Written by: Al Ewing
Art by: Jahnoy Lindsay
Colors by: Jahnoy Lindsay
Letters by: Lucas Gattoni
Cover art by: Jahnoy Lindsay (cover A)
Cover price: $4.99
Release date: April 2, 2025
Absolute Green Lantern #1, by DC Comics on 4/2/25, imagines what would happen to the town of Evergreen if four friends were confronted by an arriving alien and maelstrom of energies.
Is Absolute Green Lantern #1 Good?
Recap
When Darkseid discovered that he could maximize his power potential by absorbing the power from all Darkseids throughout the multiverse, he waged a campaign of destruction against himself. The last Darkseid remaining attacked Earth Prime but was destroyed by the Justice League. Darkseid's death unleashed a flood of energy that created a new universe formed from Darkseid's energy. This is one of his stories.
Plot Synopsis
In Absolute Green Lantern #1, we begin with a distraught man walking along a desert highway when a police cruiser pulls up for an inquiry. The man, Hal Jordan, seems agitated and refuses to take his left hand out of his pocket. When the police officer orders Hal to comply, Hal unveils a hand seething with black energy that incinerates the policeman.
Later, Hal enters a diner for water. The basketball game playing on the wall-mounted television is interrupted by a special report about a giant green lantern symbol dropped in the center of the town of Evergreen. Hal foolishly mentions he's from Evergreen, setting the cook and diner staff on edge. When Hal tries to leave, a man grabs his arm, still tucked in his jacket pocket, to see what he's holding. The black hand incinerates the man. A Waitress pulls a gun from behind the counter and opens fire, causing the black energy to explode throughout the diner.
In a flashback from five days ago, we see Hal, John Stewart, and Jo Mullein chatting during lunch in an Evergreen diner. Their lunch is mildly interrupted by a stream of bikers driving too fast and loudly through the town's center. Suddenly, one of the bikers slams into a glowing energy wall at full speed. Hal and his friends rush out to help, but the biker is past saving. Hal probes the energy wall with his hands and concludes it's part of some energy dome or force field. When Hal and his friends look up in the sky, they see a four-armed alien standing on top of a levitating Green Lantern symbol.
The issue ends with Hal and his black hand confronted by the arrival of Jo Mullein, who glows with green energy.
First Impressions
Writer Al Ewing's contribution to the Absolute Universe takes a violent, horror-centric turn in Absolute Green Lantern #1. Ewing appears to have understood the assignment to create an original take on the ring-slingers by crafting a tale that feels closer to Jupiter's Legacy than anything out of DC's Golden or Silver Age. However, this first issue feels more like teases and curiosities than a fully-formed story that will grab you.
How’s the Art?
Jahnoy Lindsay's moody, expressive art works well to capture the expressions of fear and desperation emanating from Hal as he tries to escape his problems but causes destruction he can't control. The projections of dark energy are impressively intimidating, and the character acting is excellent. If Al Ewing was going for an alien horror vibe, Lindsay nailed it.
What’s great about Absolute Green Lantern #1?
If the goal was to create a new kind of Green Lantern mythology that doesn't look or feel like the original, Al Ewing accomplished his mission. The concept of familiar characters becoming versions of known characters such as Green Lantern and Black Hand through a type of "infection" due to an alien invader is truly interesting. We're used to Lanterns coming to power through an intergalactic police system, so this take gives readers a mix of the familiar and the new.
What’s not great about Absolute Green Lantern #1?
When starting a new story from square one, we always go back to the basics, how well the creative team established those basics, and how conceptually creative the idea lands to get readers onboard quickly. So, does Al Ewing nail the basics and put a delicious icing of creative goodness on top? Not quite.
Who is the focal character? You could surmise from the cover and the last page that it's Jo Mullein, but the entire issue is spent with Hal Jordan. If you don't know who is the focal character, you don't know whose journey is most important and should hold your attention.
What is the goal of the focal character? If it's Jo, we don't know because she's only in the comic for two to three pages. If it's Hal, the best we could surmise is that he wants to be free of the black infection on his left hand, but we don't know how he got the infection or what it does.
What are the stakes? We don't know. We can tell that Hal's "black hand" obliterates anything that threatens him, but if the goal is to stop hurting people, wouldn't Hal accomplish his goal by gathering supplies and getting away from people? Why would he go into a crowded diner?
Who or what is standing in the focal character's way? We have no idea. Presumably, Abin Sur's arrival isn't totally peaceful because the one view we get of him shows him with a frowny face, but that's not much to go on. We don't know if Abin Sur gave Hal and Jo their powers. If he did, we don't know if it was intentional or an accident. We don't know anything about the conflict, presuming there is one beyond Hal getting rid of his black hand.
Therein lies the problem. Al Ewing falls well short of establishing the basics, instead relying on curiosity, teases, and half-baked mystery. That's not nothing, but it's not enough to hook the average reader.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.
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Final Thoughts
Absolute Green Lantern #1 is a decent start to a reimagined type of Green Lantern mythology. Al Ewing's twist on humans granted energy power feels like something out of a sci-fi horror story, and Jahnoy Lindsay's art captures the spirit of fear and mystery perfectly. That said, Al Ewing's script skips the basics of setting up a story and relies on curiosity and teasing to hook the reader. For some readers, that may be enough. For many other readers, it's not.
6.5/10
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