Green Lantern #46 Review and *SPOILERS*

Back To The Source

Written By: Robert Venditti
Art By: Billy Tan, Mark Irwin, Alex Sinclair, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: November 4, 2015

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's time to finish up this "planets turning to stone" story, but it's weird because it seems like it just began....... yeah, we've had a bunch of issues so far, but it wasn't until Hal went after Black Hand in the previous issue that it felt like it finally had a direction.  We've been dealing with body modification loving Thanagarians, the Green Lantern Corps missing and this whole planet stoning thing and I guess even though it hasn't felt really all together, it's been a single road leading to this.  In the last issue we had Hal Jordan go after Black Hand, who apparently is responsible for all the Medusa-ing in the Universe, even though it feels a little out of place for everything that we've seen and after beating him to...... well, just beating him I guess, it looked like Hal was planning on putting him down for good...... however one might go about doing that.  Let's jump into this issue and see how all of this plays out.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with a convergence at the Source Wall, where our final act will take place.  Trapper, Virgo and Darlene blasting off to meet Hal and Hal transporting a knocked out Black Hand to Relic, who's still studying the Source Wall and the fissure in it's face that has him worried about the ongoing existence of the Universe.  Personally, I don't know what a crack in the Source Wall would do, I just know that it's probably a bad thing and after Hal explains to Relic about Black Hand absorbing some of it, when he touched it in Godhead and the planets that have been destroyed since, Relic decides that Hal and him have got bigger problems on their hands than how they feel about one another.  Especially after Black Hand wakes up and doesn't appreciate being kidnapped.  

After a few pages of Hal Jordan and Relic dodging stone debris coming off of Black Hand and acting like he has cooties, the fight is finished when Trapper, Virgo and Darlene finally make it to their destination and shoot a big ass grappling hook at Black Hand, knocking him into the Source Wall.  It's weird though because Relic believes that all the missing pieces of the Source Wall would....... instinctively?..... Is that the word I want?  Well, he believes that they would all be drawn back to their source and even though Black Hand looks like he was slammed right into the wall, he somehow prevents himself from being absorbed......... but only for a minute.  

It's just kind of odd how all this plays out, but eventually Black Hand gets sucked into the Wall and the threat of planets being turned to stone is over........ and apparently all the planets affected will eventually make their way back to the wall as well....... which just seems dangerous.  The funniest part of this whole book though comes when Relic watches Black Hand get absorbed and begins monologuing about how he won't allow Jordan to keep using the light of the Universe, only for him to finally look over and Hal, his ship and his crew have already vamoosed.  I guess Relic isn't used to being Batman-ed.

In the end, I begin screaming at Virgo for being completely useless because now that his planet has been avenged, he's just happy that he was there to help and right from the get go all Virgo has done is get in the way, but nonetheless Hal still keeps him and Trapper aboard as he heads home to Earth to check on something.  It's a good thing he's heading home too because some radicals from the former Sovereign Nation of Modora plan on making their voices heard by doing some terrorist like shit over at Coast City. 

That's it for this issue of Green Lantern and after having all these issues that didn't really feel like they knew what they wanted to be or where they wanted to take our hero, the ending to this story feels really lackluster for everything that Hal Jordan has done leading up to this.  Hell, Black Hand didn't even put up that much of a fight and we didn't see anything that has to do with the big ass monster that tore it's way out of the Source Wall at the end of Godhead....... that seemed to make the fissure that Relic was so concerned about and it feels like that is just going to be swept under the rug in order to move on to something else.  I could be wrong, but having Black Hand absorbed and everything being fine and dandy out of nowhere without understanding how Black Hand got the Source Wall's power in the first place seems like a bit of a cop out.  Hell, even having Trapper and Virgo in this book feels like a mistake for how little they actually have to do.  As for the art...........well, that's a bit of a mixed bag actually.  When the issue begins and Hal first comes up to Relic, it's some of the best art that I've seen from this series, but the further the story goes...... or I guess, once we don't have a giant of a character anymore, the art begins to wane and it doesn't resemble any of the awesomeness that we got used to during the beginning of the book.  It's a rough start to Renegade, but hopefully now that the first leg is over and we can move on to new territory, it will finally find it's footing and show us what a Renegade Hal Jordan can really do.

Bits and Pieces:

After waiting so long for this story to finally know what it wanted to be, I have to say that this finale to the "planets turning to stone" story feels really lackluster and doesn't do anything to answer any of the questions that we've had since Godhead.  It just kind of feels like this is a quick sweep the dirt under the rug type situation, where you hope that nobody asks too many questions and that's really disappointing because we really haven't seen anything that worthwhile from this new status quo to Hal Jordan.  The art is a mixed bag as well, but the strong seriously outweighs the bad here and there are some really strong pages to look at.  Hopefully, with this story concluded, we'll be able to get into something new, where we'll finally get to see this version of Hal Jordan shine.

5.5/10