Green Lantern #48 Review and *SPOILERS*

Noise Pollution

Written By: Robert Venditti
Art By: Martin Coccolo, Billy Tan, Mark Irwin, Tony Avina, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: January 6, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

We're back on Earth and after seeing Hal Jordan get a hair cut in the previous issue, I think it's safe to say that we can move past that whole Renegade thing because while it didn't seem to go anywhere before, we all know that you can't be a bad ass Renegade with short hair........ You just can't.  So yeah, Hal's back on Earth and after spending a day with his brother and his family, tragedy struck when a group of Modoran radicals targeted the Coast City Amusement Park and Hal's nephew Howard was injured in the attack.  If that wasn't enough emotion for you, then we also had Parallax from Zero Hour show up in this Universe and he wasn't too happy to find out that Sinestro has a Corps all his own.  While I wasn't a huge fan of Convergence, I have to say that it's posthumously making our current stories pretty interesting.  Let's jump into this issue of Green Lantern and see if Hal Jordan can keep his cool while going after Sonar and his radical army and what Parallax is going to do in a whole new, whole different Universe than his own.  Let's check it out.



Explain It!:

Our issue begins with the friends and family of the victims of Sonar's attack at the hospital waiting to hear if everyone's alright and sadly, it looks like Hal Jordan's nephew Howard might be one of the ones more worse for wear because he's in a coma and the doctors have no idea when he might wake up.  After the news broadcasts a video of Sonar demanding that the United Nations call a special session to grant Modora the right to be a sovereign nation and the threat that if they don't Sonar and his Modora Separatist Army will continue their terrorist attacks...... well, Hal's got a name and a face to the person who hurt his family and is raring to go after the son of bitch...... but he still only has a name and face and he needs a little more to go on so he goes to Gotham to get more info from his good buddy Batman........ only problem is, Batman's gone and all that's left is a robot suited Jim Gordon.  It seems weird to send Hal Jordan to Gotham, but I have to admit that I love the interactions between Jim Gordon and Hal and for the first time in a long time Hal begins feeling like Green Lantern again.  It's the simple things like Hal being all snarky like he would to the actual Batman that gave me a lot of joy right away in this book.  After explaining himself to Jim Gordon, Gordon decides to share what info he has on Sonar with Hal and our hero finds out that the villain has a training camp on the outskirts of Kahndaq........ and that's the last we see of Batman or Gotham.  It's funny to me that we get that awesome cover from this brief exchange, but I get it.  Batman equals money so why wouldn't they put him on the cover?  Yeah, it's brief, but it's enjoyable as hell.

In Kahndaq, we see that Sonar's army are some serious assholes when Hal shows up and does some persuading to get them to give up Sonar by having construct machine guns pointing at them and all they do is activate their noise bombs that blow up their heads.

That's some fucking dedication right there and the cool part about this section is that we get this recurring theme that this attack has actually made Hal afraid and that's a big deal for the greatest Green Lantern, who's sole reason in being recruited into the Corps is the fact that he's able to overcome fear.  Hal's been out in space for so long at this point that it almost comes off that he's so disconnected from how the world works that he has no idea how to even go after this threat and it's a cool turn for the character, especially since he's personally affected by Sonar with the injuries to his nephew.

In the end, we head back off into space, where we see Parallax go to where Oa once was and how distraught he seems from the planet's demise.  Of course though it's Parallax so immediately he tries to recreate the planet, but I guess he's learned a bit over the time and decides that he can't remake everything and also, he's the one who destroyed the Corps in his own timeline so who's he to complain about shit going down in another Universe than he's used to?  One thing he knows for certain though is that Coast City still exists in this Universe and for some reason Parallax believes that this means he has to kill Hal Jordan......... yeah, that's some shit right there.

That's it for this issue of Green Lantern and I want to say that when we were originally presented with this whole Green Lantern Renegade story, I was really excited to get something new from the character, but it never really seemed to go anywhere and that whole Renegade bit just seemed to be evident in the first issue and then immediately fizzled out.  Now though, we have Hal back on Earth and for the first time in a long time, I started seeing some of the Hal we all know and love in this issue before everything that was thrown on his shoulders since the Guardians went all evil.  You might disagree because of the fear he was showing in this issue, but our hero is faced with a huge task that he's uncertain about how to undertake, but he's still the sarcastic hero who will shove that fear aside to make sure things get done.......... and also he's back on Earth and that's something that I've missed seeing in Green Lantern for awhile.  All I'm saying is that the character just felt right in this issue and even though he didn't have a lot to do, it was certainly a step in the right direction.  As for the art, I'm a huge fan of Billy Tan, but I found myself really enjoying the majority of the book done by Martin Coccolo and I'm not sure who we'll have regularly on the book in the future because that would mean research and that sounds terrible, but either way, both Billy and Martin make this book look great.

Bits and Pieces:

Hal Jordan's on the warpath in this issue, looking for the villain who hurt his nephew and even though we don't get any super villain action really going on here, I found this book really enjoyable for the sheer fact that Hal Jordan actually feels like Hal Jordan did before the weight of the Universe crashed down on his shoulders when the Guardians went all immortal crazy.  The art was fantastic and the direction this story is taking, while kind of slow right now, really gets me excited for what's to come.

8/10