Green Lanterns #24 Review and *SPOILERS*

Graduation Day

Written By: Sam Humphries

Art By: Carlo Barberi, Matt Santorelli, Ulises Arreola, Dave Sharpe

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: June 7, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

This series has been a bit infuriating to me because it seems to go out of its way to change continuity and just simply get things wrong.  That being said, I do hold a bit of optimism when it comes to getting into our Volthoom arc because its been something that's been just sitting on the back burner of this series for a long time now and I'm optimistic because at least it will be something and not just filler getting in the way.  Yeah, I guess Simon and Jessica needed some proper training and I'm happy that they're with the rest of the Green Lantern Corps, it just seems like this series has been waiting to get going and now that it's waited so long, it has no idea how to start.  In our previous issue, we saw Simon go off with Kyle and Jessica go off with Guy to begin their training and while Simon's seems a bit easier since he only has to land a punch on Kyle, Jessica's seems like it's the training from hell and it's possible that she'll never finish that training because as the last issue ended, she lost it and socked Guy Gardner right in the face.  Let's jump into this issue and see if it's a "One Punch" scenario or if Guy went and got something sturdier than a glass jaw.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with our heroes' training continuing and Guy Gardner having some revisionist history about how great he is and how it will take more than one punch to put him down and while Simon's training seems pretty lax with him only going toe for toe with silly constructs against Kyle Rayner, this whole training bit with both Simon and Jessica is pretty damn funny.  Yeah, it fills up most of the issue and doesn't do much for the overall story going forward, but at least it injected some humor and I really appreciated it.

While the training is going on, Rami/Volthoom is furiously trying to determine where the first Green Lantern rings are because as we found out in the last issue, when Rami built the first seven rings, he used Volthoom's Travel Lantern to make them.  So in Volthoom's mind, if he can locate these rings, he can possible recreate this Travel Lantern and finally go home.  It's not going to be easy though because as we see in this issue, the fifth ring's location is unknown, the sixth ring's location has been redacted, but wouldn't you know it, the seventh ring is actually Jessica's, giving Volthoom a window of opportunity to at least begin his quest to obtain the rings.  It doesn't seem like Sayd or Ganthet are going to be any help in all of this because when Ganthet shows up to see how Rami is making out with figuring out why the rings won't recruit new members, Volthoom/Rami tells him that he needs to go to the Vault of Shadows to get something to fix them and Ganthet doesn't bat a goddamn eye. 

In the end, we find out that one of the original seven rings went to a White Martian back in the day, but all of that for the moment at least feels like filler and as our issue closes, Simon and Jessica complete their training and have their graduation.  It doesn't last long though because Rami/Volthoom has requested that they be his security detail on their trek to the Vault of Shadows, where he plans on getting our hero's ring.

That's it for this issue of Green Lanterns and while there is a lot of filler with silly nonsense during Simon and Jessica's training, it was at least silly nonsense that I could get behind and have a good time with.  I really hope though that the backstories to the original seven Lanterns goes somewhere because right now it just seems like padding to fill the issue out with things you don't need to know, but hopefully I'm wrong in the long run and it all makes sense as our story progresses.  Really though, there isn't much to talk about this issue because it's just a stepping stone to our new adventure, but it was drawn and colored really well and I found myself chuckling throughout the issue........... Just not a lot going on though............ you know, besides for Jessica's ring just happening to be one of the rings that Volthoom needs.  

Bits and Pieces:

While there isn't much to this issue, what we did have was some really fun interactions, complete with some damn fine art that just made this a joy to read.  Yeah, this is simply a stepping stone to our next adventure, but for what it was, I enjoyed it enough and look forward to finally getting some Volthoom related stories going forward.  

7.8/10