Green Lantern #49 Review and *SPOILERS*

Prattling On

Written By: Robert Venditti

Art By: Martin Coccolo, Billy Tan, Mark Irwin, Tony Avina, Dave Sharpe

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: February 3, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Green Lantern's been a bit rough lately, what with the Renegade story not really going anywhere besides for completely overlooking the end of Godhead and blaming all those Medusa-ed planets on Black Hand alone.  Yeah, not much going on in space and with the Green Lantern Corps gone, not much of a reason to really be a Renegade either.  With all that it made perfect sense to put Hal back on Earth to see what adventures he could get into with Krona's Gauntlet........ and I was all for it and couldn't wait, but the adventures he's gotten into are all about a terrorist cell setting a bomb off in his hometown and demanding to be a sovereign nation, while Hal looses himself in his emotions about his nephew getting hurt in the attack.  While all of that might sound kind of cool, it's been pretty boring and the only thing I'm really looking forward to is Zero Hour Parallax showing up and killing Hal............ because I guess that's what a Parallax from Zero Hour does.  Hopefully all the things I just talked about are made impressive here and I can quit my bitching and can just get back to having fun with Green Lantern.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Hal watching television after his attack on the Modoran training camp on the outskirts of Kahndaq in the previous issue........... and really, all we're doing here is getting people caught up on the story about how a video of Sonar came out after the attack on Coast City, saying that if the United Nations didn't get together and give Modora it's sovereign nation status, more attacks would happen.  The thing that really gets us into our story is when the news reports on the training camp attack and says whoever did it probably made the situation worse since Sonar wasn't one of the casualties.  This of course sets Hal off and Krona's Gauntlet goes crazy with his emotions, tearing apart the place............ the biggest problem here though....... it's Hal's brother Jim's place and of course he comes walking in right after the temper tantrum and gives Hal and ear full.  This all leads to the brothers talking about how everything will be alright, just so long as the United Nations does something other than simply talk about what they're going to do and as soon as Jim says "talk", a light bulb goes off in Hal's head and he knows that an attack is eminent.

Now I know that shit is about to get real and all the dignitaries of the United Nations are a few speech translations away from getting their heads blown up from Sonar's bombs implanted in their headsets, but Hal really comes off as a crazed bad guy in this issue because he flies to the United Nations building in New York and proceeds to beat the shit out of all the guards that are trying to stop him......... and some, I'd say he even put in the hospital with the wild construct attacks he was throwing around.  Eventually though, I guess he took down all the guards trying to stop him and Hal went in and saved everyone by first telling everyone to shut up and then taking all their headsets into a construct ball and letting them explode.  Now this is the action of the book and while you could say that Hal fought a bunch of dudes and saved the day, it just came off as really lackluster and boring.

So yeah, in the end, Hal played hero and saved the day, making a personal enemy out of Sonar now that he ruined his plans and we end this book by going out into Earth's orbit to see Parallax talking about how he senses all the fear of the world and all the fear in Hal Jordan........ which I'll give him because Hal has been pretty fearful since his nephew got all coma-ed up, but because of the fear that Parallax senses, he determines that he has to kill Hal so that he'll never blow up Coast City....... like he did........ kind of like the pot calling the kettle black, huh Parallax?  Anyway, that's the issue and if Hal saving the U.N. wasn't happy enough for you, Hal's nephew Howard also came out of a coma.  

That's it for this issue of Green Lantern and I have to say that for all my whining over the past two years about me wanting Hal to come back to Earth.......... Maybe, I want him to go back to space because his time on Earth is boring as hell.  There's no real development in what's going on except that there are a bunch of radicals blowing shit up and demanding things and Hal's left just sitting around and waiting for shit to go down because as he puts it "he's used to just going out and punching things".  Hell, you'd think in the downtime that we've got that we could at least explore what Krona's Gauntlet is doing to our hero, but all there seems to be is Hal admitting that he's a little off lately and can't always control what he's doing.  I'd much rather see some development in that area than Hal coming to Earth and constantly doing something to fuck his brother's day up.  Hell, we really haven't even seen our villain do anything since his whole schtick is bombs and like in this issue they're already set up and he's just watching TV, waiting for them to go off............ This book just isn't fun anymore is what I'm really trying to get at here, but thankfully we have some really terrific looking art to keep us some what satisfied in picking this series up month after month.  Is it sad that the only thing I'm looking forward to is Parallax killing our hero so at least something exciting happens?

Bits and Pieces:

The bombing antics of our villain Sonar continue in this issue, but this story arc is just falling flat in the excitement factor because Hal is simply waiting for things to go down the whole time and his reactionary stance just leads me to yawn my way through these issues.  I begged for so long to get Hal back on Earth, but after reading these last couple of issues, I have to say that I want his ass back in space because at least there he was interesting.......... not just ruining his brother's day over and over again. At least the art was fantastic in this issue and thankfully that's something I can count on month after month.

5/10