Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #10
Written by Peter Tomasi
Art by Fernando Pasarin
Warning: Major spoilers for Green Lantern #66 and Green Lantern Corps #60. You’ve been warned.
After the last two installments of the War this week we saw both groups left in precarious positions; with Hal and Guy bound by Krona and being wrapped in the bandages that will apparently turn them into Guardians, while Kyle is screaming at John who just channeled the Black Lanterns and BLEW UP LANTERN MOGO! See, major spoilers, first paragraph, I warned you. The issue is directly to the point, and one of the first visuals we get is the rocky corpse of Mogo crashing into Oa in giant chunks. It’s raining Mogo, that gives me a mix of amusement, awe, and horror. It’s a crazy visual, but at the same time I realize that this is Mogo, this is the heart of the GL Corps, and this is his body raining down because John Stewart is an ace at blowing up planets.
Now, I couldn’t go into it in my review of GLC for fear of spoilers, but hey, if I was going to do that this review quite literally would be more blacked out than a classified document. So let’s start with the dynamic of John and Kyle in this issue, picking up immediately after John blew up Mogo. Kyle is, obviously, freaking out about this fact. He is not at all cool with it, nor should he be, and he truly believes that John could have found another option. John, on the other hand, is steadfast in his insistence that there was no other option. Now, I couldn’t really talk about this before, yadda-yadda-yadda, but I don’t agree with John at all. His decision to put Mogo out of his supposed misery was abrupt and came out of left field, and it did not sit right with me at all. Mogo had been containing the remnants of the Black Lanterns he took down in Blackest Night, and apparently he wanted to be put down. Alternatively, they could have just had John channel some green, and Kyle use blue and….kill the black energy? Isn’t that how it worked? Maybe it’s that John just blew up ANOTHER planet, or maybe it’s that I really liked Mogo. I’m sad to see him gone.
Now, Mogo’s loss creates an immediate impact. He was the heart of the Corps, and his death creates a psychic backlash that disables everyone tapped into the Green. This works in the benefit of Hal and Guy, who were being held captive by Krona and his Entity infused Guardians (who are now being hit just as hard as the rest of the GLs). Hal initially assumes that everyone is just being knocked around by the falling rocks, but the realization that it was Mogo…haunting. Our teams meet up, Hal and Guy bringing Ganthet and the Book of the Black in tow, and Kyle and John teleporting in…and immediately Guy makes the obvious comment. Red ring or not, someone needed to make the taunt and not the accusation. Our team is reassembled though, and that means that it’s time for the main event.
Wait, you mean the book isn’t even close to over? Sweet! Parallax, after barely getting a mention in Green Lantern, becomes the focus of this issue as our heroes try to crack open the Central Battery and release him in an effort to free the Corps from Krona’s control. Now, while I won’t spoil the hows or whys, but I will say (for the sake of it being obvious) that Parallax is freed, and because this happened to be Emerald Warriors, Guy gets to shine. And boy does he, Tomasi writes a great Guy Gardner, and this issue gives Guy an awesome character moment. Hal might be considered the best of the GL’s, but Guy lives and breathes the Green Lantern Corps, and let nobody ever forget it.
When I saw the giant list of inkers on this issue I was…turned off a bit, and figured the issue would suffer artistically. A lot of inkers usually reads to me like a rush job, but this issue doesn’t look like one. The rocks falling from the sky, and the completely knocked out Corps make for some powerful visuals, but honestly? Despite my well spoken stance on John’s killing of Mogo, the tears in his eyes after he did it are the most powerful part of the issue. They sell his belief that there was no other option, and despite that he didn’t like it, he honestly believed he had no choice. Two of our cavalry pick up minor temporary costume redesigns, and while I won’t say who or why…they are pretty unspectacular, but seeing dueling Corps logos was pretty sweet. There’s also some nice iconic imagery of the Corps to wrap up the issue, but the amount of White Circles in the group felt incredibly lazy.
This issue accomplished a lot, to say the least. It not only pushed us forward to the conclusion of the War, but it also wrapped up one of the sub plots that has been running for this entire book (all ten issues of it). While I believe it was necessary, and the timing was perfect, I can’t help but feel it was ridiculously rushed through, almost to the point of after thought. With so much to accomplish I can understand the need to push in as much as they can in a short period of time, but at times it feels a bit crammed. All of that said, while this issue definitely felt like it was the penultimate issue of the event, it was a whole lot better than I was expecting. Generally I expect a calm before the storm issue to feature a lot of set up so that the blow off can cram it all in…not unlike the issue just before an event, but this one did a great job keeping the pace of the last two issues in setting up the finale. Krona reveals his master plan, and we’ve got a big time fight ready to go. All in all, I absolutely can not wait for the last issue.
Overall?
9/10
