Superhero

Green Lantern | Rebirth

File this one for the fanboys (of which I’m a complete and proud member of that particular group). This book is one drenched in continuity however COMPLETELY accessible to the outsider which hopefully will make more sense as this review comes along. However I’ll first give a brief introduction to the extent of my knowledge on Green Lantern lore. The last time I bought a Green Lantern comic book was over 12 years ago, when I first got into superhero comic books (I was reading MAD magazine and Archie comic before that). The reason I even bought that comic book was because it was part of the ‘Reign of the Supermen’ storyline that was running after the death of Superman. So it was all happening in the DC universe around that time.

So my first issue and first time I got to learn about Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps was when effectively they were getting destroyed from within. It turned the main character into a bad guy and replaced him with a completely new character. So if you began reading the book like me you effectively started off completely fresh. For some strange reason I didn’t really get into the replacement character. I wanted to learn more about this character that went INSANE. The real unfortunate thing is that the character design for crazy Hal Jordan was a great deal nicer than the ‘new’ Green Lantern. So I dropped the book. Every once in a while I’d hear about Hal showing up and doing all sorts as the DC Universe and the powers that be, didn’t want to get rid of him completely, as he was and is a greatly loved character. Rebirth brings back that character in a way that’s extremely clever and more importantly takes into account all the events that happened before. It’s a great testament to the story that Geoff Johns has crafted.

Reading through this story seriously reminded me (in a good way) with the respect in which Green Arrow’s return was accomplished by Kevin Smith (yes, the Kevin Smith). It wasn’t rewriting history for the sake of it. They didn’t reboot things and hope everyone forgot about what went on before. What Johns does here is explain EVERYTHING.

It’s very clear that Johns is a fan as well and loves this stuff. Loves the fact that people become attached to characters. It’s only inevitable. You read about a character for so long, it’s natural for you to grow attached, as hopefully they grow as a character. The problem is that more often than not the powers that be will forget the amount of time and money you’ve invested in this character by reading about them on regular basis and reboot things because it’s better marketing. That was the main reasoning behind the original rebooting of the character. They made the original character mad, killed him off then fused him with an existing character (the Spectre). To say it was all a complete and utter mess is an understatement. The only good thing out of all of this was the fact that Johns was able to combine all these elements together.

The thing is though that not only did Johns tie all these elements together, but he moved the story forward and added a number of new elements that set the Green Lantern appart from the rest of the DC universe. Hal’s white hair is explained, the reason why originally the ring didn’t work on the colour yellow (which was probably meant to give the ring a weakness at the time, but Johns comes up with an actually honest to god explanation) and the list goes on.

Even though the book is mired in continuity, Johns makes sure all the readers are up to speed with what’s going on. I hadn’t read a GL story in over 12 years and was still able to not only get into the story but enjoy it and want a great deal more. Kyle Rayner (the GL replacement from all those year back) has just crashed on Earth from a mission far far away on the outer rims of space. Meanwhile the remaining Green Lanterns are going a bit funny (there were a couple of replacements for him in case he went funny, which he did so just as well). This is all tied to the fact that the bad personna (Parallax) inside the Spectre/Hal Jordan entity is claiming it’s place back into the real world and that’s where the fun all starts.

I’d be doing a serious disservice to this review if I didn’t actually mention the unbelievable artwork by Ethan Van Sciver. The last time I bought anything with his name on it was something called CyberFrog and he was 17 years old (I was probably only just younger than him at the time). All I can say is that the man has seriously come into his own. Actually I lied, I just remembered he did a couple of issues on New X-Men with Grant Morrison but this stuff is a great deal better, a lot more memorable.

Every page, every design every panel has received a great deal of love, which many artists are less inclined to put in there. The work is extremely detailed but tells the story very clearly. What comes across is the fact that he’s having fun and that reflects onto the reader’s experience completely. My hat also goes off to the colourist Moose Baunann. Completely new name to me in the arena of colourists that I notice, but he’s done a fine fine job on this book.

In the end this is a fun SUPERHERO series. Very fun. Well laid out and aimed directly at the Green Lantern fan, done by the fans themselves (only they’ve now turned pro which is a great thing to see). It returns the status quo that existed 12 years ago, but does it with respect to what’s happened and adds a great deal more to the mythology in general. The new Green Lantern series has Carlos Pacheco on the artwork and I’ve got to say that he’s one of my favourite artists, so I was going to buy that book based on his name alone, however now I know that I’m going to get a story that I will probably very much enjoy.