Green Lanterns #25 Review and *SPOILERS*

Mama, Volthoom's Going Home

Written By: Sam Humphries

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

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: June 21, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's taken us a long ass time to get here, but it finally looks like we're going to get some Volthoom coming out as the First Lantern in this book and I couldn't be happier......... even though his continuity has been changed since we originally saw him in the New 52 Green Lantern book.  That doesn't matter right now because after so many false starts, it looks like Simon and Jessica are going to learn the truth about who's been driving Rami around and we're going to get some answers about what's up with the first seven Green Lantern rings and what it means for them being created out of Volthoom's Travel Lantern.  Let's jump into this book and see if this over-sized anniversary issue gives us everything we were hoping for.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

When our issue begins I have to say that I was originally dumb-struck because here I've been thinking that the Vault of Shadows was the prison that the Guardians of the Universe kept Volthoom in for all those billions of years, but here I realize that the real name for the First Lantern's prison was actually "The Chamber of Shadows" and the Vault of Shadows is where the blue skinned half-pints actually keep all their forbidden knowledge.  So now that that's cleared up in my mind, we're solid as we move forward and see that inside the Vault are all the bodies of the original seven Lanterns that the Guardians created to take Volthoom down originally........... Well, all of the seven Lanterns but one because the Lantern Tyran'r is still keeping watch of the Vault somehow and begins attacking our main characters until Rami/Volthoom shuts him down.  The weird part.......... besides for Tyran'r still being alive is that before Volthoom froze him in air, he seemed to recognize Simon and Jessica and was about to out Rami as actually being Volthoom.

With Tyran'r out of the way and not snitching on him, Volthoom continues deeper into the Vault until he finds his First Lantern Ring, which we puts on and uses it to recreate his original body and armor and with that, the fight is on.  Now all Volthoom needs is Jessica's ring, since we found out in the last issue is one of the original seven rings that was made from Volthoom's Travel Lantern and with that ring, The First Lantern plans on finally going home.  Too bad, Simon went and got in his way and Volthoom was forced to show him what kind of a bad ass he actually is............ which ended with our villain overloading Simon's ring with the emotional spectrum to the point where his ring shattered.

In the end, Simon is out of commission and dying because this isn't an oxygen filled environment and Jessica is forced to take on the First Lantern, but he doesn't need to fight her because part of the Travel Lantern is dormant inside of her ring.  While Jessica yells for her ring to get Simon and her out of there, Volthoom is ordering it to take him to Earth-15 and in the end, the ring is confused and teleports Simon and Jessica out of there and I guess the implication would mean that they're on their way to Earth-15, but from one of the first Green Lanterns, Tyran'r knowing them at the beginning of the book........ and the fact that we're getting back stories for all of the first seven Green Lanterns, I'm guessing that they're being transported back to when the Guardians first had to imprison Volthoom.

That's it for this over-sized anniversary issue of Green Lanterns and for the most part it was pretty decent.  I can't say that I was blown away by the story because of how different Volthoom's backstory is being written than his original appearance in the New 52, but this does at least keep its own continuity consistent and finally drops the charade of Volthoom being Rami, which went on way too damn long.  Now, the cliffhanger actually gets me a bit intrigued though because it seems that we're finally having our Lantern heroes doing something worthwhile and putting them in a situation that they've never been in before and that gets me pretty damn excited.....even if Simon is ring-less now.  The art, while consistently looking good the entire issue was brought down in my opinion by the completely dull colors that make this issue look completely washed out.  I'm still on the fence with Green Lanterns right now about whether or not I think it can be salvaged from the mediocre storytelling that we've been getting so far, but I have to say that I think things might just be looking up going forward.

Bits and Pieces:

This over-sized issue of Green Lanterns finally gives us what we've been wanting from this series and now that all the cards are on the table, I think that this series finally has a chance to start doing something fun and original instead of rehashing the same old tropes for these characters again and again.  The art was decent, but the colors really disappointed me with how dull they were.

7.5/10