(This issue, and many others released this week, have a four-page “War of the Green Lanterns” preview in the back. I will not be covering that, as I’m sure it’ll be reprinted as part of the crossover itself.)
Release Date: February 16, 2011
Cover Date: March 2011
Story: Geoff Johns
Pencils: Doug Mahnke
Inks: Keith Champagne, Christian Alamy, Tom Nguyen
Cover: Ardian Syaf and Vicente Cifuentes
1:10 Variant Cover: Doug Mahnke and Christian Alamy
Hal Jordan attempts to stop Krona, but is mercilessly beaten by the ancient villain. Even when Atrocitus shows up, it’s still not enough; Krona uses the Ophidian-possessed Hector Hammond to stop the heroes, and retrieves the Butcher from Atrocitus’ power battery. With six of the entities in his possession, Krona knocks everyone out with a massive blast, and Hal wakes on the JLA Watchtower. He and the other Corps representatives head out to find Krona, leaving his friends in the JLA behind.
It’s been a while since the last Green Lantern issue, and #62 makes up for that lost time with quite a bit of plot. While beating the snot out of Hal, Krona reveals that not only was he responsible for many Green Lantern technologies (like the power batteries, sciencells, and use of the pocket dimension), he figured out how to capture the entities in the first place. That’s why it’s so easy for him to do so now.
Krona’s obsession with emotion makes sense in this story, but it’s still very weak…because he’s never mentioned it before, in any of his other appearances. This issue makes it seem like it was his driving force in life, but considering his countless past skirmishes with the DC Universe have had nothing to do with the emotional spectrum, it still falls flat. Even if you try to accept it as a retcon, it still doesn’t make much sense.
An interesting touch was that the Guardians used to wear White Lantern symbols on their robes, not Green Lantern ones. This is of course yet another retcon, as they originally sported the Green Lantern symbol even before the Corps was created. The symbol originally came from them, not from some willpower entity that looks like a whale. In this new history, they wielded the white light as well as the green one, which is awfully strange.
A brief look into the future shows the Guardians speaking to a mysterious captive, who they seemingly want to set loose upon Hal Jordan (after the upcoming “War of the Green Lanterns”). Who is this new character? Its speech bubbles are very similar to Krona’s, but are colored green instead of yellow. Whoever it is, Ganthet and Krona imprisoned it billions of years ago. The silhouette appears to be hooded, but is still impossible to identify. It’s anyone’s guess at this point.
They also mention the “loss” of one of sector 2814′s Lanterns, but notice that they do not say “death,” nor do they say which color Lantern. Even if we assume that they’re talking about one of the other Green Lanterns from that sector — Kyle Rayner, John Stewart, and Guy Gardner — I seriously doubt they’ll be killed. Or if they are, they’ll be back in the land of the living in no time. My guess? Guy will finally be lost to his rage, and become a Red Lantern permanently.
Aside from the continual retcons, the only down note in this issue was Hal’s constant attempts at humor. They just don’t work, and as usual, his one-liners sounded awful and out of place. Seriously, leave the jokes to Kyle; it works a lot better with his character, especially Hal got knocked on his ass every time he opened his mouth.
Dunno, I thought this was the strongest issue in a long time. Retcons? sure, but the entire DCU of the past 30 years is built on retcons, so…no biggie.
As for humor, I thought it was used to demonstrate Hal’s bravado pretty well in this issue. Kyle? Most of the time his “humor”, borrowed as it was from Peter Parker, came across as REALLY forced. But everybody’s mileage varies…