Written By: Robert VendittiArt By: Ethan Van Sciver, Alex Sinclair
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: August 5, 2015
The Source of The Problem
*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
It's time for Hal to find out what happened to Virgo's people because as we saw in the last issue of Green Lantern, after Hal rescued the royalty and brought him home, there wasn't much of a home to go back to. Virgo's home had been turned to stone and after a space pebble touched the ships of the crew that was responsible for Virgo's original kidnapping, it looks like Trapper, the kidnapper himself doesn't have much to go back to either. So together with Hal, these three will search out the mysteries behind this Medusa effect and hopefully along the way, they'll also find out what happened to the Green Lantern Corps as well. Let's get back into this story and see how this motley crew are getting along as they play The Hardy Boys in space. Let's check it out.
Explain It!:
Our issue begins with Hal and Virgo sharing a moment while looking out into the vastness of space. Virgo has lost his home and everything he knows and Hal has lost his beloved Corps that he left to become this Renegade that we know him to be now so they could save face by simply villifying Jordan as the cause of all the terrible things that the Green Lantern Corps were accused of........ That's love right there. Even though this feels like it's supposed to be a touching moment, neither really feel believable in their grief and even if Virgo did, I don't really know him well enough for this moment to have a real impact on me and Hal's is probably due to him not wanting to be a dick and pine over losing the Corps when Virgo has nothing left in the Universe. After the two cry on each other's shoulders, we see that Hal has been working on a custom space suit, as a way to go unnoticed. Why would Hal have to be unnoticed in space? Why because he's parked out in front of the Source Wall and Relic is out there collecting data. I guess Hal would prefer if Relic didn't realize who he was talking to........ You know, since Relic has a grudge against all Lanterns for destroying the Universe with their ring slinging.
Once Hal approaches Relic and the two get to talking about things, we find out that the Source Wall has a giant hole in it and ultimately this whole section where we're supposed to find out what's going on a bit, comes off a little unrewarding. If you read the ending to GODHEAD, you already know that some terrible monster forced it's way out of the wall and you probably already figured out that the pieces of the Source Wall are the things that are causing the transformations of planets into stone. So since we already know all of this, the only piece of info that can really be gained here is the theory that whatever broke out of the wall is purposely turning things to stone with the Source pieces...... You know, all malicious like. That's a theory that never occurred to me. Too bad that the rest of this interaction is spent with Relic thinking that Black Hand is behind it because he saw him leave the area after he was freed from the Wall himself, but since we know that Black Hand is roaming the galaxy, crying about how he can't bring things back from the dead anymore, only turn them to stone, we know that Relic's theory is nonsense. All the niceties between our hero and Relic turn to shit though when Virgo, thinking that Hal might need backup, decides to put on Krona's Gauntlet and sends out a surge of green emotional energy, alerting Relic to the ruse and Virgo knocking himself out in the process.
In the end, Hal has to get back to the ship quickly, put on the Gauntlet and try to fight off Relic's drones as his ship "Darlene" reboots her systems so they can get away. There really isn't much to be excited over with this part, just shields and constructs shot out to try and defend against the light draining drones, as Darlene harps to Hal about being treated better. I really love the idea of Darlene and Hal butting heads and the humorous dialog that would come from that, but this feels really forced and comes at an odd time. Eventually Darlene boots back up and our heroes escape Relic. As our issue closes, we see that Hal has a new problem in the form of something called the Gray Agents, who are tracking him down and it appears that when they eventually find him, Hal isn't going to be happy about it.
That's it for this issue of Green Lantern and even though I originally praised the change in character of Hal Jordan, after a couple of issues in, I'm not that impressed anymore. While I still think that it's a cool concept and a awesome way to keep the character fresh, these past two issues have been really slow and not much has happened. Even Hal's new companions aren't that interesting and that's a shame since it looks like we're going to be spending a lot of time with them. There are so many aspects to our current story with planets being turned to stone, the Green Lantern Corps disappearing, Black Hand being a sad sack and even Krona's Gauntlet forcing it's will upon Hal and right now we're only taking baby steps towards the planets turning to stone story, with a sprinkle of Black Hand thrown in and I find myself getting a little bored. As for the art, I normally love Ethan Van Sciver and get excited whenever I see his name on a book, but for whatever reason, I couldn't really get behind the artwork on this book. I don't know if it's his inking or the colors not being as vibrant as I like, but I know Van Sciver's art usually looks a lot better than what we saw in this issue and it makes me a little sad. Now don't get me wrong here, the art is still really good, it's just not as good as I'm used to seeing from the artist....... and maybe it's just me. Who knows? Hopefully in the next issue the story picks up and I can get on board with the art because I really hate not liking an issue.
Bits and Pieces:
While I love the new concept for this book, it seems that all we've gotten since it started is setup and that continues here. I loved the inclusion of Relic in this book, but ultimately it did little for the story besides affirming our suspicions about what's going on, even though it was already pretty obvious to anyone who's been reading the title regularly. The art, while awesome at times just wasn't as strong as I would have liked and I only hope that the next issue begins picking up the pace because as of right now, not much has been going on in Green Lantern.
6/10
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