Green Lanterns #18 Review and *SPOILERS*

Ten Billion Years Is Too Long

Written By: Sam Humphries

Art By: Robson Rocha, Daniel Henriques, Alex Sollazzo, Dave Sharpe

Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: March 1, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Now that we've gotten our in-depth look at Jessica Cruz' anxiety and saw Simon put his gun down in the Green Lanterns/Batman team-up, it's time to get back to the story we were left with after the Lanterns took down Frank Laminski and that's all about Volthoom taking over the body of Rami the Guardian.  It's funny to me because here we have the First Lantern, who took on all of the Corps' of the Emotional Spectrum and who now is in the body of a Guardian, one of the most powerful beings in the Universe and to stand up against him we have two rookie Lanterns who have a whole ton of problems outside of being Earth's protectors.  This is going to be a weird arc, but man I hope it's fun because I'd like to see Simon and Jessica step up and show the world what they really have.  Let's jump into this issue and find out the origin of Volthoom and see everything he went through to make him the mad god that he became.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Volthoom in the Dead Space after the events of Green Lantern #20 in the New 52, where Nekron took the First Lantern down and now that he's no longer among the land of the living, all Volthoom wants is for Nekron to finish the job because he's tired of living.  This sets us up to see everything that Volthoom has been through during his ten billion year life.  We see how he first left his home of Earth-15 in the year 3079, when the planet was being destroyed and his mother gave him the Traveling Lantern they were working on as a way to escape and also as a way to find a way to stop their planet's destruction.  Now, right away I'm pretty wary about this whole thing because Earth-15 is supposed to be a dead planet in the Multiverse and seeing it destroyed in the future doesn't make much sense to me.  So Volthoom activates the Lantern and then spends the next couple of years traveling the Multiverse in search of a technologically advanced society that can help him find a way to save his home.  This leads us to Volthoom showing up on Earth-0 and meeting the future Guardians of the Universe, but again we have to retcon the history because nowhere do we see the beginning of the Universe that he was supposed to show up at and on top of all that, this issue also nonchalantly throws away any kind of decent origin story for the Volthoom that is the Power Ring from Earth-3 because almost as a side thought we get a panel where our First Lantern says he wound up on Earth-3, where a sorcerer used a part of his soul to make a ring, but he didn't like it so he quickly left that Earth.  This just takes all the mystery out of the Earth-3 Power Ring and gives us a origin that didn't need to be because it does nothing but ruin anything that could have been down with the origin of the Power Ring down the road........ made me mad as hell.

So anyway, we get the whole shebang about how Volthoom worked with the Guardians to develop technology that uses the Emotional Spectrum and how they accidentally created the first ring when they dispelled their emotions into the Great Heart and how Volthoom took the ring and made himself into the First Lantern and then eventually betrayed him because he became too powerful.......... and then I realize that this is a catch up issue for people to get on the trolley and where it isn't catch up, it merely screws up the continuity we had and also creates continuity it didn't need to and in my mind had no right to.  

In the end, we get back to Volthoom in the Dead Space wanting Nekron to kill him because living ten billion years is too much time to be alive and that's where we find out that Volthoom can't be killed because of his connection to the Emotional Spectrum and it even pulls him back to the world of the living, where he sees Rami fleeing from the Dominators, like we saw in the first issue to this series and Volthoom witnesses Rami use the power of the Phantom Ring to get away and it's seeing that power that reawakens his hate and his need for revenge against the Guardians that did this to him.

That's it for this issue of Green Lanterns and while I normally love Robson Rocha's art, I found that the coloring here really did something to make it not look all that great and I was really disappointed because of this because this is a book that I can usually count on looking great.  With that, I also found myself angry about the revisionist history dealing with Volthoom and showing him coming from Earth-15 from the future, which doesn't make any sense because that's supposed to be a dead Universe and then having Sam Humphries just so casually giving a backstory for the Earth-3 Power Ring was the thing that really tipped the scales in my disliking this issue because it didn't need to be done and took all the mystery out of it with only a panel.  It just seemed unneeded and even disrespectful for some reason to me......... I don't know if that's the word I'm looking for, but it wasn't needed. All in all, this issue is to get you on the Volthoom trolley going forward and if you knew nothing about him going in you're probably better off, but for long time Green Lantern fans, I see this issue becoming a point of contempt with this series.

Bits and Pieces:

This issue seems to just go about re-imagining the history of Volthoom however it sees fit and a lot of it didn't seem to jive with things we've been told previously in other books throughout the New 52 and while it doesn't say this is what actually happened instead of what everyone thought, it just rewrites things without a second thought and doesn't exactly make a lot of sense doing it.  With that, the art in this issue seems to be a step back from what we usually get and ultimately I found myself really disappointed with this issue.

5/10