Green Lantern #51 Review and *SPOILERS*

Watching TV On The Back of A Frog's Head

Written By: Robert Venditti
Art By: Rafa Sandoval, Jordi Tarragona, Tony Avina, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: April 6, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

For our fiftieth issue of Green Lantern we saw Hal vs. Hal. Renegade Vs. Parallax, but ultimately it was just a big slug fest that went nowhere because even though Parallax should have been able to beat Hal while drinking a cup of tea with his pinky up.......... because he's classy like that, for some reason Krona's Gauntlet turned Hal into a construct himself and for whatever reason this scared the hell out of Parallax, who flew away, claiming that he needed more power......... Which we saw him do in the final issue of Telos, but who knows what was going on with that issue.  So with Parallax gone, I guess that means that it's time to get back to our normal story where Hal takes on the terrorist calling himself Sonar.......... What?........ What's That?....... Oh, never mind.  For whatever reason that story is put on hold so we can go back to space and leave the Earth in danger of sound bombs because Virgo and Trapper are in danger.  Let's jump into this issue and see what the Gray Agents have to offer us.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!

So our issue begins with Hal Jordan being a construct of his former self......... that's a saying right?  Well, whether it is or not, Hal Jordan is a goddamn construct and for whatever reason that means that he's become Harrison Ford in Regarding Henry, which is a strange ass reference, but what I'm getting at is that he's apparently lost his memory and doesn't know shit from shit.  It really seemed that way at least before his brother Jim ran down the history of Hal Jordan, filling up page space and catching up anyone who isn't familiar with the character, but by the end of the story about the man who overcame fear, Hal started getting his Olivia Newton-John on and was getting physical.  It seems that Jim Jordan is the only smart person in this book because he begs Hal to take off Krona's Gauntlet because turning into a construct is not a side-effect that one should deal with, but Hal says that he needs to out of nowhere find the Green Lantern Corps........... which for some reason he runs down a couple to his brother like Salaak, Kilowog and for some reason even mentions the Guardians........... do you want to tell him or should I?  So Hal says his goodbyes and flies off back into space, leaving Sonar to continue his bombings.  That's some good hero-ing Hal. 

Maybe Hal has the right idea though because we jump to Trapper and Virgo in space, flying away from a attacking force, but it's no use because these Gray Agents chasing them have some sort of teleportation technology and beam themselves on the ship............... where we see that Virgo is actually a bad ass!  That's right the rich boy from royalty kicks the shit out of everyone until Trapper screws it up by getting his head pounded by a frog man with a TV on the back of his head, who uses the former kidnapper as a distraction to Virgo so another Gray Agent could knock him out from behind.  In case you all forgot since it's been a minute since we've seen these Gray Agents have any real panel play, these characters are just like Sinestro in that they want to take over the policing of the Universe in the Green Lantern Corps' absence and to do that they believe that they need to show a strong hand right away by taking down the Renegade Hal Jordan.  Too bad he wasn't on board though and it looks like it's time to interrogate Trapper and Virgo.

In the end, this odd couple are transported to the Gray Agent's ship, but the interrogation is stranger than I've ever seen because instead of playing good cop, bad cop, they have a frog man with a TV on the back of his head look at Virgo and everything Hal Jordan said to him before he left for Earth is depicted on the TV........... on the back of this frog's head.  This is very strange, but the Gray Agents won't be going to Earth and raising any hell looking for their bounty though because Hal Jordan shows up and we end this issue with him looking like he's going to kick a little ass.

That's it for this issue of Green Lantern and like it's been for awhile now, this issue was pretty lackluster.  Instead of an explanation about why Hal turned into a construct, we get a rundown of Hal Jordan's history and instead of continuing our current story, we break off to deal with the Gray Agents just because they were set up awhile ago to be Hal's new threat.  It just seems like this issue was thrown together willy nilly and besides for us finding out about the Gray Agent's intentions a bunch of issues ago, we don't really know anything more about them besides for the fact that they have teleportation technology and have a frog man with a TV on the back of his head.  There's just really nothing here to keep your interest because there's nothing really new to the story.  Just a lot of catch up and Virgo beating the shit out of a few people.  Luckily though, the art was great so we have that, but really, Green Lantern is nothing to write home about.

Bits and Pieces:

Green Lantern leaves his current story, which kind of got all over the place with Sonar and Parallax and sets off on a new/old mission........ which kind of gets interrupted by a rescue mission..... That's right this story is all over the place and rife with filler just catching you up on the story of Hal Jordan's past and what led him to Earth in the first place.  The only real positive thing that I can say about this issue is that the art was great and it's a shame that's all we really get here.

4.8/10