Don’t Blow Your Top
Writer: Grant Morrison
Artist: Liam Sharp
Colorist: Steve Oliff
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Cover: Liam Sharp & Steve Oliff
Variant Cover: Francesco Mattina
Associate Editor: Jessica Chen
Editor: Brian Cunningham
Cover Price: $3.99
On Sale Date: December 5, 2018
**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**
What makes something a “corps” and something else a “league” or an “association?” I’m sure this is a question I could answer with a Google search, but I’d much rather speculate that it comes down to the uniform. If you have a jacket with epaulets, it’s a corps. If you wear boots without laces, it’s a league. An association has to have just one member that wears a cardigan sweater. With that settled, we can all enjoy my review of The Green Lantern #2, which has been conveniently posted below.
Explain It!
Beneath the Obsidian Depths there lies a secret Green Lantern Corps prison, so created to hold one prisoner: Evil Star. He is, true to his name, evil––don’t let the Starro mask on his costume fool you. He draws power from the very stars in the sky, which is why the Guardians stuck him where the stars don’t shine. But now he’s busted out, with the help of some other space crooks, and after beating the crap out of Rot Lop Fan, takes off with them via teleport to do, uh, more evil stuff.
You don’t slap around a Green Lantern without raising the ire of the boys in green. At first, the case is assigned to Detective Volcano-Head, but once they know Evil Star is involved, it gets dumped on Hal Jordan due to prior experience; Volcano-Head moves onto a mystery involving missing planets or something. Hal’s first task is to interrogate a member of the Spider Guild––hi, fellow Tales of the Green Lantern Corps fans, I see you!––who was part of the crew that broke Evil Star out of the inky black clink…or maybe they just pulled a heist on Rot Lop Fan. Point is, she’s a criminal, and with the help of Xudarian Lantern Tru scares the crap out of this spoiled spider for the purposes of gathering information.
Meanwhile, aboard the Blackstar Flagship with some Blackstar alien baddies, all wearing costumes from the Star Trek movies, a space vampire takes Evil Star’s Star Band from him and sucks out his life force. This Star Band is augmented with other stolen technologies and put into mass production, then sold on the black market to some Dhorians who are up to no good. Hal gets wind of this fact from interrogating (and grossing out) the spider lady, but finds out that Evil Star has been found! He’s dying on Planet Hippocrates, his Star Band having been the only thing keeping him young and supple to this point. At the hospital, he hears that something hinky is happening on the Sol system—that’s Hal’s home turf! He races home to discover that the planet Earth…is gone!
Well! If the last issue was a little unwieldy, this one makes up for it by moving at an almost blistering pace, especially towards the end. I enjoyed this issue, from the clever use of Rot Lop Fan’s sector to escape starless space, to the way that Evil Star was written so arrogantly, to the overall conceit of space crimes happening just for normal criminal reasons, and not to explode all of reality and replace it with a strawberry muffin. Even the interrogation scene was alright, and set a tone for the book as a police procedural, even if what it provided in terms of information was slim. It pains me to say that my one misgiving is the artwork—it’s too busy on the wide shots, making complex scenes look too busy. To say it is “bad,” would be wrong, but it does make this a slightly more challenging read. Those looking for some esoteric Grant Morrison writing, however, won’t find it here. This is pretty straight-forward cop show stuff.
Bits and Pieces:
The series begins proper with a couple of crimes to solve and the dispensing of a Silver Age character. No hints on which one! This issue is highly readable and offers some pretty compelling moments that should pique your interest for the next issue. But if Hill Street Blues was never your thing, then this issue might run cold for you.
8/10
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