Green Lantern Week Part 5: Green Lantern: The New Guardians.

Wow, this article took a while to come out. I hope it's worth it, as this is the comic that has the potential to be my favorite of them all. Green Lantern: New Guardians took the ideas that a lot of readers found most compelling about Geoff Johns's run in Green Lantern and Blackest Night, namely the emotional spectrum and the seven Corps. While these aren't the "New Guardians" as I believe they were described during Brightest Day (Hal Jordan, Sinestro, Atrocitus, Indigo-1, Carol Ferris, Larfleeze and Saint Walker), this group is made of the same basic concept: one member of each Corps. As of issue 2, Saint Walker is the only returning member of the group, with New York Comic-Con hints lending to Larfleeze's catching up with his rogue ring in issue #3.

For those unfamiliar, the "emotional spectrum" is the foundation that life and emotion are built on in the Green Lantern universe. It was founded by seven entities (who were secondary to Entity, the personification of life, and Nekron, the personification of death), each of which created a powerful energy source and tied in to a certain emotion. These emotions and energy sources were Rage (Red), Avarice (Orange), Fear (Yellow), Will (Green), Hope (Blue), Compassion (Indigo) and Love (Violet). From each of these power sources, an almost omnipotent ring-wielding corps was formed, the members of each corresponding with their ring's guiding emotion. Each Corps has its own strengths and weaknesses, many of which have been explored, but most of which have not.

Let me give you some insight into my own tastes, and you might see why I love this concept so much. Some of the shows I enjoyed as a child: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, Captain Planet, even Care Bears and My Little Pony. What do these all have in common? A group of individuals, each with similar yet subtly different powers, that would combine these abilities in order to combat a threat. Of course, you get this with any group dynamic, but it's usually exaggerated to epic proportions in this kind of team, and so is the enjoyment factor in watching it.

And then of course, you get things like this:

By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet!

There are so many tropes and shows based around this kind of combining powers that I couldn't do the topic justice in this post. Generally, it's awesome whenever it happens, and it's pretty much the premise that New Guardians was based on. While we still don't know why six extra rings sought out Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, the indication is that we're getting ever closer to a true answer, and an ultimate upheaval of the balance of power in the universe. Unless this series takes a grave misstep at some point in the future, it's something that I'm going to look forward to on the last week of every month.

Green Lantern Week Part 4: Green Lantern Corps

This is going to be the shortest part of Green Lantern week, because there is a fairly limited amount that I have to say about Green Lantern Corps. Like Green Lantern, the third volume of Green Lantern Corps is being written by the same man as volume two, in this case Peter Tomasi. While the previous edition of Green Lantern largely ignored John Stewart before the new volume expanded the role of Sinestro, however, Green Lantern Corps was always a tale of both partners and an ensemble cast.

While the new volume hasn't really had a chance to test out the ensemble- other than leaving it clearly evident that the new rookies introduced in volume 2 are around in the altered timeline, another aspect that I feel weakens the sacrifices of Green Lanterns who had previously been said to have worked with Hal Jordan for many years- the partnership dynamic of the two Earth Lanterns has very clearly changed.

In Volume 2, John Stewart and Hal Jordan were the two Green Lanterns of Earth, while their cohorts Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner were each elevated to the role of Honor Lantern, effectively making them third and fourth in command of the Green Lanterns. In Volume Three, the Honor Guard is effectively removed, a mystery that I'm content to let the story tell or leave as something erased by the "de-aging" of the universe, and Guy and John are instead the Green Lanterns of Earth, though they're clearly senior lanterns who are called upon in times of need, much as Sinestro was in some incarnations of the story.

Green Lantern Corps has been known to tackle threats to the entire Corps, and that is what the first two issues of the new volume have done. After the deaths of several lanterns, Guy and John lead a team of lanterns to face the threat, who we will later learn are called the Keepers and we have seen wield the green light of will.

I mentioned on Monday that Green Lantern Corps was the most effective #1, explaining some degree of the differences in the reboot as well as introducing the concept of the new series. I also feel Green Lantern Corps has long been the more boring of the GL titles, showing a lot of emphasis on life as a Lantern (which is not quite as exciting as life as a space marine, being able to return home easily between missions). This being a space opera story rather than a superhero story, the characters need to be extremely fleshed out and interesting in order to have the same effect, because that is what the emphasis of the genre is. This has been achieved to varying levels of success in the past- I care very little for Isamot and Vath, with Guy, Kyle and Soranith being very successful characters for me. Some other characters that did little for me may or may not return, and Arisia, a long-time beloved character, is equally up in the air. Suffice it to say that so far, this series has kept my attention very well. Only time will tell if it remains as strong.

Green Lantern Week Part 2: Red Lanterns

Green Lantern week continues with the frontrunner of the four Green Lantern titles in the DCnU. What? No, it's not Green Lantern. It's Red Lanterns, of course.



Yes, for some reason, Red Lantern is seen as the necessary first release of the Green Lantern line each month- possibly because Geoff Johns didn't want to compete with Action Comics every month. Instead, Green Lantern is set Batwoman and Batgirl because what the hey, girls don't read comics, right? At least, they won't at the rate DC is going. So, for whatever reason, Red Lantern is the first new issue Green Lantern fans get every month.



 While I had some initial excitement for this series, it's not the type of heart-pounding, action-packed or even riveting character-based story that is made to live up to that kind of expectations. After three issues I can say with certainty that I am invested in the plot and curious what's going to happen next... but I'm not at the edge of my seat.



  Red Lanterns is a curious creature. It's clearly written by someone who cares about the characters, about Atrocitus and Bleez, and it might work for any group of characters other than ones whose sole appeal is that they kill quickly and without mercy. This is the slowest paced story of rage I've ever seen. It's a curious mix, and one that I don't think is going to make it very far. This mix makes Red Lanterns a mediocre comic, the one you're always vaguely interested in checking out, but you always have something else more pressing on your plate. As it is, I'm wondering how the character development taking place in Bleez is going to play out across different titles, but only insofar as I have a feeling it's not going to; at least until the next story arc.



 While I'm talking about the Red Lanterns, it was revealed at New York Comic-Con 2011 that much of the first season of Green Lantern: The Animated Series is going to focus on them. I can't help but wonder if it's going to be the more cinematic origin of the Lanterns that we saw in the one-shot Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns, or if the series is going to focus on the storylines and motivations that we see in the comics. If Batman, X-Men and Spiderman in the past are to be any indication, Green Lantern: The Animated Series will define how a generation sees the Green Lantern mythos, which means that it may very well be a better indication as to what happens in the future of Red Lanterns than anything else we can address. I'll be back tomorrow to talk about Geoff Johns's Green Lantern Volume 5, and whether or not that's in name only.

Green Lantern Week Part 1: The New 52

I've been a little quiet around here lately. Okay, let's not lie; I've been completely silent for several weeks. I've been working on my own projects, dealing with crises at work, going to New York Comic-Con, having power outages, and altogether having way too many excuses not to do anything more complex than tweet and post unscripted video logs. To attempt to make up for this, I'm launching off a week dedicated to posts about the new status quo of the Green Lantern universe. I've looked at 5 different comic titles related to Green Lantern in the past ten weeks: Justice League, Green Lantern, Red Lanterns, Green Lantern Corps, and Green Lantern: New Guardians. Last Friday I posted my look at the last #2 issue I'll be talking about, as part of my vlog series "52 Weeks of Green Lantern".



 Today, I'm talking about the 5 #1's that featured the Corps and the emotional spectrum, while I spend the rest of the week talking about the direction that the four Lantern books and related media are going. What do I have to say about the figureheads of this "DCnU", or DC new universe, the "new 52", a title which harkens back to one of recent years' most popular series? From a strictly literary standpoint, the new 52 was a colossal failure. Series failed to introduce characters, at times preferring to stick to long-established arcs that new readers picking up a #1 are clueless about, such as in Green Lantern, or by trying to accomplish too much to accomplish anything, like in Justice League. While I'm not dwelling on comics that I didn't read, the well-known transformation of Starfire from a caring lover and friend to an anonymous-sex demanding bimbo in Red Hood and the Outlaws #1 or the rape/gratuitous sex scene that ended Catwoman #1 are some more blatant examples of the fact that the new 52 was a poorly coordinated collection of stories. Justice League #1 was largely a farce. While Darkseid was hinted at, the book largely existed to hold the well-known "superpowers vs Batman" debate that has been going on since people realized that Superman and Batman comics both existed. Any and every story that it told was secondary to this comedic routine, leaving me with a desire not to bother picking up this book again.



  Green Lantern #1 was more driven by the story, as well as having a large focus on characters. The problem here, though, is that a #1 issue generally gives you some sort of insight as to what's going on, or at least you have an indication that it is coming in the future. GL #1, on the other hand, gave you more of a mind to read the previous storyline, which in turn requires you to have read several storylines previous. In short, while it may have been a decent issue of Green Lantern, this is impossible to tell for readers who were, in fact, looking for Green Lantern #1. Almost a polar opposite in terms of the reaction it's received, Red Lanterns #1 has been criticized almost for being too well wrapped up; while many people claimed it was among their least favorite #1s, by far the largest reason I've seen is that it gives no indication as to how it can last as a long-running series. This issue set up a protagonist, a conflict, and motivations, but it failed to strike people at the emotional level that readers of a comic about the avatars of rage would expect.



  Green Lantern Corps and Green Lantern: New Guardians struck me as two of the best first issues to come out of this. There was nothing here like Green Lantern Corps: Recharge in terms of really digging readers in, which to me is a failure for the purposes of a massive, high-publicity relaunch intended to bring in a ton of new readers, but it does the purpose of a number one. The characters are introduced, the concept and story arc are introduced, and you're not forced to research the last four years of comics to understand what it is that you're reading.



 That's about it for today, and my first look at what the new 52 brought us for DC comics. I said that these first issues were a strictly literary failure; many of these are stunningly drawn and they've been selling like hotcakes. Over the next few days I'll take a look at each series and tell you why first impressions aren't everything.