Green Lantern #163 Review

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Reviewer: Chris Delloiacono
Story Title: On the Waterfront — Black Circle: Urban Knights, Part 4 of 6

Written by: Judd Winick
Pencilled by: Charlie Adlard
Inked by: Charlie Adlard
Colored by: Tatjana Wood
Lettered by: Jack Morelli
Editor: Bob Schreck
Publisher: DC Comics

Break out the dance shoes, it’s the early 90’s all over again in the pages of GREEN LANTERN and GREEN ARROW. An unnecessary crossover that goes back and forth between two comics that sucked in the 90’s, and is even worse now. Comics reading is at an all time low, and cheap gimmicks like this seemed to be a thing of the past. Unfortunately fans of the Emerald Gladiator and the Emerald Archer have to read through two more issues of this compost.

Green Lantern and Green Arrow are in the midst of an acrimonious team-up that includes Connor Hawke (Ollie’s son) as well as Amon Sur, who’s the son of Abin Sur, the being who gave Hal Jordan his power ring. The four are attempting to stop interplanetary drug dealers, the Black Circle, from taking massive amounts of the Earth’s cleaning products for sale in their area of the galaxy. The idea of Earth cleaning products as drugs is hokey, and the Black Circle is an utterly forgettable group of villains, they’re nothing but cheap Skrull rip-offs. A quick note to the writers: lame plot hook, plus awful foils, makes for wretched reading.

Judd Winick’s dialogue is sharp for the most part, including some nice back and forth between GA and GL, but in the end everything seems forced. I am flabbergasted that such a solid writer is involved in this drivel. The most galling thing is that Winick is going to end an excellent run of more than thirty issues on GREEN LANTERN with his three parts in this travesty. Not the postscript I’d want to leave on a book.

Like the plot and crossover, the art even rings true to the early 90’s. Charlie Adlard’s work isn’t horrible by any stretch of the imagination, but it just isn’t up to snuff for a major comic book. Perhaps it would have been better to bring in another artist to ink his pencils. The work looks rushed, and the characters just aren’t drawn correctly.

This is without question a team-up and marketing gimmick that never should have occurred!