Release Date: December 15, 2010
Cover Date: January 2011
Story: Geoff Johns
Pencils: Doug Mahnke
Inks: Christian Alamy, Keith Champagne, Doug Mahnke, and Shawn Moll
Cover: Gary Frank
1:10 DC 75th Anniversary Variant Cover: Frank Quitely
The Parallax-possessed Flash is beating the living shit out of Hal Jordan, but Hal taunts the fear entity by claiming that it is afraid of him. Meanwhile, Sinestro and Atrocitus are still tracking down the Butcher, but Sinestro is called away by one of his Corpsmen to deal with the situation on Qward. The Indigo Tribe and other colored Lanterns try to help Hal, but are interrupted by the arrival of the entity thief. He waves off Hal’s ring constructs with ease, since he’s captured Ion. After forcefully removing Adara, Proselyte, and Parallax from their hosts, the thief finally reveals his identity: Krona.
Krona? Really? Ugh. No, I’m not mad because my prediction of Appa Ali Apsa was wrong. I’m annoyed because Krona was the primary antagonist in the recent Trinity series. I’m sure we’ll find out just how he escaped his Worldsoul prison in upcoming issues, but the fact remains: he was already the villain in a recent major event. There’s no reason he had to be the bad guy again.
Revealing Krona to be the entity thief also sets up other problems. Namely, it’s yet another in a long line of Geoffcons. Aside from retconning much of Krona’s history, this reveal completely decanonizes the excellent Green Lantern: Ganthet’s Tale, which was critically important to Green Lantern continuity. (Oddly enough, I reviewed Ganthet’s Tale last week. I swear, I did not know that Krona was going to be the entity thief!) In that book, it was discovered that Maltusians who had settled on Oa became the Guardians specifically because Krona damaged the universe by trying to see its origin.
Green Lantern (Vol. 4) #60 retcons all of that, showing that not only were the Guardians around well before that, but that Krona actually worked for them as the keeper of the entities. We also know from his first appearance as the entity thief that he also created the oath for the Green Lantern Corps, so he was still with the Guardians when that group was created.
Furthermore, Krona probably built the Orange Lantern and its temple on Okaara, as seen in Green Lantern (Vol. 4) #41. He’s the one who owned the map that Larfleeze and his pals stole billions of years ago, after all, and it’s likely that Krona created the map as well. (Note: Green Lantern [Vol. 4] #41 refers to Krona as a Guardian, but at the time, I figured it was just an error, since Larfleeze’s group stole the map from Maltus, not Oa.)
All of this is completely silly, as much of Krona’s later villainy now doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. There’s loads of other villains out there that would have fit the entity thief’s profile much better, so it was incredibly lame that Krona’s the evil mastermind once more. Not to mention the multiple retcons necessary to make it work. And his final line? “I am Krona. And I am mad!” Truly groan-worthy, along with those silly “Maltusian evolution tapestries.” They’re still fucking bandages.
One more part of this issue that was ridiculous: Hal implying that Parallax feared him. This is complete and utter nonsense. I don’t care how hardcore and tough Geoff Johns thinks Hal Jordan is; no Green Lantern, or any other Lantern for that matter, could strike fear into Parallax. (Not even Sinestro.) He doesn’t even fear the goddamned Spectre, for crying out loud! About the only character in the DC Universe that would be credible in scaring Parallax would be Batman, because everyone is scared shitless of that guy. The implication that Parallax actually fears Hal came off as nothing but fanboy wankery. Come on, I hate that giant space bug, but I’m actually defending it here, so you know something’s wrong!
The only thing in this issue that I really liked was the fight between Hal and the Parallax-Flash. Hal got his ass kicked, but it made perfect sense; there’s no way he’d be able to beat the Flash on solid ground, and when an experienced speedster is possessed by the living embodiment of fear, that would amp up his abilities considerably.
All in all, Green Lantern (Vol. 4) #60 was awful. Geoff Johns is a great writer, but these constant retcons need to stop. The stories suffer greatly because of them.
I was also disappointed that you were wrong. Krona just sucked being revealed as the villain.
Good review. I’ll just give you one nitpick: You seem to be misunderstanding what happened between Hal and Parallax, and thus mischaracterizing it as “fanwankery”, which even cleaned of its haziness isn’t a very valid criticism – i.e., “The protaganist was shown in a positive light. That’s fankwankery!”
Setting that aside, here’s what happened: Hal pulls a theory out of his butt (P-lax being afraid of him) to explain his current behaviour. Now, Hal *could* be right, but Parallax’s reaction (or lack thereof) seemed to indicate otherwise. He wasn’t afraid, he was being controlled.
Johns does this quite often, in fact. And specifically writing Hal Jordan: Showing his immediate reaction is off, and show him working to come up with the right solution. Johns did the same thing wiht Hal AND Sinestro in Blackest Night, with the white ring. Both characters thought they had the situation totally bagged, and couldn’t be more wrong.
That’s not “fanwankery”…it’s showing that the characters don’t know everything, nor have everything figured out. They make mistakes and rush to judgment. Like us real human beings do.
Otherwise, nice review.
Interesting take. I took Parallax’s initial reaction to Hal’s goading to be one of “oh, shit, he figured it out!” Parallax then jumped out of Barry in a rage to try and prove Hal wrong. I hope this is not the case, as like you said, characters making mistakes makes them much more interesting to read. Johns made Hal far too squeaky clean with Rebirth and much of what followed, and it’s nice to see Hal finally second-guessing himself and tripping up. (I mentioned this in my review of the last issue, too.)