Release Date: January 18, 2012
Cover Date: March 2012
Story: Peter Tomasi
Pencils: Fernando Pasarin
Inks: Scott Hanna
Cover: Andy Kubert
Guy Gardner puts together a badass team of Green Lanterns, and the Martian Manhunter clues them in as to the true origins of the Keepers. The Lanterns realize that since the Keepers are immune to their rings, they need to make them feel afraid and fight with conventional arms. They retrieve two fear-casting Sinestro Corpsmen from the Sciencells and hijack a Khundian weapons transport. Now the Green Lanterns are armed to the teeth and ready to take the fight to the Keepers’ world.
Ugh. This issue was all kinds of awful. Not because of the basic plot, either; the Keepers’ true origin and the dick move the Guardians pulled on their world was just fine, albeit unsurprising given the blue immortals’ actions in recent years. Also interesting was the revelation that Green Lantern power batteries are not sent to a pocket universe, but to a distant world within the regular universe. The art looked fantastic, too; each panel was rife with cool details, and Fernando Pasarin’s double-page splash of the Keepers’ history was the high point of the entire book.
What made this issue an eye-rolling turd were the rampant errors and incredibly hamfisted homages. If you thought that “Av-eneg” nonsense from the last issue was bad, then buckle up.
First of all, the “Mean Machine.” Each of those guys is based off of a classic action movie actor, right down to their faces and builds. That’s okay, I guess, but then their names are thinly-veiled versions of their real world counterparts. Flint? Bronchuk? Come on! Does Peter Tomasi really think that his readers are so stupid that they wouldn’t get it just by looking at this crowd? At least with Ermey a few years ago, the character looked nothing like R. Lee Ermey. Tributes like this are more meaningful if they’re tastefully done. Shoving our faces in it by making everything blindingly obvious is insulting. Not only that, but the character design of these guys was just boring. They’re just wearing regular clothes with a Green Lantern symbol slapped on them!
It gets worse with Fat Man and Little Boy. Aside from the fact that one is fat, and the other is little — wow, how original! — they’re aliens. Why would their names be English terms? The real offense, though, is that they’re named after the nuclear bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima during World War II. That’s in very poor taste, and it’s compounded by the fact that within the story, the pair will also be used as powerful bombs. Not cool at all.
This issue was also rife with other nits that were equally annoying, yet easily could have been avoided. The Martian Manhunter had made clear in issue #4 that he’d wipe Guy’s memories of their meeting. But now, Guy remembers J’onn without a problem. Next, it’s said that the batteries are retrieved through a “temporal conduit.” The correct term would be a spatial conduit; the batteries aren’t traveling through time!
Then there’s the matter of the Khundian weapons. You’d think a spacefaring warrior race would have some cool rayguns or phasers or something…but no. As Orion Pax of the Green Lantern Corps message board pointed out…the guns the Corps retrieves are all Earth-made firearms!
Finally, that bit about a “force of will” being encoded in the Keepers’ DNA makes absolutely no sense. Not only is willpower not an emotion (no matter how much DC Comics says otherwise), it’s also not something that can be hardcoded into beings’ cells. Give me a break.
It was nice to see the story move forward a bit, even though it was predictable, but the poor writing and crappy homages just sank this issue.
I did find both the design and the idea of the group of bad ass lanterns pretty ridiculous. first, because the “bad ass” thing was so obviously over the top and 90´s like that it was insulting. Also, why do groups of lanterns that are edgy and dark and whatnot keep coming up?? How many they were? why not just bring back the Corpse, which was such a good idea?
I did like the part where Gardner figures about what makes different a Green Lantern, not only having lots of will and the idea that he has.Yes, it has been don a lot, but with everyone getting a ring this days sure feels nice to say out loud that it is not just the will thingy.
At the end of the day, it is less annoying than GL when it comes to Johns-esque ideas of will and the history is moving foward. And the enemies are new so thats a good thing.
Indeed. It seems that every few months, we’re introduced to some brand-new group of GLs that “doesn’t play by the rules,” but have apparently been around forever. I too wish they’d bring back the Corpse; I can’t think of any valid reason why they’d be forgotten. This is the exact kind of mission they’d be required for.