catching up on concepts and characters with lightning precision.

The art's interesting too.  I love the design concept for the Godhead covers.  The interior here features new Green Lantern work from Rebirth artist Ethan Van Sciver, who shares the workload with a number of others.  There's also some splashes of that indy style that Marvel's been exploiting in series like Hawkeye and Moon Knight.  It's unexpected and effective.

Green Lantern has long been a favorite comics sandbox for me.  I feel guilty for having all but abandoned the sandbox with the departure of Johns.  Fortunately his successors know some fun games to play.

Reading Comics #126 "Bull Moose Grab Bag III"

Ten comics for a steal.  Even when the contents go wrong, you can't go wrong.  These happened to all be bagged and boarded.  Always a plus.  I used to do that with all my comics.  Became less of a priority after the first break in reading at the start of the millennium, and then I sold that collection, and sold the next one.  What're you gonna do?

Uncanny Avengers #16 (Marvel)

Here's Rick Remender again, our new friend from the pages of Captain America, apparently in the thick of some gigantic crisis that will likely have been rebooted, given all the characters who are killed off during it.  The big threat constitutes the Apocalypse Twins (this series is part of the X-Men/Avengers mash-up that has persisted since the end of, well, AvX, so the referenced Apocalypse is the one and same Apocalypse you may or may not have recognized as teased at the end of X-Men: Days of the Future Past).  This story kind of wraps up next issue, but carries over into the next storyline.  Well, whatever.  The big development in this particular installment involves Thor and Captain America being all climactic, in typical Avengers fashion.  The artist is Steve McNiven, whom I remember most fondly from the "Old Man Logan" arc in Wolverine.  Good reliable talent right there, makes this looks sufficiently impressive.  As usual, I don't really understand what Remender is up to.  Like Jonathan Hickman, Remender for me is what Grant Morrison seems to be for a lot of other readers.

Batwing #28 (DC)

For a while, Batwing was the African representative of Batman Incorporated.  I enjoyed what I read of that from the start of the New 52 era.  Recently the armor has gone to Lucius Fox's son.  Based on this issue I don't see this as an improvement.  Writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti have plenty of good credentials behind them (various Jonah Hex and Uncle Sam & the Freedom Fighters comics chief among them), but they're felled by the typical trap of trying to fake their way through the stereotype urban scene (ready to write Milestone adventures they are not).

The Flash #27 (DC)

At one time I read The Flash regularly without exception, thanks in large part to the remarkable Mark Waid run that began a little over twenty years ago.  I haven't really done much of that lately, not really at all since the New 52 launch, perhaps out of disappointment that Geoff Johns cut short his second run with the latest relaunch.  This issue, from recently departed (co-)writer Brian Buccellato, who along with Francis Manapul has shifted over to Detective Comics, is actually pretty good, mixing Rogues with history, playing with the revised Barry Allen story of having the death of his mother hanging over him thanks in part to fact that her murder was pinned on his father (made for truly excellent material in Flashpoint).  I still have to wonder if this increasingly revolving game of musical chairs will lead to resolution on that.  Or simply hope Johns will return to the thread he left behind...

Forever Evil: A.R.G.U.S. #4 of 6 (DC)

I remember Martin Gray over at Too Dangerous for a Girl calling this perhaps the best part of the Forever Evil crossover event.  A.R.G.U.S. is the we're-not-S.H.I.E.L.D.? group from DC (which is funny, because Checkmate is a perfectly viable and distinctive alternative).  The main draw for me is the presence of Steve Trevor, who in a previous incarnation was the, ah, Lois Lane to Wonder Woman's Superman.  Since the New 52, he's best been defined by his inability to retain that relationship, and thus his efforts to find a surrogate.  I thought he'd found it in Justice League of America, but things might've changed when I wasn't looking.  Another sometimes-supporting cast member for Wonder Woman, Etta Candy, is present in the issue.  Wonder Woman herself isn't in the issue (mostly), but curiously she is on the cover, and her frequent enemy Cheetah shows up both on the cover and on the last page (it's actually artist Neil Edwards' weakest moment the whole issue, besides mouthless Psi).  One has the sense that the whole point of the mini-series was to further establish the Wonder Woman brand in the New 52.  This is overall a good thing.

Green Lantern #28/Red Lanterns #28 (DC)

via Hit Fix

via Green Lantern Wikia

This is another another comic I was glad to have gotten randomly in one of these grab bags, especially based on my increased appreciation for Red Lanterns from other grab bags.  This was the flip book saga featuring the debut of Supergirl as a Red Lantern.  This is a saga that completely capitalizes on the New 52 version of Supergirl, who isn't the well-known superhero she was in previous incarnations.  In fact, no one knows who she is when she pops up as a Red Lantern.  They in fact think she is just a random Red Lantern.  This occurs in the midst of other things that've been developing in the Green Lantern franchise, likely by the lead of Robert Venditti, who was given the unenviable task of following Geoff Johns in that regard (unless people were just looking for a fresh start, which Green Lantern itself didn't really get at the start of the New 52).  One of his ideas has been to restrict the use of all those rings floating around, with the idea that unrestricted usage drains the universe of essential energy.  Something like that.  Star Trek: The Next Generation toyed with that idea concerning warp drives.  Venditti also seems to have reconfigured a few semi-familiar faces from days past, including Evil Star (totally reinvented and it seems quite interestingly), Kanjar Ro, and Bolphunga the Unrelenting (famously debuted in the same Alan Moore as Mogo, "Mogo Doesn't Socialize").  Each time I sample Venditti's Green Lantern I like it.  Certainly the same goes for Red Lanterns these days.  The writer on the flipside is Charles Soule, who's always impressing me.  The man running the Red Lanterns in the comics is Guy Gardner, who is actually less of a hothead than ever before.  He's also got Ice by his side once again (more fond memories from two decades ago), although it's as contentious a relationship as ever.  (By the way, Guy looks awesome these days.  About the first time ever that can be said.)  The main thrust of the flip book actually has far more to do with Green and Red Lanterns not getting along (but for different reasons than before, more like a professional rivalry these days).  When they realize this mysterious girl is Kryptonian, they of course realize she has something to do with Superman.  If you're not reading either (or I guess any of these, including Supergirl), this would be a good sampling occasion.

The Superior Spider-Man #26 (Marvel)

I recently talked a little bit about how the Doctor Spider-Man era ended, but on its way to that ending there was (seemingly as always) Green Goblin to deal with.  But in this particular issue Goblin is dealing with the Hobgoblin, trying to figure out who's behind the latest incarnation.  He thinks he knows.  He's wrong.  There are a number of stories in the issue with a number of artists drawing them.  One is Peter Parker inside the so-called mindscape figuring out how he'll find his way back.  Another is the Avengers finally rejecting Doctor Spider-Man (I won't explain that again).  The final is the Goblin/Hobgoblin one, which amounts to the most significant one (it does rate the cover), and feature the work of Humberto Ramos.  I was a huge fan of Ramos for years thanks in large part to, ah, his collaboration with Mark Waid (I just can't avoid mentioning that guy!) on Impulse.  I'm glad he's remained relevant, and that he's become one of Dan Slott's chief collaborators on whatever version of Spider-Man he's writing.  His Goblins are fantastic.  Who knew?  Plays completely against type (as far as I knew), but it's a huge reason why that's the best thing about this issue.

Superman #27 (DC)

One of the major developments of the New 52 was the sudden end of the romance between Lois & Clark.  (Guess she didn't want to become a desperate housewife.  Ha!)  But thankfully, Lois Lane has stuck around.  And even gained powers.  But I guess with this issue she lost them, which as far as current logic goes is a good thing.  Superman risks a giant gamble in allowing Parasite to siphon them from her.  Scott Lobdell is at the helm.  Apparently his run wasn't very popular.  I still have no idea why fans find him so hard to love.  (But, ah, the next issue promises Starfire.  There you go.)

Swamp Thing #28 (DC)

Swamp Thing, with about a decade lead time, was a poster child for the early Vertigo, thanks to Alan Moore's psychological approach.  In the New 52 the character has returned to his own mythology, which Charles Soule goes about exploring in this issue.  The character of Capucine, featured and named on the cover, is fascinating, a long-lived woman with an incredible story all her own.  This is good stuff.  Another series I've never really thought to buy deliberately, but am infinitely glad each time I've found it in a grab bag.

Talon #15 (DC)

A spin-off from Scott Snyder's Batman...not hugely compelling a concept on its own.

Teen Titans #27 (DC)

Remember Impulse, which I mentioned earlier.  That was Bart Allen's earliest incarnation.  Geoff Johns turned him into Kid Flash.  And the New 52, thanks to Scott Lobdell and a new backstory, or I guess forestory, is a freedom fighter from the future.  I've long been interested in reading some of this for myself, and I think it's pretty interesting.  The only curious element is the strange looks Kid Flash keeps giving people, as if he really is the villain fans have been interpreting this new version of the character to have suddenly become.  One of Lobdell's original Titans, Solstice, has her story explained in the issue, too, while the Superboy situation is explore, too.  (From what I've read about it, I think that's pretty interesting, too.)  Besides all that, I also found it interesting that Scott McDaniel provided breakdowns.  I found this particular image to make that most obvious:

via Up Roxx

If you know McDaniel's work at all, you can see it most clearly in the shoulder.  He's another talent I wish would get a better break these days.  He's long been a favorite of mine (how long? twenty years of course!).  The last significant work he's done was the short-lived Static Shock at the start of the New 52, which to say it was received poorly would be an understatement.  This is unfortunate, since McDaniel started out that one as both artist and writer (his first real effort in that regard), which was a statement of confidence from DC.  I don't know what's happened, but it certainly seems like he lost it, apparently in both regards.  I wish him luck digging his way back to where he belongs.

Green Lantern #18, 19 (DC)

writer: Geoff Johns
artist: Ardian Syaf, Szymon Kudranski

These are some of the final issues of Geoff Johns writing Green Lantern, something he's been doing since 2004 with the Rebirth mini-series.  Now's as good a time as ever to acknowledge that his interpretation wasn't for everyone.  This is the sort of thing you expect from a generally popular run.  It's perhaps also inevitable when the movie more or less based on this run was more or less a failure at the box office.

#18 picks up with Hal Jordan and Sinestro in the dead zone where they've been trapped for the last several issues thanks to Black Hand (last prominent during Blackest Night a few years back).  One of my personal criticisms of Johns has been that he hasn't always had a strong focus on Hal, the character he helped bring back as an undisputed heroic figure.  What Johns has spent most of his time doing is expanding the Green Lantern mythology.  He's done that in a lot of ways, notably with the idea of the entire traditional color spectrum having its own league of champions, a concept suggested by the prior existence of the yellow ring Sinestro has used and the Star Sapphires.  It might be argued that all Johns has ever done is work on the details neglected by others, treating them as vital elements rather than static concepts.

As the issue progresses, we're reminded that Simon Baz, the most recent human to become drafted into the Green Lantern Corps, has also joined Hal and Sinestro in the dead zone.  Predictably, Sinestro uses the opportunity to selfishly advance his own objectives, believing that he's the only one capable of confronting the First Lantern currently rampaging around the franchise.

Since the New 52 relaunch, Johns has done an excellent job exploring both Hal and Sinestro, and so for them to have ended up in this predicament in an appropriate cumulative point.  When Johns has his characters converse, it's different than when, say, Brian Michael Bendis does so.  Bendis is like a strictly comic book version of Joss Whedon (who has also written comics).  He specializes in clever dialogue, grounded in context but mostly emphasizing the character of the writer.  When Johns does it, he's emphasizing the characters and their particular narratives.  Hal and Sinestro are characters obsessed with their own narratives.  Javier Marias wrote about something called "narrative horror" in Your Face Tomorrow.  This is something neither Hal nor Sinestro suffer from.  Hal is always trying to rise above his problems.  Sinestro is always trying to deny his, or else simply wording them in the best manner possible.  That's what Johns truly seems to grasp.

When those on the outside free Simon, they get Sinestro along for the ride.  Yay everyone but Hal!

#19 is a lot about how Hal intends to follow them out.  The only way is to die and wield the power of the black ring, which only works on the dead.  To do this he has to willingly sacrifice himself.  We've already seen that you can't just die in the dead zone.  Hal discusses this option with Tomar Re, an iconic Green Lantern from a previous era, dead a very long time in continuity but featured (and voiced by the great Geoffrey Rush) in the movie.

Because Simon (the only human Green Lantern created by Johns) and Sinestro are back out in the real world, there's a greater emphasis on the action there.  Simon has been the focus of the title since last fall's #0, but he's taking a back seat in these last issues from Johns to the more familiar faces.  Johns will still be writing him in the Justice League books, so I guess there's that.

The First Lantern, Volthoom, has apparently been a lot like the Batman crossover event foes, doing much the same thing from series to series, and this bugs some readers.  That's par for the course with these events.  It depends on how distinctively the individual writers tell the same story.  Maybe in the collections I'll get to see for myself.  In this issue, he has Sinestro see a vision of his life if he'd never become a Green Lantern.  Sinestro's relationship with his homeworld of Korugar has long been a key element of franchise lore.  In the way Johns has presented him, Sinestro could very easily have been a character on Lost, someone with a dark past in need of redemption that doesn't seem so hard when they're seen in sympathetic light (that's literally every character on Lost).

Hal was contemplating last issue making the leap to his death and everyone else's salvation (well, he's the hero of the title and everything), and he's doing the same at the end of this one.  Johns brought him back from the dead at the start of his run.  Does he reverse that at the end?

When the new writer comes aboard two issues from now, Hal will still be around.  But is the whole point of the First Lantern to provide Johns with another patented reality swipe?  It seems possible.  Johns did it in Infinite Crisis and again in Flashpoint.  That could very well be how next issue ends.

We'll see.

Quick Hits: Green Lantern #17 (DC)

The other major news that's hit comics I love in recent weeks, besides the death of Damian in Batman Incorporated #8, was that Geoff Johns is concluding his epic run with Hal Jordan in Green Lantern #20.  You may recall that I recently speculated that Geoff could easily have continued for years to come with Simon Baz, who has only been around for about half a year, in much the same way Brian Michael Bendis reinvigorated and continued his even longer Ultimate Spider-man run with Miles Morales, so it was a shock to me that not only is Geoff walking away in the near future, but within the span of a few months.  That puts a huge emphasis on the "Wrath of the First Lantern" arc, which has become Geoff's finale after starting on the franchise in 2004 with Green Lantern: Rebirth.  The First Lantern basically becomes the summation of all his ideas, and reading it, especially this particular issue, it's not hard to see how Geoff could have come to this conclusion, whether it was what he was originally thinking when he planned it or if he recently made the decision based on his workload (which is always extensive) and increasing focus on the Justice League franchise (where Simon Baz continues in the pages of ...America).

Green Lantern #15 and 16 (DC)

writer: Geoff Johns
artist: Doug Mahnke

(via dccomics.com)

What's most impressive about Green Lantern these days may be obvious, but it needs to be stated, because I think it's being taken for granted: the introduction of an entirely new human member of the Corps.  Since last September's #0 we've been following Simon Baz, alleged terrorist and man riddled with guilt over an accident that left his sister's husband in a coma.

I want to contend, finally, that Simon is the most interesting addition to the Corps since Hal Jordan.  Yes, this means that I think he's more fascinating than John Stewart and Guy Gardner (who only became interesting when he developed a chip on his shoulder), both of whom were basically not Hal Jordan.  Simon is more compelling than Kyle Rayner, even, whose claim to fame is being the "alley rat" (Sinestro's description) who was at one point the last Green Lantern.  Simon is the first one since Hal to have a story happening to him that has nothing to do with being or becoming Green Lantern.

Some critics have found caveats to the character, that he is both inspired and hackneyed.  I'd go with the former rather than the latter, obviously.  He's the first significant Arab-American, post-9/11 or otherwise, in mainstream comics.  That Geoff Johns paints him as a suspected terrorist, even if due to circumstances more than personality, is a much-needed addressing of the times we live in, whether related to 9/11 or the Arab Spring.  The truth is Americans are still grappling with their relationship to the Middle East, regardless of the twin wars that have been fought there for the past decade.  Simon is one way to finally get working on this.

In the two issues being considered here, Simon is still learning the ropes any new member of the Corps must figure out, including the limits of the ring's charge and discovering their colleagues.  As usually happens in comics, the circumstances are less than ideal.  Simon has just tracked down the man who actually loaded the truck full of explosives he himself was caught driving, unaware of the cargo, and Agent Fed (who I'm still hoping will be developed into a distinctive supporting member of Simon's cast).  The ring runs out of juice, the Guardians' Third Army attacks, and a Green Lantern who happens to look like a squirrel shows up.

The middle detail is just one element of why Geoff's approach is working so well.  He's chosen to keep Simon out of the "Rise of the Third Army" crossover event, allowing Peter Tomasi and Tony Bedard in other books from the franchise to run with that story.  Simon is firmly focused on his own.  Most writers would have preferred the traditional trial by fire, yet Geoff remains firm.  Simon has a specific mission in mind, his personal redemption, first in clearing his name, and then in #16 making good for his brother-in-law.

That's a crucial, defining moment as well.  B'dg cautions him that he can't use his ring like that, but Simon persists, concentrating all his will on the man in the coma.  Incredibly, significantly, he's successful.  Each Green Lantern, every human Green Lantern, has a distinctive story, even if their arc takes some time to explore, and a particular approach to using their ring.  They have individual strengths, which was something Geoff developed as far back as Green Lantern: Rebirth.  This is the first sign that Simon continues that tradition.

B'dg also helps him access messages from Sinestro and Hal, currently lost in a nether region, warning of the threat the Guardians pose.  Sinestro also reveals that he instructed the ring to find someone like himself, which should add an interesting wrinkle to future stories.  Like Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels, or the arc Sinestro has taken, there may be dark times ahead in Simon's future, which makes it all the more significant that he follows this message with the big moment of saving his best friend.

I've been saying since the start of this New 52 reboot that this is arguably the strongest material of Geoff's tenure with the franchise, which may sound odd considering how long he's been at it now and the big stories he's already told.  Sometimes it's not the big stories, though.  He's only now getting to the heart of Green Lantern, and he's using a new character to reach it.

Reading Comics #90 "Geoff Johns in Brightest Day"

Five years after Green Lantern: Rebirth and countless developments later, Geoff Johns wrote the stories included in Green Lantern: Brightest Day, titled after the bi-weekly Brightest Day series that followed the Blackest Night event but in truth a culmination of the story he began when he first started writing in this franchise.

Rebirth famously posited that Parallax was not simply what Hal Jordan became after going mad during the events of "Emerald Twilight," but was rather the entity of fear itself, imprisoned by the Guardians of the Universe within the Central Power Battery of the Green Lantern Corps.  Geoff expanded on the themes already established by other creators in subsequent stories, for instance bringing new significance to the yellow ring of Sinestro and Carol Ferris' sometimes transformation into Star Sapphire.  Instead of isolated developments, Geoff saw the beginnings of a whole spectrum of power rings, and a corps for each of them.  The Sinestro Corps was obvious enough, and the source for a whole storyline.  The Star Sapphires, as the wielders of the yellow rings represented fear, were all about love.  Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris are the two most famous comic book characters to never end up happily ever after.

The Red Lanterns were another development from existing material, representative of rage, a reaction against one of the Guardians' most grievous errors in its initial efforts to bring order to the universe, when they originally relied on the emotionless robots known as the Manhunters.  There were also the Blue Lanterns, representing hope, the Orange Lanterns representing avarice (Larfleeze being Geoff's greatest addition to Green Lantern lore), and the Indigo Tribe representing compassion.

Just as Geoff figured out what Parallax best represented, he also saw what Ion was.  Ion was a concept introduced during Kyler Rayner's time as the torchbearer, when he was apparently the last of the Green Lanterns.  Ion turned out to be willpower's answer to Parallax.  Willpower is what the Green Lanterns represent.  It's said to be the purest of all motivations.  (There's a whole Green Lantern and Philosophy where you can read about this layer of the franchise, which I've previously written about.)

Before the New 52, where there's literally a series called Green Lantern: New Guardians, the storyline featured in Green Lantern: Brightest Day was the first tale called "New Guardians," and features all these different ring-bearers coming together at the prodding of Krona, the Guardian who created the multiverse when he decided to look at the moment of creation, which directly led to the antimatter universe where the first yellow ring was forged.  (I know, it really does begin to sound like fantasy, like Lord of the Rings, when you talk about Green Lantern like this.)  Krona is trying to collect all of the entities who represent the spectrum Geoff has fleshed out.  In the Brightest Day series itself, the white lantern glimpsed in this collection has more significance, in case you were wondering, just as it plays a major role at the end of Blackest Night, when the benefits of blending the spectrum are first discovered.

Green Lantern: Brightest Day also features Sinestro becoming less a villain and thus more of the character readers of the New 52 relaunch will find familiar.  There's also a lot that fans of the 2011 movie will find familiar, which I suspect was deliberate.

Reading this and Rebirth apart from the rest of Geoff's run has a way of putting a strong focus on everything he's accomplished, how he's enriched the mythology.  The story in this collection may not work entirely on its own, but it's a milestone and will certainly help anyone to see how much Geoff Johns has really accomplished.

By the way, the specific issues included in Green Lantern: Brightest Day are Green Lantern #s 53-62.

Reading Comics #89 "Geoff Johns Solidifies Green Lantern Mythology"

I've been a fan of Green Lantern since I realized he was a superhero who wore my favorite color, and had it in his name (but he also appeared in Super Friends, which Green Arrow did not).  He was a favorite action figure.  When I got my first comics, they featured Hal Jordan, a reprint of his first appearance (Showcase #22), an old issue featuring Hector Hammond (Green Lantern #177), a reprint of the start of the Green Lantern/Green Arrow road stories (Green Lantern #76).  At the time it was not cool to be a fan of Green Lantern.  I learned this because I took my meager collection with me to a school activity period that I got to select as featuring comic books.  All the other kids were wild about Punisher, a typical 1990s "gritty" character.

Eventually I got to read comics of a more contemporary kind, and the memorably surreal (in hindsight downright Vertigo-ian) first issue of Green Lantern Mosaic was among them, plus some Hal Jordan stories featuring the likes of Evil Star.  But when I had the chance to read on a regular basis, it was at the time of Superman's return from the dead, which memorably featured the destruction of Coast City. I still have no idea why Green Lantern was a part of that story, because to this day the two franchises still have very little to do with one another.  (Just one of the many things I would work on should I ever have the chance to write Green Lantern for myself.)

This led to Hal Jordan becoming Parallax.  It was a memorable time for me.  I had Mart Nodell, the creator of the original Green Lantern Alan Scott, sketch his distinctive lamp on the cover of Zero Hour #0, which was the end of the biggest Parallax story other than "Emerald Twilight," which saw the aftermath of Coast City's destruction as Jordan went on a rampage, obliterating the Green Lantern Corps, murdering the Guardians of the Universe, and absorbing the Central Power Battery, which was the move that ostensibly created Parallax.

Ron Marz then got to introduce readers to the "torchbearer" Kyle Rayner, who found himself in possession of the last Green Lantern power ring, bestowed upon him by the last Guardian, Ganthet.  Kyle was my Green Lantern, at least in the sense that he was the first one I read with any consistency. For me, it was a really good time to be a fan of the franchise, although I was certainly aware that many fans were annoyed enough to carry a torch of their own for the "right interpretation" of Hal Jordan for years.

For me, though, this period inspired a different interpretation of Green Lantern lore.  As other readers in the letters columns of the time pointed out, it was almost as if DC had turned this franchise into its very own Star Wars.  Up to this point, Green Lantern has certainly been familiar as well as memorable. Along with the Flash, it was Hal Jordan's introduction that helped usher the Silver Age.  Hal in fact appropriated Alan Scott's oath ("In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight!  Let those who worship evil's might beware my power, Green Lantern's light!"), which was just one of the many ways the mythology began to form around him.  There was also Hal's unique origin, which introduced the entire concept of the Green Lantern Corps.  Here wasn't simply someone who represented himself, but an entire legion of similarly powered heroes throughout the galaxy.  It's still unique enough that I'm not sure wide audiences are ready to embrace it, one of the reasons why Green Lantern the movie turned out to be a popular failure (although of course reductionist and reactionary theory will have it that the movie itself was to blame).

Hal had been replaced as Earth's (or rather, Sector 2814) before Kyle, first by the impetuous Guy Gardner and then by the more cerebral John Stewart, both of whom were original candidates to assume Abin Sur's ring.  Both remain key parts of Green Lantern lore.  There's also Sinestro, Hal's worst enemy and former mentor, as well as former Greatest Green Lantern Ever.  He's also the originator of the yellow ring of fear, which would later be appropriated by Guy Gardner (but ultimately replaced by alien DNA that transformed him into Warrior for a time).

Sinestro's the real key, and half the reason why I'm writing about all this right now.  The part that made the Kyle Rayner era of the franchise seem like the DC version of Star Wars was that a lasting story in this saga had been reached, a flashpoint if you will.  And half the reason why most fans are actually happy about it now is that Hal Jordan has since recovered from his bout of Parallax, all thanks to Geoff Johns and Green Lantern: Rebirth.

Before getting to that, it's worth going over the rest of Hal's story before this point.  Following Zero Hour Hal had a shot of redemption when he sacrificed himself to save Earth in The Final Night.  That still, incredibly, wasn't the end of his story.  In Geoff's own Day of Judgment (finally being collected this year) he became the new host of the Spectre, DC's Spirit of Vengeance, the avatar of God's judgment, and in fact starred in an ongoing series in this role.  DC had moved on, but apparently couldn't move past Hal Jordan as a featured member of its universe, even if he had been by some accounts been irredeemably ruined as a character by going the full Vader.

And to give you an idea of what I had at one time considered the cinematic version of Green Lantern, I would literally have made a trilogy of films involving the rise and fall of Hal Jordan, including the rise of Kyle Rayner as his replacement.  In 1999/2000, I was pretty obsessed with this idea.

Green Lantern: Rebirth chronicles how Hal emerged from the spectre, as it were, of Parallax by revealing what Parallax actually was.  He was the personification of fear, ensnared by the Guardians early on in the history of the Green Lantern Corps and trapped in the Central Power Battery.  Parallax then becomes the source of the infamous yellow impurity, which for a time meant that Green Lantern power rings were literally powerless against the color yellow (which when coupled with Alan Scott's similar weakness to wood, led to the Big Bang Theory joke of being able to defeat both iterations of Green Lantern with a No. 2 pencil).

All of which is to say that Geoff reveals in Rebirth that what really happened during "Emerald Twilight" was that Parallax took hold of Hal Jordan following the destruction of Coast City, an event that made the hero formerly known for not having fear to be controlled by it.  In some circles this has been dismissed as a classic example of a "retcon" (retroactive continuity), but it's really the first sign that Geoff really understood not just what had come before him in Green Lantern lore, but its infinite possibilities, most of which had never even been considered.  His subsequent years with the franchise have been incredibly fruitful to this effect, including Sinestro's expanded significance and his recent activities post-New 52.

It's worth noting that in the pages of Rebirth are perhaps Black Hand's last pages as a laughingstock villain.  If you need proof of how awesome he has become since that time and haven't been reading recent adventures, see Blackest Night for perhaps the definitive example.

Rereading Rebirth is an affirmation that Geoff absolutely nailed it.  I was not a fanatical fan of Hal Jordan.  I appreciated his sporadic appearances in Kyle Rayner's adventures, and his significance in Green Lantern lore, but when the stories moved on so did I.  He never went away, though.  In one guise or another Hal's story continued, and then Rebirth tied everything together, and "Emerald Twilight" if anything became even more significant in hindsight, the first part of a greater saga in some ways concluded by Rebirth.

The Green Lantern franchise has under the auspices of Geoff Johns expanded to the point where most comic book fans will no longer scoff at it.  DC believed it had reached a sufficient level of respect so that general audiences might also come to appreciate it, get beyond the fact that Green Lantern contradicts most of what most people think about superheroes.  Green Lantern offers its own version of Parallax, which may be part of the reason comic book fans themselves were reluctant to embrace it, but it does hit the key development of Sinestro when he puts on the yellow ring in the closing credits.  I thought that alone would have enticed audiences to overcome any other objections, and realize what a grand saga Green Lantern represents, because they're all about grand sagas of a different kind with the Avengers cycle and Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight.

If you're reluctant about Green Lantern yourself, start with Rebirth.  It'll give you an idea of the grand scope, the rich history Geoff Johns brought together, the endless possibilities.  Sometimes the only story worth telling about any superhero seems to be their origin, and that's part of why so many of the movies based on them do exactly that.  Green Lantern has at least one more.

Green Lantern #14 (DC)

(via dccomics.com)

writer: Geoff Johns

artist: Doug Mahnke

There's a ton to talk about with this issue.  I'm going to start with what's on the cover.  Now, Geoff Johns writes both this series and Justice League.  Having an issue of Green Lantern that features the League, written by the man who writes both series...you would kind of expect a lot of similarities.  One of Geoff's unacknowledged strengths as a writer is his ability to write for the occasion, rather than an overly uniform style.  His style is knowing what makes a particular franchise work, and he's done this successfully for more than a decade with a great number of iconic properties.

Part of this, of course, owes to Doug Mahnke's distinctive style.  Mahnke has been working with Geoff on Green Lantern for years now.  He's not an artist who gets a great deal of publicity, but he's distinctive and dynamic, and as Geoff has obviously determined one of the best in the industry, and maybe it takes an issue like this for people to notice.  Just like Geoff, Mahnke doesn't allow the fact that he's doing the League transform Green Lantern into something else.  While this particular phase of Geoff's saga doesn't feature a plethora of characters, there have been plenty of moments like that.  Both are keeping this one intimate.

Now, the reason the League shows up in the issue is because of the new ring-bearer  Simon Baz, Geoff's own Green Lantern eight years in the making.  He's been flagged as a terrorist, which has nothing to do with his being a Green Lantern, but has certainly added a great deal of complications to that fact, and even in this issue is forcing him to learn about his new role in an immediate way.  This is fascinating stuff.  Sometimes people don't see how DC can be anything like Marvel, much less the reverse (of course, some people probably can't see these distinctions at all, but they are definitely there), but as I've said before, Geoff is basically getting to do his version of Brian Michael Bendis on Ultimate Spider-Man (the Peter Parker or Miles Morales version), following a new career as it develops rather than rushing into the expected.  In this instance part of that is being rushed, simply because of the heated nature of Simon's life.  

It also means, hopefully, that Geoff is really only getting started, which for some of us is an entirely welcome prospect.

In some ways, though, there are signs that he may no longer be writing Green Lantern the way he once did.  "Rise of the Third Army" is an event crossover in much the way "War of the Green Lanterns" was just before the New 52 reboot.  It does not seem like it's anywhere close to "Blackest Night," say, or "Sinestro Corps War."  The Third Army itself is not so awesome as many of the other concepts Geoff has brought to the franchise.  The First Green Lantern is far more interesting, and tellingly is already supplanting the Third Army as the real star of the event.  The Third Army is supposed to be the culmination of the Guardians of the Universe's revised plans for maintaining order, replacements for the robotic Manhunters who proved emotionally compromised (because they had none) and Green Lantern Corps (compromised because have emotions), perfect because it removes free will from the equation (will being, of course, central to the concept of the Corps).

In some ways the Third Army is exactly like the Black Lantern Corps that starred in "Blackest Night," and Geoff acknowledges this with Black Hand's return.  Black Hand became a far creepier villain when he started reanimating the dead, which he does again this issue with one of the Guardians who had previously stood sentry over the First Green Lantern.  

One of the biggest teases of Geoff's current work, however, is the final fate of Sinestro and Hal Jordan, who dominated the first year, brilliantly, of the reboot.  Are they gone for good?  Probably not, but they're still in limbo, visible only for a few pages at a time.  Though Simon Baz is the new star and the most interesting element of the book, there's a lot of snatches of story going on.  "Rise of the Third Army" doesn't have an event book like "Blackest Night" to accompany it, and perhaps it couldn't support one, but that's another odd thing about it.  It's been hyped for months, and yet seems like just another of the many crossover arcs that have begun to dominate the New 52, almost like the ubiquitous "Rotworld" event that ran through the arcane titles for months on end.  

If you're suddenly wondering if you should even bother with it, I would caution that you stick around. Maybe Green Lantern Corps or Green Lantern: New Guardians is a better place to look if you want to read more about "Rise of the Third Army."  Green Lantern itself is where you'll see how the bigger picture unfolds.  Right now that picture is still developing, much like Simon Baz.