Turn back the clock nine years ago, you walk into a comic
shop and see an issue with a pretty simple title, Green Lantern: Rebirth. A story that brings Hal Jordan back to life
and takes center stage again for the Green Lantern mythos, the writer of this
Book Geoff Johns has taken his first steps to revamping not only the character
of Hal Jordan but everything we knew about Green Lantern. Now with the latest
issue out, it comes to a close an end, not with a whimper but a bang.
John pulls few punches as this issue not only wraps up his
run on the series but also on the Story-line “Wrath of the First Lantern”, a long story arc that brought all of the
Lantern books facing off with a reality changing villain. It showed some highs
and lows as the story progressed but ended hitting every beat a conclusion like
this should. This brought in a lot of the elements that Johns has added over
the years, the different Crops adding on, Nekkron of Blackest Night appearing
as well as the entity Parallax which was the first item Johns added to the
Green Lantern books which is safe to say a perfect note to end on.
The issue in of itself wasn't a perfect issue sadly; the
story did seem to move at a break neck pace with one event happening right
after the other leaving some holes that really needed to be filled. Some could
say that mirrors the last few stories of Green Lantern and if you title your
head it works in a almost madding way. In a way that your mind trying to point
out some of the flaws but once you finish the book you can’t help feel like you
have enjoy yourself in some way. It also goes on to say that this isn't really
an end, characters are set to go on different ventures throughout the galaxy.
This is only a chapter in the stories of them and it left with more excitement to
see where they might lead.
The one small down sided to it though may be that while certain items were removed from the book, some things were added back in which feel like trying to re-shift the book backwards instead of forwards. While I feel this time was something that was the right thing to do, it does seem to retread ground we have seen once before and limits possible futures.
The Art Team on this was just amazing, and I do mean TEAM, yes Doug Manke has been the main penciller here, he is added by Christian
Alamy, Keith Champagne, Mac Deering, Mark Irwun, Wade Von Grawbader, Tom
Nguyen, Not to metion Patrick Gleason, Cully Hamner, Arron Kuder, Jerry Ordway,
and Ivan Reis. On I am not done yet as there was also Ethan Van Sciver, Alec
Sinclair, And Tony Avina.
Not done just yet as we continue with the Colorist Alex
Sinclair and Tony Avina, and last by very not the least Dave Sharpe as the
letter for the issue. It might seem like a long way to pad out a review to add
every single name that seemed to work on the book, but they all deserved it and
deserve to be mentioned and not passed over as, the artist and left at that. If
I could add applause to a column I would.
In the end this was a enjoyable end to a long running work
Geoff Johns has been working on, going out with a bang has never been so appropriate
here. Here is hoping for the same for those talented people coming on the books now.
OVERALL: 9.0 out of 10
Bryan "BAC" Clendening Writes for Broken Infinite, follow him on Twitter @BAClend
