Rebirth Rewind: Green Lanterns #13 (2016) Review

THE PHANTOM LANTERN: PART FOUR

Released: December 21st, 2016

Writers: Sam Humphries

Artist: Ronan Cliquet

Colors: Blond

Letters: Dave Sharpe

Cover Price: $2.99

Review written by Joey Casco of TheWineStalker.net

Frank Laminski has stolen the Phantom Ring from Rami to become the Phantom Lantern, and Rami is now Volthoom's hostage. But every time the Green Lanterns of 2814 confront Frank, he bounces. Can they finally pin him down and get the Phantom Ring back? Use the "Phantom Lantern" label to read my other reviews from this arc.

To start the issue there's a flashback to Volthoom's past with the Guardians. It turns out that he was the reason that the Green Lantern rings were put into action in the first place! But this really has more to do with the story moving forward than this arc.

Back to today (or 2016) in Coast City:

Using the yellow light of Fear, Frank has made constructs of the Green Lanterns' biggest fear: themselves. So as they attack they dig into biggest insecurities.

For Jessica it's her confidence.

For Simon it's his trust issues.

And back at Frank's apartment, Volthoom is trying to do something called the Malthusian transfer. We later find out that basically it puts Volthoom into Rami's body.

Rami isn't having any of that, and we learn more about their pasts. Volthoom grows tired of Rami's backtalk and blasts him, yelling that all he wanted to do is go home. (we learn about this in a future issue after this arc)

Rami collects himself and continues his verbal battle with Volthoom. And we learn that there is no battery for the Phantom Ring because it gets its energy from the person who wears it. Frank is about to blow!

Jessica conquers her fear and gathers her willpower with a memory of her sister convincing her that being a Green Lantern is the job that she was made for.

One of Simon's fears is of course harm being done to his family, and the construct trying to use that one was a big mistake.

The constructs being taken out angers Frank, and he turns red with Rage. But the Lanterns still want to help him rather than defeat him in battle.

He even turns blue with Hope when it occurs to him that he could actually beat the GLs!

Jessica tries to pull the ring off his finger and it's back to the orange of Avarice!

And he quickly turns to fear, realizing that he's going to die. On his knees he starts crying and asks them that with everything he's done to them, why do they want to help him?

The blast knocks back the Lanterns and the issue ends, to be concluded in issue #14.

Bits and Pieces

There was a lot of switching of light colors here because the Phantom Ring is causing Frank to completely fall apart, and because of that this issue was pretty chaotic. But that's the point. Frank is going through more emotions in a single minute than a kid going through puberty. The entire Green Lanterns series dealt a lot with Jess's and Simon's insecurities and how they learned to overcome them together and rely on each other as partners, and this issue is one of the pieces of that theme. The art is GREAT and looks very cinematic at times. For me this was another fun issue in this very fun arc.

8.5/10