Invaders from Mars

I picked up a couple of different comics recently that had stories about alien invasions. Let’s give ’em a spin and see how they turned out…

 

Green Lantern #23

The Green Lanterns stuck on Qward have to fight their way home. Hal Jordan briefly puts on a whole bunch of Sinestro rings, but he doesn’t really know that much about manipulating fear, so he gets disarmed fairly quickly. They lose one of their number, an alien named Ke’haan, to an attack by the Anti-Monitor, but they’re able to recover the powerful Green Lantern entity called Ion.

Meanwhile, the Guardians of the Galaxy decide to rewrite some of the rules that govern the operation of the Green Lantern power rings — first, they now allow Lanterns to use lethal force against the Sinestro Corps. And finally, Jordan, John Stewart, and Guy Gardner return to Earth to enlist the aid of more superheroes, but discover that the Sinestro Corps has followed them home.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Not entirely happy with the story. It could have been simplified a bit, and we’ve seen, so far, mighty little of some of the promised villains. But it’s still got more good stuff than bad stuff.

 

PS238 #25

Aliens are invading Earth! Superheroes are busy fighting against the invaders, as are the teachers and some of the students at PS238. Unfortunately, the aliens have fixated on powerless Tyler Marlocke (who nevertheless adventures as the mostly-hapless technology-based kid-hero Moon Shadow) as the key to their invasion. They’ve engineered a virus that, when injected into Tyler, will turn him into a typhoid mary who will spread a DNA-altering disease around the world — all future humans would turn out looking just like the aliens. Can everyone prevent Tyler from being injected with the virus, or is the Earth doomed?

Verdict: Thumbs up, but just barely. This book is at its best in straight-forward lighthearted shenanigans, and this story is just way, way too serious.