Throwback Thursday: Green Lantern Corps: Edge of Oblivion #1 Review (2016)

Lost and Found

Written By: Tom Taylor
Art By: Ethan Van Sciver, Jason Wright, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: January 13, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

So our Green Lantern Corps have upped the ante by getting rid of their Lost Army moniker and replaced it with "Edge of Oblivion"....... which just sounds immediately more badass. To catch everyone up, we saw our Corps take on light pirates, who were trying to preserve their power in this dying Universe by siphoning off whoever had a little light left shining.  After it was all said and done, our band of Lanterns met up with a bunch of their Corpsmen fighting their own battle of survival, but at the end of this one, things went and got weird when a handful of Lanterns were converted to different spectrums and Mogo became able to rock all of them.  The final issue to Lost Army was fun and exciting, but for the most part, the series was lackluster.  Hopefully, this mini-series will right its path and our Lanterns will find a way home after John Stewart witnessed Hal Jordan closing the gate to them by fixing the rift within the Source Wall.  Let's jump into this issue and see what Tom Taylor has to say about our Lantern heroes and what he has planned for us.  Let's check it out.



Explain It!:

Our issue begins with our Lanterns getting a little Cabin Fever............ well, a little "Universe Before Their Own" fever and Bd'g is just freaking the hell out in his adorable little squirrel language.  Not all is lost though because John Stewart is trying to keep morale up and ultimately they decide that the first order of business is to find the rest of the Corps who are still lost.  This leads to Mogo shining his ass so bright that he comes off as a big ass Green Lantern beacon in the almost-dimmed out Universe.  While this actually works and gets a bunch of Lantern's attention, it also gets the attention of an object in space that begins moving towards our heroes and to all of our surprise, it's bigger than Mogo.  After creating a shield to fight back the advancing mass, we see that this is a type of planet, that supposedly holds a city............ but they just keep calling it a city........ so I guess it's a planet-sized city and this city has two gigantic protectors named Dimsas and Ausras, who originally thought that Mogo and the Lanterns were enemies of their world, but quickly realize that the little guys are actually heroes like they consider themselves.  It's just odd though because this flying planet came out of nowhere with what looked like the intention to attack........... That's a little too offensive for these guys who come off as only defenders.

After a "we're all friends here" talk, Salaak calls together a meeting because John Stewart is all about offering out the Corps' help in saving this planet and its people by bringing them to their Universe when they finally find the exit and Salaak being the logical person that he is doesn't think that a team up is the best option for them right now.  Of course, Salaak gets shut down, but come on!  I don't care if getting out of here is your first priority, you've got to be smart about it and as far as smarts go, Salaak is your man!

In the end, the Green Lanterns get introduced to the people of the city and their partnership in escaping this doomed Universe is made, but out in the crowd we see a few hooded figures talking as if they aren't about to let some meddling Lanterns get in the way of their plans...........which I guess involves dooming everyone to this short existence and we see that actualized when Muk Muk goes off on his own to check out the city and is killed for his curiosity........ Poor Muk Muk, he's had a rough time for a while now.  First, he's believed to be a traitor when the Durlans replaced him, then he gets stuck in a dying Universe and now he's just dead.  Do people have a thing against poor Muk Muk?

That's it for this first issue of Edge of Oblivion and man was it a fast read.  This issue just moves at a lightning pace as it sets up what we'll be dealing with and while it may cut down some of the suspense you'd think we'd get from this type of story, I have to say that I appreciated it because we went too long in Lost Army with nothing happening and not knowing what the hell was going down.  I don't know if Mogo is still rocking his every spectrum power because we never see it here and that makes me afraid that we won't get any payoff from that status quo change that we saw in the series that proceeded this one.  Hell, the only thing that seems to correspond is seeing Guy Gardner is just a Green Lantern, but the rest of the Lanterns who were altered in Lost Army weren't shown here.  I'm intrigued with where the story is going partly because of this issue and partly because of that promo that DC kept putting at the beginning of all our books showing John Stewart as some sort of zombie monster........ so right now, it's all interesting and having Ethan Van Sciver on art and Jason Wright on colors is just icing on the cake.  It's all really fun and like I said, it gets the story moving right along......... no time for dilly-dallying.

Bits and Pieces:

It seems that Tom Taylor doesn't want to make the same mistake as Lost Army did because this story just starts moving right out of the gate and before I knew it, it was over.  It was fun setup for what we'll be dealing with for the next six months, but I hope that it offers us more connection between Lost Army and this besides for the whole being lost bit because seeing a handful of Lanterns altered to a different spectrum and Mogo rocking them all was the highlight of the last series and besides for Guy Gardner only rocking the green, we don't have any of that here.  A really fun and fast setup issue with excellent art all the way through.

8/10