Green lantern corps10/7/2023 ![]() My gripes about Tomasi's New 52 Corps have to do with the level of violence in the book, and the seeming lack of any good examination of the violence within the story. Tomasi trumps the end of Geoff Johns's first Green Lantern series, in which a frustrated Hal Jordan returns to Earth stripped of his ring Gardner suffers the same fate, but the final page with Garnder crying against the self-same motorcycle from the Zero Month issue is considerably more heartbreaking, and ties the present issues superbly with the one set in the past. Gardner's attitude, his dedication to heroism, and even his odd costume all make sense now.įurther, the argument Tomasi depicts between Gardner and his father is pure brilliance I tell you, nine out of ten writers would simply have had two talking heads yelling at one another, and it's a rare mind like Tomasi's that would have Gardner take his father's cane and start smashing photos on the wall as they argued.Īnd what's more is how Tomasi allows the Zero Month issue to function on its own, but it also leads in to the two "Rise of the Third Army" issues. Gone are Gardner's previous beginnings, which have become confused with time (something about an abusive parent, a brother in a coma, and a super-soldier-type program, maybe) now Gardner's origin is more mundane but relatable, the black sheep son in a family full of law enforcement. There's a great mix here - of Gardner's pride, of the rightful yet tragic promotion - that demonstrates Tomasi's clear understanding of the character.Įven better is Tomasi's Zero Month issue (perhaps the best Zero Month issue I've read so far), in which he provides a new origin for Gardner. Here, the Guardians finally give Gardner his deserved recognition, promoting him to Lantern Sentinel, and Gardner in his hubris accepts - never suspecting that the promotion is a Guardian ploy to bring about Gardner's downfall. Gardner is an accomplished Lantern, worthy of praise, though his brash attitude has often put him at odds with the Guardians. ![]() ![]() Though this does cause some repetitious overlap between the two stories, Tomasi's Guardians are so underhanded, and the moral quandaries to which they subject the heroes so engaging, that the reader will hardly mind the book's extended encore.Īlpha War offers a fine, though at the same time unfortunate, comeuppance for Guy Gardner. In both stories Tomasi crafts a wonderfully intricate plot in which the characters believe they act of their own volition, but are instead manipulated by the Guardians. In "Alpha War," the Guardians' target is their in-Corps police force the Alpha Lanterns (with Gardner and Lantern John Stewart as their pawns) in the first two chapters of "Rise of the Third Army," the target is Gardner himself. This is stellar stuff.įollowing events in a variety of Green Lantern titles (including some pre-New 52), Alpha War's two stories each turn significantly on the Guardian's manipulation of the Corps toward trying to get the Corps to crumble from within. Tomasi has always written a good Guy Gardner, but in the two adventures collected here Tomasi's Gardner crackles on the page, not to mention Tomasi's pretty fantastic new origin for Gardner and how Tomasi ties that origin to the present action. 2: Alpha War is just plain great, in the spirit of some of Tomasi's successful Corps stories past. Though I continue to have concerns about the direction of the Green Lantern Corps title, I'm inclined to shut up about them, at least for a paragraph or two.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |