Green Lantern #47 Review and *SPOILERS*

Home Is Where The Heartache Is

Written By: Robert Venditti
Art By: Martin Coccolo, Billy Tan, Mark Irwin, Tony Avina, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: December 2, 2015

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Now that planets....... and any given thing that happened to be chilling in space with the misfortune of coming into contact with Source Wall dandruff have stopped turning to stone, Hal has decided that the Green Lantern Corps can suck it because he's not going to do all he can in order to find out what happened to his friends, he's going home and that's that.  Well, maybe it's not that dramatic, but with the Corps missing, I would think that he'd be more interested in finding out why than visiting his hometown.  That's just me though and what the hell do I know?  Yeah, some things have happened since the last time we tiptoed through the pages of Green Lantern and that's the fact that we found out Hal was really the one responsible for stranding the Corps in the Universe that existed before our own, when he closed the fissure in the Source Wall...... Yeah, that's a dick move and I hope John Stewart socks Hal one when the Corps eventually makes it back to their Universe.  So yeah, Source Wall fixed, Black Hand out of our hair for awhile, why not take a trip home?  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Hal tying up some loose ends like Trapper and Virgo.  That's right, since they haven't had anything to do for a whole bunch of issues, no need keeping them around and continuing to have nothing to do, so Hal's sending them away while he's on Earth.  To keep Trapper in check while he's away, Hal gives Virgo the dead man switch bracelet........ you know, so Virgo won't wake up in the middle of the night with an axe in his face or anything.  With that, Hal says his goodbyes and flies down to Earth to go meet up with his brother Jim, but what he didn't count on was his brother having an alarm on his apartment and the cops coming......... The whole "show me your hands" thing doesn't really play too well when your rocking a green glowing gauntlet.  

Luckily though, Jim shows up and clears the whole situation up, but then Hal begins acting dopey....... at least in my mind.  Even though we've been dealing with the disappearance of the entire Green Lantern Corps, Hal asks Jim if Simon Baz has been coming around like he promised he would....... and of course he hasn't because the Corps have disappeared!  Corps Shmore though because none of that matters when Jim can't stop staring at Hal's current hair style and the brothers have some bonding time by cutting Hal's hair and Jim talking about how he doesn't want his son to emulate his uncle's hippy look.  

Once the haircut is complete, Jim calls his wife and has her and their two kids meet Hal and him at the Coast City Amusement Park for a little family fun.  I can't say that any of this felt forced, but for some reason, whenever Hal and Jim interacted, it seemed weird and the conversations just didn't feel right.  While I pondered why these two felt so odd whenever they were together, we see a Modoran dressed as a delivery person leave some boxes that were supposed to be parts to repair the ferris wheel, but once we see these boxes start absorbing the noises around it more and more........ I had to start wondering if they were repair parts at all.  That's right, Modora is making itself heard through terrorism and these boxes explode once they collected enough sound.  While that's completely terrible, it's even worse for our hero when he tries to keep the wheel from falling, but because of his concentration on the falling ride, he misses catching the car containing his niece and nephew and from all the screaming that Sue Jordan began doing, I'm guessing her little boy Howard isn't doing so well from the fall.

In the end, we move away from Hal, who in my mind is having a goddamn breakdown because in his actions to try and protect his family by coming back to Earth, he just placed them in danger and we move out to space, where two Sinestro Corps members just got the shit murdered out of them by a green light.  As our issue closes, we see that the culprit is none other than Parallax, who I guess after Convergence decided to pay this Universe a visit and isn't too happy about Sinestro having followers.

That's it for this issue of Green Lantern and while I loved the ending to this book, including the very emotional scene of Hal and what happened to his nephew and the development that Parallax is in this Universe, the rest of this issue really didn't do much for me.  We immediately get rid of Trapper, Virgo and Darlene because as we've come to realize through issue after issue of them having nothing to do....... they just aren't interesting characters and when we get down to Earth, Hal's Renegade hair is immediately cut off and it feels like we never really saw him rock this new image or persona in a satisfying way.  Hell, the GL Corps were gone from the get go and besides for the initial talk about Hal being an outlaw, we never got to see it and he's almost back to classic Hal at this point with nothing to show for it.  The art in this book was great all the way through though and the ending, the parts that I've already stated were my favorites, somehow upped the game and really became something spectacular to look at.  Hopefully this series picks up a we move forward because even though I've been holding out some kind of hope that Renegade Green Lantern would be something new and interesting for the character, right now it's just been lackluster, while altering events that had been previously set up........... Yeah, I'm never letting go of that big ass monster ripping it's way out of the Source Wall at the end of Godhead.

Bits and Pieces:

While there are some really strong things to see in this story, the majority of the issue just left me wanting more.  Strange dialog and getting Hal back to a more classic feel seems to be the name of the game here and it's kind of disappointing because of how much I was looking forward to Hal's space Renegade persona.  Great art throughout this book though, that only gets stronger as the story progresses.  

6/10