By Robin Jones
It’s not easy being Green… (by @lottiejonesy)
“Hchello mchss Moneypenny, itsch a lovely pharty, shhhame I waschn’t invited…”
Welcome to P and I #007! But don’t worry, there’s not a Humpalot, Squidbeaver or ScharamooschScaramoosch in sight, although reading this whilst listening to Duran Duran is always welcome. Let’s delve right into things, I decided I wanted to look at the Green Lantern last week, and that’s exactly what I’ve done, and also like last week, I’ve teamed up with someone from my Twitter feed, the young, talented, Jean Claude Van Damme and Iron Shiek loving @TheFatLantern! Like Green Arrow and Green Lantern, we blazed a trail through bad puns and crap Sean Connery impressions and bring my first look at the Emerald Knights of Oa.
I’m going to be brutally honest when starting this piece. I didn’t used to like the Green Lantern. I didn’t know much about him at all until in 2011 a major blockbuster film came spiralling into the cinemas during the summer. The Green Lantern had Ryan Reynolds, everyones favourite motormouth actor in the lead role as Hal Jordan, Mark Strong in support as, who I now know to be a pivotal villain in the series; Sinestro,Tim Robbins and Peter Sarsgaard also shoehorned in there and a big ole budget behind it! A bunch of friends asked if I wanted to go see it, and I jumped at the chance, since WB/DC had made such awesome Batman films with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight I thought it would be a guaranteed winner. Cue two hours later, my eyes stinging from the 3D glasses, we all walked bleary eyed out of the cinema screen, wondering what had gone wrong! My biggest gripe with the film wasn’t Reynold’s cgi costume, it wasn’t even the films unsure footing of whether to be serious or not, it was the lack of imagination when it came to Jordan using his ring in his fights with Parallax. Two F-16′s and a chain do not help make an impressive final battle!
Fast forward to now, and I’ve just finished reading Geoff John’s Green Lantern: Secret Origins and I am also ready to dive into the classic Emerald Dawn. I’m following quite a specific reading list handed down to me, in a ceremony matching the potency and gravitas of the inauguration of a new Lantern on Oa, by Dominick Papandrea, or @TheFatLantern, the most Green Lantern centric, most Green Lantern knowledgable, most Green Lanternable person in my twittersphere! For a newbie like myself, having someone who was willing to take their time and explain to me a comprehensive reading list and why it’s best to go in that order was a massive help. I think one of the biggest blockers to a potential comic reader is the fear of continuity lines and assessing how best to deal with things like crossed continuity. What Dominick did was give me a list that spans decades of comics, and weaves into a clear narrative right through to more recent stories like Blackest Night and The Sinestro Corps War.
Dominick runs his own site, The Fat Lantern which is full of reviews, irreverent humour and FAT Illustrations, one of which is mine! (You’re going to have to look for it!) I was lucky enough to have Dominick send me over his story of how he became such a huge fan of the Green Lantern.
I have been a comic book reader my entire life. It wasn’t until I was an adult, however, that I fell in love with Green Lantern. The first Green lantern comic that really sparked my interest was #0 of “Blackest Night”, released on free comic book day 2009. Reading that comic resulted in me becoming one of the biggest Green Lantern fanatics out there. I was on board for the entire “Blackest Night” series. After “Blackest Night” concluded, I went back and read “Green Lantern: Rebirth”, then everything else that had “Green Lantern” and “Geoff Johns” on the cover.
When I first read “Green Lantern: Rebirth”, I was blown away. It’s such a strong, emotional Green Lantern story. But I felt like I had so many blind spots. It brings up a lot of Green Lantern history that I just didn’t know. So I went further back to the late 1980′s/early 1990′s and read “Emerald Dawn I & II”, “Emerald Twilight”, and “New Dawn”. These comics deal with the rise and fall of Hal Jordan, and the rise of then new Green lantern, Kyle Rayner. My connection with Green Lantern kept getting stronger the more I read. Now, I spend as much time as I can catching up on the past 70 years of Green Lantern that I’ve missed.
Prior to “Blackest Night”, I had absolutely no interest in Green Lantern. Geoff Johns, along with a handful of great artists, redefined a character with “Green Lantern: Rebirth” by bringing Hal Jordan back, while also defining an entire universe with the establishment of the emotional spectrum in “Blackest Night” (and the comics leading up to it). That blew me away and made me excited about Green Lantern. Even now that Geoff Johns is not writing Green lantern anymore, I still feel that same excitement. Will is a powerful emotion!
Will indeed is a powerful emotion. So, with all this newfound information at hand, a reading list as long as my arm, and a spare evening, I read Geoff John’s Secret Origins. It was good to see Hal Jordan vulnerable, human and not as polished with the use of his power ring. In the first issue he doesn’t even don his trademark Green, white and Black uniform! It’s purely about his backstory and thats what I love about Secret Origins! Geoff Johns takes the opportunity to further build upon his rebooted Green Lantern story, by dealing out extra layers of characterisation. Something I had always wondered was why was Abin Sur traveling to Earth in a spaceship when he had his ring and the power of will? Johns answers that by explaining that Abin Sur’s power ring will fail him when he needs it most, from the beginning of issue two it sounds like Sur has come to terms with his destiny, he seems ready to die in service to a greater cause. It’s this attention to detail, John’s answering of questions which have hung over Jordan’s beginning as the Green Lantern, which are the the stories strongest points. Everything about the story is fleshed out, built upon and made a fuller experience. It is good to see Sinestro prior to his fall from the Lanterns, working with Jordan, mentoring him on how best to wield his ring. What John’s does is re-boot the Green Lantern’s story for an audience such as myself, a newbie who has no prior knowledge, and also makes a comic for Green Lantern fans, answering those questions they have long pondered, and for me, it has introduced me to a character I really want to delve into. Sinestro.
Sinestro is a character I would love to explore a lot more, I always felt Mark Strong’s performance as him was perhaps the film adaptations strongest (excuse the bad pun) point. I will definitely be looking to read the Sinestro Corps War at a later date, as this fallen Lantern intrigues me. What he embodies is the lure of power and how by abusing that power, it can abuse you. Once the Lantern of sector 1417, he had been securing order through fear, which embodied the colour yellow. It’s this tale that strangely, I find more interesting than Jordan’s. Darth Vader’s story was cooler than Luke Skywalker’s, The Empire Strikes Back was the best Star Wars, therefore I want to focus on the bad guy! Expect further developments soon!
As you know, I’ve been holding my third poll now for which comic I should read next, and the difference with this latest one is that it’s indie, non superhero comics I’m going to be checking out! Now, I’ve read the Walking Dead and I love that, but the realm of comics that aren’t superheroes is pretty much a blank canvas to me. So the choices for what to read were laid bare last week and I offered you the following…
You battled it out amongst yourselves over who was voting for what, with some great recommendations coming my way alongside your respective votes. However, there has to be a winner…
So there you go, I’ll be reading Y The Last Man for my next review!
Until next time…
For more comic views and reviews follow Robin on Twitter at @Hulksmash1985
Posted on July 11th, 2013
Category: REVIEWS
Tags: Comic Reviews, DC Comics, Green lantern, Hal Jordan, Papercuts and Inkstains #007, Robin Jones, Sinestro