Green Lantern/Space Ghost Annual #1 Review and **SPOILERS**

Keeping the Peace Between Peacekeepers

Writers: James Tynion IV and Christopher Sebela 

Art and Colors: Ariel Olivetti 

Letters: A Larger World Studios 

Back-up By: Howard Chaykin 

Back-up Colors: Wil Quintana 

Back-up Letters: Pat Brosseau 

Cover: Ariel Olivetti 

Cover Price: $4.99 

On Sale Date: March 29, 2017

**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**

Hey, here’s something I never considered! Space Ghost inhabiting the same universe as the Green Lantern Corps. I mean, it’s actually downright ridiculous. But it’s just the kind of ridiculousness I want to see in my comics! Now, if we can just get on that Thundarr the Barbarian comic book…come on DC, I know it was a Ruby-Spears cartoon but this can be worked out! You have a think on it while I review Green Lantern/Space Ghost Annual #1!

 

Explain It!

While laying the green smackdown on Larfleeze, Hal Jordan bumps into Space Ghost, who lurks nearby all ghostly-like. He thinks Hal is wielding just a little too much power, so Space Ghost starts beefing with him. They essentially take turns punching each other until they wind up on an isolated planet that doesn’t believe in extraterrestrial life—under penalty of law! Hal and Space being evidence of said non-existent life puts people in a tricky predicament. The planet’s Jerk Army begins attacking, so Hal makes a construct of the scariest thing he can imagine—Batman—and this sends everyone running! Safe for the moment, Hal and S. Ghost get back to fighting, testing the effectiveness of their powers against one another and finding them equally matched. So evenly matched that they render one another unconscious. Just then, a little girl named Keila shows up with a giant robot named P.E.T. and gathers up our heroes for a stuffed animal tea party or something else stupid, I’m sure.

She’s taken Space Ghost’s power bands and Hal Jordan’s power ring, and has them both captured in her meadow or whatever. Keila can’t really process the fact that there are aliens that should not legally exist on her planet, but after a while common sense prevails and Keila decides to trust these strange men like all little girls should. She brings them to the source of a distress signal that brought Space Ghost and Hal Jordan here in the first place, and it turns out to be some weird scientist making an illicit spaceship in his garage. Just then, the Jerk Army shows up, so Keila gives Hal and Space their weapons back—but they each wield the wrong ones! Finding themselves terrible at it, they switch to their familiar power items and kick butts from here to the buttresses of Buttantinople near Buttapest. In the fracas, the one dude that built a spaceship got wrecked, so they all take his dying body into space so he can be like, “Yeah, I did it. I went to space before I died.” In the future, we see Keila has grown up to be a space-traveling peacekeeper—with logos from both Space Ghost and the Green Lantern Corps on her helmet!

The backup is a pretty dark Howard Chaykin piece about how Ruff n’ Reddy came together in the backstabbing, dog-eat-dog world of comedy entertainment. We see other purported comic duos and even our favorites working alongside new silly characters, as well as come to know a world of anthropomorphic crickets and the human beings that live among them. It was a pretty cool story, though I had a little trouble getting into its rhythm the first time I read it. Now, I’m about ready for more, if DC Comics and Howard Chaykin are ready to make them.

So I have to say, the artwork in the first story is phenomenal. Howard Chaykin’s art is great, too, but the stuff by Ariel Olivetti is absolutely stunning. Space is rendered so richly and deeply, and everything looks painted by watercolor (and may have been, at that.) I found that Ariel drew the Space Ghost comic book in 2005 as well, so I’ll want to give those a look. The story, well it was okay. I didn’t find it spectacular, but it was interesting enough and moved along at a good clip. I don’t know that I necessarily agree that people should be forced to face their own macroscopic uselessness, but I can see how Hal and Space Ghost would promote that kind of idea. So yeah, I dug it. Don’t know if I “boy this would make a great ongoing series” dug it, but perhaps “I could take three to five more issues of this” dug it.

Bits and Pieces:

A reasonably touching story and some unbelievably great artwork makes for one solid issue of a comic book. This one, specifically. Don't know if I want too much more of it, but I liked what we got. Howard Chaykin does a story in the back which will probably make you want to smoke cigarettes. This is a weird comic book and only bonafide weirdos need apply.

8/10