Review: Green Lantern #6 By Geoff Johns And Mike Choi

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Green Lantern #6

Written by Geoff Johns

Art by Mike Choi and Alex Sinclair

 

The short of it:

Hal Jordan is settling into an over-sexed normal life with once again on-again girlfriend Carol Ferris, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t still trying to save people. He beats up four guys with his bare hands to remind us that the ring doesn’t make the hero. Meanwhile, Sinestro continues to hunt down members of his former Corps that are still active…or just Lyssa Drak, who hasn’t been seen since War of the GLs, and I wasn’t aware still had a yellow ring. He’s forced to hunt down a former rival, one whom he beat and humbled during his time leading the Sinestro Corps. With the help of this mentally shattered former foe Sinestro hunts down Lyssa Drak, and after a view of the future, and his companion begging for his life, Sinestro defeats the witch. But now that he’s seen the future, he knows that there’s only one person he can turn to for help. Care to guess who?

 

What I liked:

  • Hal without a ring is growing on me. It’s a much needed change that, unfortunately, is never going to last, and something Johns is being pretty clear about not intending to let last. But I like it, and it’s nice to see Hal actually in a relationship again. It’s also nice to see that he doesn’t need his ring to kick someone’s ass. There’s no reason why four lightly armed guys should prove any trouble for someone who would have practiced fighting against Batman for just this sort of an occurrence.
  • I’m hardly sold on Starstorm as a character, and I doubt we’ll ever see him again, but I enjoyed the way he wound up comparing to Hal. A man completely broken down with everything taken away from him, but unlike Hal, he allowed himself to completely give in to his despair. He allowed himself to lose, all because Sinestro defeated him.
  • Sinestro is far and away the star of this book and it’s perfect even after six months. He’s so much more dynamic than Hal ever was, much more well rounded too. He’s not a good guy, and he’s not really a bad guy either. Sure, he drags a guy around on a chain to do his bidding in this issue, but that was because the man was refusing to help him. He’s complex, and it leads to a better narrative than the straightforward right and wrong of Hal Jordan.
  • Lyssa Drak? Yes please! One of my favorite under utilized members of the Sinestro Corps who I felt equally suffered for her blow off spot in War of the GLs. And it’s not the skintastic outfit she wears, I was sold on her as the keeper of the Book and the stories within. I like that to her, with her methods, everything is part of a story. Hell, I also like that she’s an evil as hell version of Shadow Lass from the Legion. She’s a great one off villain for this issue, providing the right combination of creepy bad guy and plot furthering that make this issue feel less like a fill in issue.
  • MIKE CHOI IS ON GREEN LANTERN! Yes, I put over Doug Mahnke for his work every month, and I won’t say I was getting tired of it because then I might jynx it and he won’t come back, but MIKE CHOI! I’ve always wanted to see him do some work at DC, as I can’t think of anything he’s drawn that I haven’t enjoyed, and here he is on Green Lantern! And this issue is gorgeous! Really, there’s only one flaw with his art here, and I’ll get into that in the next section. For now, let’s just make it clear I could totally get used to Mike regularly drawing for DC Comics if he’s not at Marvel drawing X-23.
  • I’m a fan of any book that can pull off a character seeing the future and not make it look overly forced. There’s a million ways to do it, and generally I come up groaning “plot device”. Here I came out thinking “Nice idea, Geoff.”
  • I like the last few pages, despite seeing them coming a mile away, I think I’d have been more disappointed if they had gone a different direction.

 

What I didn’t like:

  • Let’s start with that art issue and get it out of the way, shall we? For as gorgeous as the issue looked I just couldn’t shake that Hal and Carol look like teenagers. Their faces are just too young and it looks weird. It’s not as bad at the end of the issue, but in those first few pages Hal looks 15.
  • Speaking of 15, Hal and Carol working things out means that they just have a lot of sex? I mean, yes, we see them on a real date, but within six sentences we’ve established that this is a rarity.
  • Starstorm is a whiny bitch. The idea of a rival that Sinestro utterly broke is cool, but I kept wanting him to die. And not in the “I hate him and hope he eats it” way, more of the “He’s pathetic and I never want to see him again” way.
  • I’m not going to pretend I understand why Sinestro knocked out Lyssa and then took her book but not her or the ring she was wearing. Did he really just leave here there to keep screwing with people? Or did he kill her and I just didn’t realize it?

 

Final thoughts:

Lyssa Drak took too long to come back. Really, this is a problem with a lot of the name brand Lanterns in Yellow, there were a lot of ones who had origins and big moments during the Sinestro Corps War, but since then very few have received any sort of real attention. Lyssa was one of my favorites, and this is her biggest appearance since…I don’t even know when. It was nice to see her in charge of herself instead of simply seconding of whatever someone else. It made her seem like a bigger threat, especially since she fully embraces the power of fear.

I don’t mind Hal  having it relatively easy now that he’s without his ring. I mean, it can be argued that his life founds its way into the crapper solely because of his inability to turn off his devotion to the Corps, and now that he’s separated from it he’s getting a chance to feel like an actual person. Unfortunately, this obviously can’t last, but a Hal without his ring getting time is probably the best way to rehab the character into something a bit more…likable.

Sinestro obviously can’t fill the title role on this book forever, but I’d hope that he’d move into another title for himself once Hal takes his book back. Sinestro has always been a great character, but Geoff Johns has breathed so much new life into him. He’s easily one of the strongest characters in the Big Two right now and it’s really just because Johns has gone ahead and given him a level of depth beyond “renegade Green Lantern” that was enough to keep him as a threat in the Silver Age. He’s a character beyond good and evil, and that’s something that makes him awesomely unique in modern comics. He’s a tweener that actually makes sense.

Mike Choi was a welcome surprise in this issue, as I hadn’t expected a fill in for Doug Mahnke. I never expect one, to be honest. Apparently Choi has been doing some work on Demon Knights that I’ve missed (one more reason to read the book), but I’m just happy to see him at DC. He’s one of my favorite artists, and I’ve had a habit of whining that Marvel doesn’t give him enough high profile work. Well, DC just gave him an issue of Green Lantern, and it looked amazing. I really hope this leads to more work for him, because really, he’s awesome, his style is awesome, and he deserves a regular job drawing a top title.

I’d be interested to see more of Sinestro taking on threats from his unrevealed past, whether it be from his Green Lantern days or his Sinestro Corps days. Starstorm may have been a bitch, but I totally want a one shot or backup story detailing just what happened there. I want to see Sinestro completely break the man. I’m a horrible person, right?

Really, my only problem at all with this issue is that the pacing and design of it make the story feel too much like a bridging issue instead of something that stands alone. Sure, that’s what fill in issues tend to do, but there’s a lot of material in this issue that makes me want to view it as a single issue story. It’s so close and yet so far away. 

Overall: 7.5/10

A lifelong reader and self proclaimed continuity guru, Grey is the Editor in Chief of Comics Nexus. Known for his love of Booster Gold, Spider-Girl (the real one), Stephanie Brown, and The Boys. Don't miss The Gold Standard.