Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #39 Review

Writer: Robert Venditti / Artist: Rafa Sandoval / DC Comics Issue #39 was a bit of a mixed bag for me. It picks up with our hero, Hal Jordan as a guest of General Zod and the Family Zod (I’m working on a name). Zod’s motives are interesting and border on sympathetic as the conflict calls into question the role Lanterns play in universal security. After all, why didn’t the Corps intervene in the destruction of Krypton? Even with that in mind, the Guardians come across annoyingly bureaucratic even for their current tenuous relationship with John Stewart. If Venditti’s point was to convey that the Guardians are having a hard time coming to grips with being washed, then it was highly effective. If you hold those particular pages to your ear, you can almost hear you grandfather telling you to get off his lawn. I also wish they would have spent a little more time diving into the effects of Kyle’s current predicament with Hal’s ring and why that’s happening. Other than that, it’s a lot of entertaining bromance and tough talk from the Four Corpsmen. And visually, Rafa Sandoval proves once again why he is second to none on this book.

The epic cover alone is enough to justify this book’s existence, but the enormous splash pages of the Corps charging in rings blazing are next level. With some of the cleanest linework in the game, I can already see a slew of young writers lining up to mimic Sandoval’s highly stylized sci-fi vibe for years to come. Bottom Line: Although I wish Venditti…