Green Lantern #15
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Doug Mahnke, Christian Alamy, Keith Champagne, Mark Irwin, Tom Nguyen, and Alex Sinclair
The short of it:
In sector 2820 a Lantern goes to check in on his home planet, fearing the worst thanks to the Third Army….what he finds is a nasty, almost, cloud of the beasts and is never heard from again.
Meanwhile, back in Michigan, it’s Baz time! Not about to be dragged into Green Lantern craziness, Simon’s only real concern is figuring out just what exactly happened to wind him up as public enemy number one, and that means tracking down the owner of the van he stole…that went boom. Simon is infamous by this point, so he’s oh-so-quickly recognized by the man who has the answers he seeks. He manages to convince the man to let him inside to plead his case, to find out where to go next for information…but all is not as it seems. It seems Mr. Wale is the only evidence he needs, as the van owner set up the bomb and put the van where he wanted it to explode…same place Baz stole it from. And now? Now he gets to kill Baz and be a hero. A momentary flash of green energy saves Baz’s life, but the ring goes dry and leaves him running. Agent Fed shows up just in time to save him, but before the bottom can be gotten to about anything…
THRID ARMY ATTACK! Fed and Baz have to find a way to get away from the body snatching monsters that the Guardians have unleashed on the universe. On top of that, we’ve got another green light showing!
What I liked:
- Agent Fed has really, really, REALLY grown on me. He’s leaps and bounds different from the guy that resorted to water boarding in a matter of minutes of interrogation. Now he’s the guy who is going to try and find Baz by thinking like Baz. By considering him innocent until guilty. Thus forms our new odd couple buddy partners!
- I like that the car mystery is already essentially solved. I mean, yeah, we don’t know why Edward Wale is a crazy person, but at least we know something and it’s not just looming over the horizon.
- Baz continues to be more human than most of DC’s stable as he tried to prove his innocence. He’s not a bad guy, not by any means, and the lengths he goes to, the naivete on display, you really do get the belief that he wouldn’t even consider hurting another person. Let alone try and blow up a city.
- Props to Geoff for getting outside the box with the identity of the First Lantern, I was expecting some silver age Green Lantern story callback featuring characters and ideas that predate me as a person, let alone a reader. So a name that instantly hit me in the face with passing familiarity, and one that has never been truly tied into the mythos? You’ve outdone yourself, Geoff!
- Normally I hate “Oh no! My ring is out of power!” stories in GL, but this one works. Baz has zero training or understanding, and no other Lantern’s looking to come and train him since his ring technically doesn’t exist (what with the Guardians trying to kill the previous wearer). Plus, he yells out “C’MON! DO SOMETHING!!” and hopes it will work. Love it.
What I didn’t like:
- Ed Wale was paint by numbers once you saw his gun, in other words, on the first page you saw him. His story was pretty much entirely laid out by that moment, and it killed the suspense of him turning on Baz. They got some back with the Third Army, but the scene lost a lot of oomph.
- While I’m loving this being Baz’s book, either give us more Hal or no Hal. One page is an awful tease and generally leads to me completely forgetting that there was a plot point.
Final Thoughts:
When the Third Army bursted into the kitchen I gave it an “OH YEAH!” Kool-Aid Man style.
No, seriously, this issue made them seem scary again for the first time in several months. Especially the double page spread in the beginning once you realize that giant black cloud is billions of Third Army soldiers.
I’m not a big studier of laws pertaining to what the FBI can or can’t do, but I imagine if an FBI agents finds his way into your house where you’re holding a man at gun point, saying “You’re an intruder” isn’t going to make him apologize and leave while you kill the guy.
The hooded figure that Hal and Sinestro deal with in the Dead Zone. My money is on Tomar-Re. He was Hal’s ally, Sinestro’s enemy, and he’s dead. I wanted to guess Abin Sur, but he died considering Sinestro his friend, so that wouldn’t make sense with the man claiming to be Sinestro’s enemy.
B’dg? Really? I love the message, but talk about obscure use of a GL.
Speaking of, whatever happened to Vath Sarn, Princess Iolande, and Soranik Natu?
Overall: 8.5/10
