I’m a life long Green Lantern fan. I can remember when Arisa used her ring to speed up her aging so that Hal Jordan would hook up with here (and he did.) I can remember when Hal Jordan gave up the ring to be with Carol Ferris. Hell, I can remember before John Stewart was in the Marines.
I fondly recall the glory days of H.E.A.T. threatening comic book creators. Good times.
So you’d think that I’d be all for the upcoming War of the Green Lanterns. Well, I’m really sort of apprehensive about it. And by “sort of” I mean “completely.”
I’m worried for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I’m not really sure that the Green Lantern banner of books is really as strong as DC would have us believe. I mean Green Lantern has a stellar art team, but the story seems to alternate between “wheel spinning” and “stalling.” I can’t honestly say that I care about the events of that book, and I’m a Hal Jordan fan.
Green Lantern Corps is a title that’s really coming into it’s own after a few shakey months when Tony Bedard first took over. It’s actually an interesting read and The Weaponer makes for quite the addition to the rogues gallery of the Green Lantern Corps.
Emerald Warriors is sort of a disappointment, but mainly because I’ve come to expect excellence from Peter Tomasi. Still, his work on that title has been extremely underwhelming, with only the most recent issue giving any indication that the book has found it’s footing.
And when you combine the announcement of a Red Lantern Corps ongoing book, it looks like you’ve got a franchise that appears ripe for collapsing on itself, especially if the Green Lantern film underperforms.
But there’s another reason why I’m leery of this upcoming storyline; DC has a spotty history when it comes to them. In fact anytime you’ve got a storyline that references a recognizable DC character and a violent act, the results are never good.
Allow me to illustrate this point.
Amazons Attack! (or War of the Wonder Women)– I’m a huge Will Pfeifer fan and even I can’t defend this storyline. It was misguided and poorly executed. It was supposed to be a huge deal and no one cared. But that’s what you get with an editorial mandated story.
Battle for the Cowl (or War of the Batmen) – With Bruce Wayne dead, DC decided to use the turmoil to a) cancel a few titles and b) pretend that the new Batman wasn’t going to be Dick Grayson. To that end they crafted this miniseries that saw several members of the Bat-family fighting for Bruce’s legacy. It was a huge waste of time and an excuse for new #1 issues.
War of the Supermen (or Snore of the Supermen) – What if Earth and New Krypton had a war and nobody was interested? That’s the question this event answered. It was billed as the “100 Minute War” but it felt so much longer, like it wasted so much more of my time. This book was the FCBD launch, this is what DC promoted to their new fans last year. Man, this storyline was very underwhelming.
And so you see, given those examples, why I’m not that keen on “War of the Green Lanterns.” With that track record and basically the same editorial staff in place, does this storyline really have a chance?
I mean, am I alone in worrying about the quality of this storyline and using recent history to formulate a theory?
