We Had to Destroy the Culture in Order to Save It
Writer: Grant Morrison
Artist: Liam Sharp
Colorist: Steve Oliff
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Cover: Liam Sharp & Steve Oliff
Variant Cover: Tom Raney with Alex Sinclair
Associate Editor: Jessica Chen
Editor: Brian Cunningham
Cover Price: $3.99
On Sale Date: February 6, 2019
**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**
More Jim-infuriatin’ stories from the verdant Lantern Corps! Looks like this one has a spooky vampire…check out my review of The Green Lantern #4 and let’s see what’s happening!
Explain It!
A four-armed space scoundrel and a Blackstar walk into a bar. The Blackstar has a story about how one of her clan “saved” a planet threatened by sun-eaters, by perverting their society into cannibalism and giving the world’s life force the Countess Delzebeth, an alien vampire that feeds on…uh, planetary energy. The four-armed Hex Solo tells a tale of three stalwart Green Lanterns, answering a distress call from a planet threatened by a pair of sun-eaters! Well ain’t that a coincidence! It’s not the same planet, incidentally; the Blackstars destroyed some insectoid, religious race, this is a whole different group. Turns out the Lanterns, or specifically, Hal Jordan, has been on the trail of these sun-eaters, since he found out they were trafficked by Snagglepuss through that nefarious black market. Yes. Literal Snagglepuss.
Hal Jordan’s got other problems, namely that the Guardians have sent Atomic Explosion Head and a few others to retrieve Jordan so he can get his spanking for murdering that Dhorian slaver. He’s willing to go, but first—a Hail Mary play to save this planet from sun-eaters. It involves getting a sentient star that is also a Green Lantern to divert and then subdue the sun-eater—did I mention that the remaining one is pregnant? But before that star Lantern shows up, the regular ol’ Green Lanterns create a fake sun using their rings—at incredible expense of their emotions! Or something.
See, this is the problem when the galaxy’s most powerful weapon is a mood: it’s not exciting to watch it get used. Whether the character has sufficient will to overcome an obstacle is merely a matter of the writer’s whim; willpower isn’t a bullet that needs to be loaded, it’s a theoretically limitless resource that is either “on” or “off,” depending. In this case, it is “on,” and the sun-eater is kept at bay until the Green Lantern sun shows up and takes it away in a squad car. In the end, we learn that Hal Jordan was chastised by the Guardians, and selected for mental therapy, but then it turns out the four-armed fake Clint Eastwood was Hal Jordan all along! Which everyone, including the Darkstar, knew. And that Darkstar, incidentally, is Countess Delzebeth herself. Hal Jordan’s gone directly to the top in order to ask to join up with the Darkstars—and he’s offering a power ring as his entrance fee!
And, just like we were sure that Hal Jordan was fake-playing at being a four-armed vagabond, we can be just as certain that he’s setting this all up to double-cross the Darkstars, at the request of the Guardians. Unless Countess Delzebeth is a moron, she’ll know this too, but of course we will go through all the motions of a mystery that, frankly, I’m unclear on. Was there a murder? Is there some stolen property? This all appears to imply a larger story, but I’m not getting it. Is this still tied in with the earth being shrunk and sold to Space Moses? I guess we’ll find out. I liked the artwork better here than in other issues, likely because there were more wide shots and scenes in open space. It’s when scenes take place indoors or near machinery that the linework gets crowded.
Bits and Pieces:
Can Hal Jordan and some weird-looking members of the Green Lantern Corps stop a world's sun from being consumed? Probably. I mean, that's like his "thing,' right? All "save the planet" and whatnot. Me, I'd want to know what the sun thinks about it. Has anyone considered that the sun might want to be eaten?
6.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment