Green Lantern: Brother’s Keeper

Well, my library had another Green Lantern book. I love Green Lantern, so why not read more, right? Well, this one wasn’t very interestingly apparently.

This issue starts off with a big commentary about how it contains a plot arc revolving around Green Lantern Kyle Rayner’s work apprentice being attacked by bigots who hate him for being homosexual. Apparently, the pair of issues presented here caused quite a stir among the gay community, and paralleled a real life attack. Unfortunately, I’m a little late on the band wagon, so I was not quite as exited as the rest of the authors when they wrote it.

Anyway, after the author’s hyping this up in the prologue, it starts with a story about… A mind controller causing havoc in the middle of the city and possessing a couple of Lanterns? This has nothing to do with the commentary in the beginning! After Brainwave gets bored, he runs off and laughs at everybody, because he has more important things to do. He Doesn’t do anything for the rest of the book, even though he beat the stuffing out of Earth’s Green Lanterns and ran off laughing at them because he was bored.

Anyhoo, the rest of the book is about the assault of Kyle Rayner’s apprentice. While Kyle and his green girlfriend (Captain Kirk would be proud) Jade are out of town seeing Kyle’s mom and going to his high school reunion (an amusing string of events by the way.) After this, Jade receives a phone call telling her that Kyle’s assistant, Terry Berg, has been nearly beaten to death. Apparently he was caught kissing his boyfriend outside of a dance hall, and some jerks decided to beat him up over it. Kyle gets pissed off and beats the stuffing out of them, hunts them down, and they all go to jail. Not surprising, since your average street thug doesn’t stand a chance and against a FREAKING GREEN LANTERN!

Anyway, the rest of the issue is spent by Kyle sulking over how he wasn’t able to protect his friend, him getting pissed off, and leaving Earth with Jade for a while. Plot doesn’t have many twists in it, and doesn’t seem very epic for a Green Lantern story. Also, it’s kind of preachy. In the end there’s some more commentary about the backlash the story received. I’d enjoy the message it portrayed a bit more if the story was more interesting. Genreally though, the story’s main hook was that it was more controversial a few years ago. Didn’t excite me nearly as much as another Green Lantern book I found at the library….

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Green Lantern: Rage of the Red Lanterns

Well, I did find something interesting while I was scouring my local library for comics to review. Despite making quite a few comments about how Japansese comics are better than American comics, I actually enjoy reading Green Lantern books quite a bit. The real key to enjoying American comics is not to look at them as a whole, which is a convulted mess, but to look at the individual story arcs as separate and unique.

Now then, we have a book from the Blackest Night story arc, which was being advertised quite frequently at comicon. This is the beginning of that arc, which appears to revolve around factions of lantern corps waging war. It goes beyond the green light of the lanterns and the fearsome yellow of Sinestro, and includes the raging red and the blue light of hope. I think it adds an interesting element to the DC universe, and gives the Green Lanterns some new allies and enemies.

This book starts with the Guardians creating a team known as the “Alpha Lanterns,” in order to work as internal affairs within the Green Lantern corps. The first trial they are to investigate is the case of Liara, a Lantern who executed a Sinestro corps member who was bragging about becoming a martyr for his cause (really, I think she might have done the corps a favor.) Sinestro who is currently being imprisoned by the Green Lanterns, is enjoying watching people squabble about the current issues, while prophesizing about a bigger threat.

A bit later, on the way to Sinestro’s execution, the Green Lanterns are ambushed by a squad from the Sinestro corps. Unfortunately, another faction appears in this battle, intent on killing both the Green Lanterns and the Sinestro corps. These guys are hardcore. The red rings they possess cause their organs to stop working and producing blood, and causes them to spit napalm while they try to kill enemies and drink their blood. They manage to take both corps by surprise, which allows for ANOTHER lantern corps, the blue lanterns to show up and save the green lanterns skins. This corps is run by an ex-guardian of the Green Lantern corps, and is generally a bunch of space hippies who spread hope throughout the universe. Their main representative, Saint Walker, attempt to convince Hal Jordan to join with them.

Hal refuses, and instead attempts to get back to executing Sinestro, who has been captured by the red lanterns. Interestingly, the red lanterns seem to want Hal to join them too…

Overall, this is a pretty interesting arc, where a lot of stuff happens, and builds up for more stuff to happen. I will probably look into more of this blackest night stuff if I manage to get my hands on it.

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