Caught Him, Black Handed
Written By: Robert Venditti
Art By: Billy Tan, Mark Irwin, Alex Sinclair, Dave SharpeCover Price: $3.99
Release Date: October 7, 2015
*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
Alright boys and girls, are you ready to finally get started on an actual story with this Renegade thing? Yeah, that might sound like a dick thing to say, but we've had a bunch of issues and an Annual already and this thing has gone absolutely nowhere. We've got the Green Lanterns vanishing, planets turning to stone and Gray Agents out and about looking for our boy Hal.......... and all our hero has done is fly around in his back talking ship and talk to a few folks. It's just not what I thought this story would be, but hopefully here we gain some momentum and kick this thing off right. Alright, no more stalling, let's get to this thing.
Explain It!:
Our issue begins with Hal Jordan just boring the hell out of his new crew, Trapper and Virgo because instead of doing anything interesting, he's just watching Darlene's monitor as the ship computes the path of "stoning". I guess it's not Hal's fault that he's boring everyone, he does need to know what planets have been turned to stone and after Darlene's done with her data, Hal sees that the path is leading right towards........ well, he doesn't say, but he does go after Black Hand, who says that he's going to Earth so I think it's safe to say that Hal's sudden "I have to do this alone and now" speech to Virgo and Trapper was prompted by him thinking of his home becoming a glorified parking lot.
So Hal uses Darlene's computations to determine where Black Hand will be and the two begin throwing down. It didn't have to be this way though, initially Black Hand was all child-like and dazed from going world to world and not being able to raise the dead...... you know, like he likes to do, but instead turning whole planets to stone. Yeah, he's gone a bit crazy and when Hal originally tells him that the two of them have to go to the Source Wall and see if the power can be put back where it belongs, Black Hand simply doesn't go because he's not supposed to go places with strangers.
Now, I know that Black Hand isn't all there and seemed kind of adamant that he wasn't going anywhere with Hal because he didn't recognize him...... but I think with a little more "I got some candy" kind of luring, he could have got Black Hand on the stranger trolley, but instead Hal takes down his hood and tells Hand who he is....... which, as you can imagine, doesn't go very well.
In the end, Black Hand tries to lay his hands on Hal, so that our hero will turn to stone and Hand will have himself a cool trophy to lug around with him on his way back to Earth, but after pleading and trying to tell Black Hand that he can't go to Earth, Hal finally looses it and knocks Hand out. As our issue closes it looks like Hal is finally done playing with Black Hand when he says that it's time that he buried him for good.
That's it for this issue of Green Lantern and while I'm happy as hell that this issue finally began our overall story, I'm not sure that I'm buying it. Here we find out that Black Hand is the culprit behind all the planets turning to stone, but in previous issues we saw that small pebbles were hitting planets and going all Medusa on them and that made sense since at the end of GODHEAD we saw a giant monster come tearing it's way out of the Source Wall and at least in my mind, that would cause a lot of momentum for rubble to go flying and eventually hit planets in it's way........ and since we saw a pebble cause the ships of Trapper's friends to turn to stone, that still might be the case. It's just weird that this whole issue seems to spell out that Black Hand is the villain and through all of Darlene's computations, all she found were planets affected by Black Hand. It just doesn't jive with me here, but maybe down the line this concept will be explored further. Really though, as much as I like this issue for moving forward with a story, it was just a fight scene and as much as I normally like Billy Tan's art, here I wasn't much of a fan....... or maybe it was just the way that Black Hand was presented because I really didn't dig what he looked like at all.
Bits and Pieces:
Our story finally gets legs and starts moving here, but because of elements of the plot that seem to contradict things that we've seen in past issues, I found myself liking the concept of this story more than the issue itself. If you're looking for a straight up street fight between Hal Jordan and Black Hand though, this might be the issue for you.
So Hal uses Darlene's computations to determine where Black Hand will be and the two begin throwing down. It didn't have to be this way though, initially Black Hand was all child-like and dazed from going world to world and not being able to raise the dead...... you know, like he likes to do, but instead turning whole planets to stone. Yeah, he's gone a bit crazy and when Hal originally tells him that the two of them have to go to the Source Wall and see if the power can be put back where it belongs, Black Hand simply doesn't go because he's not supposed to go places with strangers.
Now, I know that Black Hand isn't all there and seemed kind of adamant that he wasn't going anywhere with Hal because he didn't recognize him...... but I think with a little more "I got some candy" kind of luring, he could have got Black Hand on the stranger trolley, but instead Hal takes down his hood and tells Hand who he is....... which, as you can imagine, doesn't go very well.
In the end, Black Hand tries to lay his hands on Hal, so that our hero will turn to stone and Hand will have himself a cool trophy to lug around with him on his way back to Earth, but after pleading and trying to tell Black Hand that he can't go to Earth, Hal finally looses it and knocks Hand out. As our issue closes it looks like Hal is finally done playing with Black Hand when he says that it's time that he buried him for good.
That's it for this issue of Green Lantern and while I'm happy as hell that this issue finally began our overall story, I'm not sure that I'm buying it. Here we find out that Black Hand is the culprit behind all the planets turning to stone, but in previous issues we saw that small pebbles were hitting planets and going all Medusa on them and that made sense since at the end of GODHEAD we saw a giant monster come tearing it's way out of the Source Wall and at least in my mind, that would cause a lot of momentum for rubble to go flying and eventually hit planets in it's way........ and since we saw a pebble cause the ships of Trapper's friends to turn to stone, that still might be the case. It's just weird that this whole issue seems to spell out that Black Hand is the villain and through all of Darlene's computations, all she found were planets affected by Black Hand. It just doesn't jive with me here, but maybe down the line this concept will be explored further. Really though, as much as I like this issue for moving forward with a story, it was just a fight scene and as much as I normally like Billy Tan's art, here I wasn't much of a fan....... or maybe it was just the way that Black Hand was presented because I really didn't dig what he looked like at all.
Bits and Pieces:
Our story finally gets legs and starts moving here, but because of elements of the plot that seem to contradict things that we've seen in past issues, I found myself liking the concept of this story more than the issue itself. If you're looking for a straight up street fight between Hal Jordan and Black Hand though, this might be the issue for you.
5.5/10
You perfectly summed this issue up, if you want a Hal versus Blackhand fight then you will love this issue. Gotta admit that the fight was very cool with the stoning infecting Hal's constructs. The construct foot pads were cool too, it never occurred to me that Hal can't even walk on the planet.
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