Green Lantern and Green Lantern

Release Date: August 23, 2000
Cover Date: October 2000

Story: Judd Winick
Pencils: Randy Green
Inks: Wayne Faucher
Cover: Rodolfo Damaggio and Kevin Nowlan

Kyle Rayner and Alexandra DeWitt are scouring space for any sign of Oblivion, and track his signal to a storm-ridden planet. Kyle is starting to feel weak, so the pair takes a break and compares how their lives have played out in their respective universes. As they get moving again, Kyle and Alex burrow deep below the planet’s surface where they’re seemingly attacked by alien worms. They get closer to the signal, but they discover that it’s a bomb! The two Green Lanterns manage to escape in the nick of time, and finally come to terms with their feelings. They accept their love for one another, but they have to let go of it, as well as the guilt. As they take off into space, Kyle locates where Oblivion is really hiding, and he quickly transmits his findings to the other four teams: the villain waits amongst the ruins of Oa.

There’s only a little bit of action here: the attack of the worms and the bomb explosion. The point of this issue is to focus on Kyle’s reunion with Alex, albeit an Alex from a parallel universe. Right from the get-go, their team up is presented as very strange indeed. From their awkward attempts to get to know one another a little better to their comparisons of their respective universes, the very human nature of both Green Lanterns is expertly handled. In fact, their roles as Green Lanterns is barely touched on…and that’s a good thing.

The fact that they wield power rings is merely the framework for this story. When Kyle and Alex both break down and realize how much they’ve missed the other, it’s a fantastic scene. The whole concept of it being an Alex from a parallel universe (rather than a resurrected Alex, or a clone, or an android, et cetera) is a great idea to begin with, and it was great to see how she and Kyle dealt with each other’s presence. Sure, they’re not the exact same person that the other had lost…but it’s close enough.

Thankfully, the artwork also does a great job in making these moments important and believable. Randy Green has a fluid, cartoony style that is sorely missed in modern Green Lantern comics. Hyperrealism isn’t needed, and the emotions Kyle and Alex feel in each other’s presence are still clear as day.

Green Lantern and Green Lantern is a great piece of Circle of Fire, and serves as a reminder that human stories are almost always better than nonstop fisticuffs.

Green Lantern and the Atom

Guest review by Frank Lee Delano. Check out his blog at The Idol-Head of Diabolu!

Release Date: August 23, 2000
Cover Date: October 2000

Story: Brian K. Vaughan
Pencils: Trevor McCarthy
Inks: Tyson McAdoo
Cover: Cary Nord and Mark Lipka

While the other strike teams are away, the Atom remains at the JLA Watchtower to coordinate their activities. The two members of the futuristic Teen Lantern Corps stuck with him feel that’s a waste of their talents, and they manage to convince Ray Palmer to take more direct action. They go to Earth in search of Oblivion’s creator, presumed to be a super-villain capable of reading Kyle Rayner’s mind and manifesting his youthful fantasy idea of Oblivion as an actual threat. They make a list of four suspects, the first being Batman’s foe the Scarecrow, who gets the drop on the trio. The Tiny Titan shrinks until fear gas no longer affects him, and then helps Forest use his ring to instill fear by creating a Batman construct. Suspect #2 is the misogynist Dr. Psycho, who Hunter subdues by beating the midget with constructs from Little Women. The Mighty Mite next tortures a confession of non-involvement out of Professor Ivo by threatening to rearrange the synapses in his brain until he’s rendered an idiot. Finally, the group checks on Dr. Light, still safely tucked away inside Kyle’s power battery. Ultimately, the only progress made is the discovery that Kyle had also thought up the Emerald Knight as a kid, another Green Lantern off on a mission with Power Girl.

Back when this book first came out, I was still running my comic shop, and had this one customer who absolutely hated everything Brian Vaughan wrote at DC. I defended Vaughan at the time, although I would never consider myself a fan and had very limited exposure to his work. Had I read any of the issues in this event beforehand, I might have been less forgiving.

The whole premise of the crossover is dumb, and the character selection seemed geared more toward protecting trademarks than to offer a spotlight for underappreciated heroes. Vaughan wrote two of the six one-shots and the bookends, and dropped a lot of hints toward the conclusion of the story in this issue. I don’t know if they paid off, because this is the only one I’ve read, and it was too lousy to make me want to sample any more. The Teen Lantern Corps members present are as annoying as their seeming models, the Wonder Twins. The villain selection is illogical and underwhelming. The resolutions to the various battles are too clever by half, smugly grating. The jokes are deeply painful groaners, and the art is ugly as sin.

I was happy to provide this guest review, but I must confess that I regret that it involved having to read such a lousy, mercenary book. Set the lot aside and read Pride of Baghdad instead.

Green Lantern and Adam Strange

Guest review by Kelson Vibber. Check out his blog at Speed Force!

Release Date: August 23, 2000
Cover Date: October 2000

Story: Brian K. Vaughan
Pencils: Cary Nord
Inks: Mark Lipka
Cover: Rodolfo Damaggio and Kevin Nowlan

Adam Strange and Green Lightning, a speedster Green Lantern from the future, defend Adam’s adopted world Rann from an attack by Oblivion. They find that the entire population has been driven mad with rage, and even Adam’s wife Alanna wants to kill him. Overwhelmed, they retreat to the Rannian wilderness to regroup, fight monsters, and investigate the cause of the planetwide madness. When they find it, they learn something very disturbing about the attacker.

Story

This chapter is mostly self-contained, which is fortunate because I’ve never actually read the Circle of Fire bookends. Even so, there isn’t a whole lot of plot. Instead it focuses on a character study about being trapped between two worlds.

Green Lightning is heir to both the Green Lantern ring and the Flash legacy, through the union of the Rayner and West families. They could have easily made her a Green Lantern with an extra power, but instead she’s fueled by this conflict: Each side of her family wants her to follow their legacy and not the other. She can’t live up to either side’s expectations without disappointing the other, causing her to doubt herself and develop a mental block that only allows her to use one set of powers each day. This makes her more interesting than she could have been as just an overpowered hero, but it does lead to the odd situation that a book with Green Lantern in the title features a Lantern who doesn’t actually use her ring through most of the book.

Adam Strange, meanwhile, is torn between two literal worlds: Earth and Rann. There are two ways to tell an Adam Strange story: tell a straight-up wacky space adventure, or focus on this tension between the world of Adam’s birth and the world he longs to call home. This story drives home the point that, on Rann, Adam is in fact an alien. He’s the outsider, trying to fit in by being a hero, though the people of Rann see him as a primitive. The accusations that Alanna makes while under Oblivion’s influence sting all the harder because they echo doubts that already exist in his own mind.

By the end of the book, what stands out isn’t the adventure, the fighting, or the giant monsters, but the way the two conflicted characters help each other work through their self-doubt.

Art

I’m not familiar with Cary Nord’s work, but it’s a bit sparse here for my tastes (Which is odd, because I usually like artists like, for instance, Scott Kolins) &mdash except in the incredibly detailed splash pages. His pages of the battle-damaged city of Ranagar remind me Keith Giffen’s style, and the opening page features a jumble of panels in front of an impressive view of the Moon and the JLA Watchtower with Earth, the sun and a starscape in the background.

What does stand out with the characters are the facial expressions. Especially in the close-ups, you get a real sense of fear, surprise, delight, despair, even smugness.

I’m not too impressed by the design of Green Lightning, though. On the plus side, she looks like a runner, not a bodybuilder or a model. On the minus side, the costume is awfully plain, and the combination of earpieces that stick out sideways and a bald head remind me of Mr. Mxytzptlk or Londo from Babylon 5. If DC had decided to keep her around in some way, it would have been worth breaking up the solid color a bit.

Overall

It’s a nice character study of Adam Strange, and would be a good introduction to the character. (Certainly better than my own, which was the extremely bleak early 1990s miniseries.) It’s not much of a Green Lantern story, though, since Green Lightning doesn’t make much use of the Green Lantern mythos, and in the end, she mainly exists to serve as a mirror for Adam Strange’s own conflict.

Bonus: Flash Facts

Adam describes the distance to Rann as being about 25 trillion miles. At the time, Rann was supposed to be in the Alpha Centauri system, which is about…25 trillion miles away. (This also means that Rann should have two suns in the sky, like Tatooine.)

Adam mentions “flashing images in cartoons that can induce seizures in kids.” This is a reference to the 1997 incident in which hundreds of Japanese children (at least some of whom had epilepsy) experienced seizures or other symptoms while watching an episode of Pokémon.

Green Lantern: Circle of Fire #1

Welcome to The Indigo Tribe’s Green Lantern: Circle of Fire event! How is this an event? Well, keep reading and find out…

Release Date: August 16, 2000
Cover Date: Early October 2000

Story: Brian K. Vaughan
Pencils: Norm Breyfogle
Inks: John Lowe, Ray Kryssing, Steve Bird, John Nyberg, and Keith Aiken
Cover: Cary Nord and Mark Lipka

A new villain known as Oblivion comes to the planet Rann, but Adam Strange cannot stop him before the Zeta Beam pulls him away. Back on Earth, Kyle Rayner struggles with deadlines, while Strange runs into Firestorm and the Atom. The JLA is summoned to the Watchtower, and Kyle is shocked when Strange describes Oblivion. Kyle created a comic book character named “Oblivion” when he was a child, and this new villain sounds and behaves exactly like him! The team takes off to confront this new menace, but Oblivion makes short work of the group. Kyle is sent back to find reinforcements, and he runs into Hal Jordan, the Spectre. He warns Kyle that this will be his biggest challenge, and that someone close to him will betray him. By the time Kyle gets back to the Watchtower, the JLA and Oblivion have both disappeared from sensors. Other supervillains worldwide are taking advantage of their absence by staging crime waves, so the only heroes left to help are Power Girl, Firestorm, and the Atom. Suddenly, a group of unknown Green Lanterns from the past and future appear within the Watchtower, claiming they’re responding to Kyle’s request for help. One of them is even an Alexandra DeWitt from a parallel universe! Kyle pairs a veteran hero with each of these new Lanterns, and the group splits up to find a way to defeat Oblivion.

For once, Kyle gets a chance to lead! His desire to live up the legacy of the Green Lantern Corps is brought up again, but in this case, he gets to put his money where his mouth is. Kyle’s always wanted to restart the Corps, and just look at those six new Green Lanterns! All of them are unique and interesting, especially the “Teen Lanterns” and Green Lightning, the Flash hybrid. Even the Manhunter’s a nice touch, since it doesn’t look like any other we’ve seen before. Of course, my favorite is the alternate universe Alex, which is a marvelous creation in and of its own right. Kyle’s had plenty of time to deal with Alex’s death, but this only brings up the pain all over again. And since she’s dealing with the loss of her own Kyle, it makes things all the more complicated.

With the world’s villains attacking en masse due to the JLA’s absence, I find it hard to believe that the small group Kyle collected are the only competent heroes available. Fortunately, the introduction of other superheroes into the story doesn’t feel forced, with perhaps the exception of Power Girl. In fact, Kyle himself is only brought up to speed on the impending threat because he’s a member of the JLA!

Norm Breyfogle’s pencils are always a treat; he’s most known for his Batman work, but he draws a pretty badass Green Lantern. His designs for the other Lanterns are excellent, and the sorrow evident on Alex’s face when she reveals her identity to Kyle is Breyfogle’s finest panel in the book. The shadowy form of Oblivion is a great design, too, especially when paired with young Kyle’s scribbles.

What will happen to Kyle and his team? The Circle of Fire story continues in five one-shot issues…and that’s where this blog’s “event” comes in!

Starting Monday, February 27, you’ll see a review of one of the five Circle of Fire one-shots every day. (Story-wise, they all take place simultaneously.) I’ll only be writing one of these reviews, however; the others will be provided by some very special guests! Joining me next week will be a group of top-notch comic book bloggers. Here’s the rundown of who’s reviewing what:

• Green Lantern and Adam Strange – Kelson Vibber (Speed Force)

• Green Lantern and the Atom – Frank Lee Delano (The Idol-Head of Diabolu)
• Green Lantern and Green Lantern – me
• Green Lantern and Firestorm the Nuclear Man – The Irredeemable Shag (Firestorm Fan)
• Green Lantern and Power Girl – Michael Bailey (Fortress of Baileytude)

I’ll update this list with the correct links as the reviews go live. The whole thing wraps up on Monday, March 5, with my review of Green Lantern: Circle of Fire #2! In the meantime, check out my guests’ blogs! You won’t be disappointed, and you might just learn a thing or two about their favorite characters.

Green Lantern: New Guardians #6

Release Date: February 22, 2012
Cover Date: April 2012

Story: Tony Bedard
Pencils: Tyler Kirkham
Inks: Matt “Batt” Banning
Cover: Tyler Kirkham and Matt “Batt” Banning

The archangel Invictus is summoned by his followers, and Kyle Rayner overrides his ring in order to warn the other Corps representatives. Invictus emerges from a statue on the fake Okaara, beating the snot out of Fatality and Munk. They teleport away, and Invictus’ next target is Arkillo. He blames all of the ring wielders for being servants of the Beast, but after making short work of Arkillo, he learns that Saint Walker is not evil. Unfortunately, Saint Walker discovers that Invictus isn’t evil, either! Finally, as Bleez returns to the Orrery, she vows to burn down each world until she finds Kyle and crew.

Not a bad issue, though it fell prey to the “new threat wipes the floor with our heroes” cliché. As we all expected, Invictus showed up, kicked everyone’s asses, and seems poised for victory…until a lone wolf (Bleez) arrives to throw a spanner in the works. While nothing new, at least the story worked well. Invictus does not see himself as some world-conquering villain, and it’s often these flawed but well-meaning characters that make for interesting stories. (I also dig how he uses the statues of himself as a teleportation system.) It’s notable that Invictus hasn’t encountered a power ring in billions of years; that means he’s unlikely to be the “ring thief.” Someone else in the Orrery must have reprogrammed the rings to go after Kyle.

Kyle’s “hacking” of the ring’s communication system was cool; you’d think the ring wouldn’t have such a stupid restriction, but it seems to me that it was something put in place by the Guardians after Blackest Night. They’ve had a bug up their collective asses since the other color Corps showed up. Further screwing with the Green Lanterns’ rings to prevent any alliances, as it were, is right up their douchebag alley as of late.

Moving on to the subject of sexism and objectification…how about Fatality’s talking boobs?

That’s not a cropped panel; that is the panel. It’s bad enough that Fatality’s in a brokeback pose on the cover, but this is far worse. The preceding panel has her talking to Munk, and in this one, the viewpoint shifts down just so the reader can check out her massive rack. Even Munk looks ashamed at this embarrassment.

Other than this blatant pandering, Tyler Kirkham’s artwork carried this issue quite well. The battle sequences with Invictus were larger than life, and Kyle’s attempt to stop the archangel with a titanic construct (get it?) looked great. I wish he had a chance to draw more character development instead of explosions, fistfights, and constructs, as Kirkham really is an underrated artist, but that may have to wait for another story arc.