Green Lanterns #17 Review and *SPOILERS*

Fear of Failure

Written By: Sam Humphries

Art By: Eduardo Pansica, Julio Ferreira, Blond, Dave Sharpe

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: February 15, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Oh boy, we had ourselves one hell of a romp in the previous issue of Green Lanterns.  We saw our heroes go to Gotham, Simon and Batman had themselves a pissing contest about Simon's gun and we saw Alfred affected by whatever crazy ass fear signal that is coming out of anti-Batman propaganda videos floating around on the internet.  On top of all that, we saw Scarecrow being the root of the problem and while most fans of Batman immediately centered on him after learning that there was a problem with fear in Gotham, I don't think any of us thought he was toying around with the fear spectrum............... honestly, because it doesn't make much sense, but besides that, it was a cool cliffhanger.  Okay, with that out of the way, let's jump into this issue and see if our Lantern heroes and Batman can work any better together here and if they can break Alfred of his whammy before putting a bullet in Simon's thinking cap.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!;

Our issue begins with Scarecrow giving us a little rundown about how his kink is all about fear and not just inflicting it on others; no, he's all about feeling that sweet, sweet adrenaline himself and the problem he's been facing for a long time now is, he's just numb to it and when it comes to his drug of choice, he's grown a tolerance.  That's him though, back at the Batcave, Alfred is feeling a whole shit ton of fear about the Batman getting him and in these scenarios there's only one thing to do.  Get the Bat before he gets you and to do that he's making sure that the Green Lanterns won't pull a fast one on him by shoving Simon's gun to the side of his head and threatening to paint the Batcave with his brains.  Of course, Batman gets to him and deactivates his fear with a post hypnotic trigger that was previously instilled in him, but where Alfred's fear leaves, Simon's shame begins because since we spent so long with Simon and Batman fighting over his gun in the previous issue, it looks like for all of Simon's bluster, Batman was right all along and now Simon has to deal with Bruce's silence as he works out a pattern to the fear inducing Vine.  

Of course Batman figures out what he needs to and tracks down where the Scarecrow is working his interwebs magic, but Simon still has that big ol' burden of guilt weighing on his shoulders over what happened to Alfred, but don't worry too much about our hero because when they storm the joint and Scarecrow cranks his fear inducing machine up to eleven, it's Simon who saves the day by overcoming his fear of failure and trusting in himself, which we see when he puts the gun down and uses his ring to........... Well, he smashes the console, I don't exactly know what kind of construct he made....... but he did it!

In the end, Scarecrow is all sorts of bummed because for the first time in a long time, he actually felt that old friend of his named fear again when Batman showed up, but with his ridiculous internet Sinestro Corps machine destroyed, it doesn't seem like he'll be able to get that high again.  We do end on a high note though........ depending on how you feel about things because Simon decides that he does have what it takes to be a Green Lantern and puts the gun down once and for all.......... which kind of sucks in my mind because I thought that was something special that separated him from the rest of the Corps, but even with that we have Batman taking Simon aside and telling him that after all the Lanterns he's worked with in the past, he thinks that Simon is actually one he can get behind and trust.  Not to mention, he also plans on calling on Simon sometime in the future for something mysterious and with Lobo feeling like he's ready to split out of the JLA at any minute, I'm thinking that Batman might already be looking for a replacement for him.

That's it for this issue of Green Lanterns and while I am getting a little sick of both of our Lanterns feeling like they don't belong, it wasn't overblown here like I feared it would have been and even leads to a big character development with Simon laying down the gun that defined him since his creation in the first year of the New 52.  Yeah, Jessica doesn't have a lot to do, but with her having an issue pretty much dedicated to her previously, I'm happy that Simon gets a chance to shine and I love the ground work here that points to Simon and Bats doing something important together in the future.  My biggest gripe against this issue though is the fact that we have some weird ass science going on here with Scarecrow somehow tapping into the emotional spectrum of fear and using the interwebs as a ring.  I mean, I don't need a big explanation, I just need something that makes sense to me and I walked away from this issue still scratching my head.  The art was great though and I look forward to getting back to our Volthoom story in the next issue.

Bits and Pieces:

For our first Green Lanterns and guest star team-up, I thought that this issue and the previous one did a pretty fine job at showing the strengths and weaknesses of our heroes here......... even though it just mainly focused on Simon and yeah, we had some weird science going on with our villain that doesn't make any sense to me, but even with that we had a decent story and some great art that keeps me excited for this series.

7.5/10