Writer: Grant Morrison / Artist: Liam Sharp / DC Comics
Grant Morrison’s The Green Lantern opened up pretty strong with a relatively clean slate and some oddball sci-fi concepts to set the tone for the tumble into this wacky intergalactic wonderland. Issue #2 doesn’t fail to keep the same energy as Hal Jordan gets back into the swing of ring-slinging. Morrison plays the majority of this story-line out like your basic cop procedural…except with spider people. It was mostly effective in bringing our hero a little closer to the threat, but honestly, it wasn’t the centerpiece I expected.
The lion’s share of the shine in this book belongs to the introduction of the villains. These are self-aware, sardonic, memorable characters that honestly had me laughing for a lot of the book. In fact, they’re every bit as abstract and strange as Morrison’s idea of space. The only drawback narrative-wise is that if you’ve been reading Green Lantern books up until this point, the whole vibe of the book almost feels like looking at the GL universe through a fun-house mirror.
This view doesn’t look like anything else happening in the DC universe. The switch-up can be disorienting depending on how invested you were by the end of Robert Venditti’s run. Visually, Liam Sharp’s artwork is definitely representing the overall weirdness of Morrison’s script. The color palette and line work is actually reminiscent of the satirical otherness of 2000 AD. The detail in every panel is impeccable and the facial expressions are distinctive even for the less-than-human characters.
Bottom Line: The Green Lantern is a solid book that has the burden of following up a universe that has been built up for almost 15 years by two other writers. Though its disregard for what’s come before can be jarring at first, it’s still fresh and entertaining. Definitely a book worth your time.
8 vague Justice League movie cameos out of 10
Reading Find BNP’s other reviews of the series here.
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