The Bloody Cost of War

     With the massive Sciencell riots over, the Green Lantern Corps have to pick up the pieces.  Pieces which include chunks of Oa’s protective shell.  The Alpha Lanterns elect to not help in any way whatsoever, instead securing the prisoners.  Soranik Natu tries to remove the tattoo that Sinestro had put on her when she was younger, but she is unsuccessful.  Back on Daxam, Arisia and the Daxamites hit the Sinestro Corps hard, and Mongul rethinks his strategy.  While the Green Lantern Corps clean things up, Salaak tells Kyle Rayner and Guy Gardner that the Alpha Lanterns are executing all the prisoners.  The two of them yell at the Alpha Lanterns, but they still kill Alexander Nero, an old villain of Rayner.  When the Alpha Lanterns try to kill Bolphunga and Kanjar Ro, the two prisoners with whom they made a deal, Rayner and Gardner stop them.  The Guardians of the Universe spare those two but send Rayner and Gardner back to Earth as punishment.  Somewhere out in space, a group of asteroids explode, and dozens of Black Lantern Corps rings fly out into the cosmos.

     And with that, all the setup in both Green Lantern series to the Blackest Night is complete.  And believe me, the Green Lantern Corps have definitely lost their way, thanks to Sinestro and Scar.  Killing prisoners in secret indiscriminately, allowing lethal force, ignoring due process…  It’s scary.  And really cool.  It’s great to see Rayner and Gardner standing up for what they believe in, and it’s also interesting to see Salaak of all people begin to question the Guardians.  I would have liked to have seen more of the battle on Daxam, but I assume that more of that will take place in Blackest Night.  We’ll also get to see more of the Sinestro Corps, when Sinestro and Mongul start fighting over control.  Peter Tomasi has to be given props for lots of things, but none more so than being able to juggle all this simultaneousl occurring plotlines.  It’s quite a feat.  And Patrick Gleason has improved so much during his tenure on this series.  He can finally draw characters’ faces consistently and well.  Hhis skill with normal stuff and anatomy is now equal to his skill with freaky stuff.  I only hope that all my favorite Corps members will make it out of Blackest Night.  After all, things look pretty grim right now.

Plot: 9.3      Art: 9.2      Dialogue: 9.3      Overall: 9.3

Strange Intentions

     Caught in the midst of a battle, the Secret Six, or more specifically, Deadshot, were forced to make a difficult decision.  Deadshot insists on carrying the corpse himself, and he gets into a fight with Mr. Smyth and his assistants over it, since they believe that it would be a bad precedent for him to do so.  Ultimately, Smyth decides to allow him to do as he wishes.  The Secret Six also shows signs of division over the topic of slavery.  At dinner, Mr. Smyth reveals that his plans involve the utilization of slavery, with representatives from all parts of society, in order to achieve something great.  In prison, some guards try to fiddle with Artemis, but their superior scares them off.  She then yells at him for being a greater evil than his subordinates for fooling himself into believing that he is decent.  One of Mr. Smyth’s assistants show the Secret Six what their slaves are building: a giant prison for every criminal in the world.  In the middle of the night Jeannette decides to go free Artemis, despite her better judgment, and the rest of the Six catch her.  They then divide down the middle on the issue, with Jeannette, Scandal, and Bane trying to help Artemis (actually, Bane’s trying to help Scandal), and Catman, Ragdoll, and Deadshot trying to stop them.  In the scuffle, Artemis seems to stop breathing, and Wonder Woman, full of wrath, arrives to deliver punishment to those who harmed her sister.

     This arc is great because it explores just where in the morally gray spectrum of today’s comic books that the Secret Six stand.  Even those fighting to keep Artemis imprisoned are primarily doing it just because they accepted the job to work with the slavers.  And those fighting to free Artemis aren’t exactly trying to help her out of the kindness of their hearts.  Only Scandal seems to really dislike what’s going on, and that’s mostly because she doesn’t want to be like her father, Vandal Savage.  It’s Gail Simone at her best in these pages.  And Mr. Smyth is another delightfully scary villain.  His ideas for the betterment of the world are truly bizarre and frightening.  I don’t know about everyone else, but I can’t wait to see Wonder Woman lay the smackdown on the Six.  None of them would even stand a chance against her, except for maybe Jeannette.  It’s a rare opportunity to see the main characters of Gail’s two current series interact with each other.  Nicola Scott continues to do her superb work in this issue, though some of the faces, like Mr. Smyth the one shot of Wonder Woman, are a bit funkier looking than her usual work.  It’s clear that the Six won’t be getting out of this mission unscarred.  But that tends to happen to them on every mission.  And that’s why they’re so fun.

Plot: 9.4      Art: 9.2      Dialogue: 9.3      Overall: 9.3

Two Hamburgers Would Be Nice

     The battle between green and orange, with little splashes of blue and violet, comes to a close in the last pre-Blackest Night issue of Green Lantern.  Agent Orange gleefully places the blue ring on his finger and notices that his stomach is, at long last, no longer hungry.  However, that was all just a vision, and Hal Jordan’s arm is indeed still attached to his body.  The two then begin to fight, with Jordan creating his own corps made purely from the power of his ring.  Fatality tries to convince John Stewart of the power of love, but Stewart doesn’t buy into it.  The Orange Lantern Corps disappate as the fight between Jordan and Orange heats up, and the Guardians of the Universe use this opportunity to burst into Larfleeze’s inner sanctum.  Jordan grabs Larfleeze’s orange lantern and is battered by messages and feelings of greed.  This makes Larfleeze even angrier.  Things don’t look too good until Jordan finally says something sincere to his blue ring, which turns it on, draining Larfleeze’s power.  The ring then flies away, heading back to Odym and the Blue Lantern Corps.  The Guardians ultimately decide to make a second deal with Larfleeze, offering him the Blue Lantern Corps and the chance for a blue ring.  Meanwhile, Ash and Saarek find the Black Lantern battery and a pair of giant, decaying hands that cry out for flesh.  And Hal ponders a mysterious vision that the blue ring gave him…

     All right.  I’ll finally admit that it would be nice to see more of the same kind of earth-shattering revelations that we see in Green Lantern Corps in this series.  Right now, the two series do seem rather uneven in that regard.  Nonetheless, this series has still been crucial to the buildup to Blackest Night, since it’s given more of a spotlight on the new corps that Green Lantern Corps.  Larfleeze is definitely my favorite of the new characters that Geoff Johns has brought in, despite my personal preference for the Blue Lantern Corps.  He’s so creepily interesting.  And in some ways, I’m cheering him on in the upcoming struggles.  I can’t say I want him to decimate the Blue Lantern Corps, but I want him to survive Blackest Night.  Johns has really outdone himself by making such an awesome new character.  Philip Tan continues to be the weakest artist in the Green Lantern arsenal.  He’s good with freaky things, like Larfleeze’s face, but he’s not so good with things like human anatomy and faces.  It makes me long for the work of Ivan Reis, Ethan van Sciver, Doug Mahnke, Shane Davis, and Patrick Gleason.  Fortunately, this is his last issue, so we don’t have to worry about that any more.  Eddy Barrows, on the other hand, draws some beautiful stuff in his few pages at the end of the book.  I particularly like his rendition of the Blue Lantern Corps.  Now, all the preparation is over.  The Blackest Night is here.  And I don’t think I’ve been looking forward to a crossover/event this much… possibly ever.

Plot: 9.2      Art: 8.8      Dialogue: 9.4      Overall: 9.2

When All Else Fails, You Can Count on World War II

     Blah blah blah Justice Society of America.  Blah blah blah Kung blah blah blah.  Spectre blah blah blah blah.  Blah Stargirl blah blah blah.  Blah blah blah Atom Smasher blah blah.  Rinse and repeat.  The reason that I say this is that this issue means absolutely nothing.  It does not advance any sort of plot whatsoever, aside from indicating that, according to the old members of the JSA, no one is good enough for Stargirl.  This silly plot revolving around World War II doesn’t even really deserve a summary.  I know it’s filler, but Jerry Ordway is just relying on the most tried-and-true subject matter for comic books rather than actually coming up with his own material.  His art is fine, minus the fact that some characters often don’t have eyebrows.  Or at least visible ones.  But this issue is so meh, so mediocre that I refuse to give it a summary.  I’d rather spend my time on something worthwhile.

Plot: 5.5      Art: 8.5      Dialogue: 4.2      Overall: 4.9