Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #33 Review and **SPOILERS**

-->

Cool It Now, Watch Out

Writer: Robert Vendetti 

Breakdowns: Tom Derenick 

Penciller & Inker: Jack Herbert 

Colorist: Jason Wright 

Letterer: Dave Sharpe 

Cover: Francis Manapul 

Cover Price: $2.99

On Sale Date: November 29, 2017

**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**

Say…who is this Jack Herbert fellow? I don’t remember seeing that name. How exciting! And on a fifth week, no less…I’m not sure if that will end up being a good or bad thing, all told. But I’m excited to check out the artwork! See what I think by reading my review of Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #33, conveniently right here!

Explain It!

Age restrictions are a funny thing, since they tend to assume some sort of division between childhood and adulthood that cannot actually be measured before the fact. The only way to know if someone is responsible enough to handle their alcohol, for instance, is to let them have some and see what happens. As dozens of alcohol-poisoned college students will tell you, there’s no magic switch that gets flipped on your twenty-first birthday that will keep you from binge-drinking grain liquor. But these age restrictions are largely arbitrary: you must be twenty-one to drink, but only sixteen to drive a car. Yet you must be twenty-five to rent a vehicle. I’m not sure what age scientist thinks happens at these ages that makes society okay with giving someone in the throes of puberty license over a murderous combustion engine, for example.

I didn’t, however, think the Green Lantern Corps had age restrictions on membership. I thought it was a measure of one’s will, and their ability to overcome great fear, that determined whether a green ring selected you for an authoritarian Sadie Hawkins Dance. And yet here are Ganthet and Sayd watching new lantern Somar-Le, daughter of Tomar-Tu, fly around happily in space while discussing the age parameters for Green Lantern membership. It seems rather arbitrary, no? One must assume that aliens live different lifespans, and mature at different rates, so that a three year-old from one planet might be more wizened than a being of 200 years from another. Anyway, the Guardians and then John Stewart stand and watch Somar-Le fly around for an uncomfortable length of time, and then we finally switch scenes.

It’s Kyle and Hal on planet Molto, saving the inhabitants from…molten lava. You know, I have to put this on the residents of Molto a little bit, there is such a thing as caveat emptor. Hal has a secondary goal, to observe Kyle and see how well he “thinks outside the box,” which is an awfully noble and reckless thing to pursue while the fate of an entire planet is at stake. Like, maybe you should do field testing where genocide isn’t the potential result of an error? In any case, Kyle is still beat up over Soranik, so he’s got no creativity, meanwhile Somar-Le is being taught to use her new ring and she makes a murderous elephant and space tiger. In the end, Ganthet and Sayd are captured along with other Maltusans by the Controllers, which was advertised literally on the cover to this issue.

The artwork here is something special for sure. Some of the linework is shaky, but very expressive, and the coloring goes a long way to class-up the proceedings. But this story is like a grab bag of the Green Lantern Corps’ current state with a tepid cliffhanger tacked on at the end in order to justify some kind of arc. I look forward to more from Somar-Le, and indeed to find out more about the intensifying relationships between folks within and without the Corps, but this thing read like my grandfather’s Christmas letter, except without the randomly-inserted racism and angry diatribes against his ex-wife.

Bits and Pieces:

This issue should refresh the reader about the comic's status quo, after we had that two-parter with Superman and the one-off tie-in with Metal. Unfortunately, where we are in the world of the Green Lantern Corps seems really boring. Hopefully the thing advertised on the front cover will spice things up.

6/10