Nose to the Greenstone

With the Lubbock Comic Book Expo over for another year, it’s time to try to catch up on some of the comics reviews I’ve been neglecting. And lo and behold, there’s been a passel of “Green Lantern” comics piling up.

Green Lantern #39

We get our introduction to Agent Orange, the sole guardian of the Orange Lantern in this issue. The Controllers, old rivals of the Guardians of the Universe who run the Green Lantern Corps, visit the planet Okaara in the Vega system, which is off-limits to the Green Lanterns. The Controllers hope to control the Orange Lantern to power their schemes, but Agent Orange and his minions effortlessly take them apart. Meanwhile, Hal Jordan is still stuck wearing both a Green Lantern ring and a Blue Lantern ring. He has a big argument/discussion with the Blue Lanterns and their guardians, Ganthet and Sayd, about power and/or weaknesses of hope — in other words, hope needs willpower to work, just as the blue rings need green rings to function. The Guardians on Oa aren’t happy that Jordan has two rings, but when the robotic Green Lantern Stel chases a Sinestro Corps member to the Vega system, Larfleeze, the greedy Agent Orange, attacks Stel and the Guardians for breaking their oath to leave Vega alone.

Verdict: Ehh, thumbs down. Mostly boring stuff. Too much talky-talk, which I could excuse if it were interesting talky-talk.

Green Lantern #40

The Guardians decree that the Vega system is no longer off-limits to the GL Corps, and they all go off to invade Okaara and take out Larfleeze. But things don’t go as easily as they’d hoped — when Agent Orange kills someone, he’s able to steal their identity and create an orange-light construct of them to fight on his behalf.

Verdict: I’ll give it a thumbs up for the fairly nifty identity-stealing gimmick of Agent Orange, but other than that, there’s a whole lot of shootin’ and shoutin’ and not a whole lot to show for it.

Free Comic Book Day: Blackest Night #0

Our focus here is on Hal Jordan and Barry Allen as they review some of the high-profile recent deaths in the DCU — Batman, the Martian Manhunter, Aquaman — with the implication that they’ll be some of the zombies rising under the control of the Black Lanterns whenever the “Blackest Night” crossover gets started this summer.

Verdict: Thumbs up, mostly for the great dialogue and interplay between Hal and Barry. Sure, the “Blackest Night” hints are fairly cool, as are the pinups of the seven color-coded corps, but really, it’s just nice to see GL and Flash interacting again.