Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Green Lanterns #2 Review and *SPOILERS*



Twisted Sister


Written By: Sam Humphries
Art By: Robson Rocha, Jay Leisten, Blond, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: July 6, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Green Lanterns may have been the Rebirth title that I was looking forward to the most just because of how much I enjoyed the characters of Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz, but even with me getting plenty of these characters, I find that Simon isn't exactly how I remembered him being, what with him being a sad sack..... when he's not being an over zealous blowhard.  We've definitely got an odd dynamic though and I don't know if Simon's character changed to fit the story that we're dealing with, I only hope that he becomes more rounded as Jessica gains more experience and confidence in herself and her abilities...... and what better way than to throw an all out invasion by the Red Lantern Corps at our heroes.  When we left this series previously, we saw Simon bestowed with an odd new Green Lantern ability: Emerald Sight and Jessica was finding out how terrible Wal-Mart really is....... and then everybody in the store became infected with rage, but believe me, it was still pretty terrible before all the rage came spewing out.  Let's jump into this issue and see how our two rookie Lanterns handle this crisis and hopefully find out what Atrocitus' plan is for Earth.  Let's check it out.



Explain It!:

Our issue begins with a little bit of catch up for anyone who isn't familiar with the Red Lantern Corps and what they're all about, but for all of us who have been paying attention and have been on the Red Lantern trolley for awhile now, it's not too over the top in its delivery and we do get to find out what this whole "Red Dawn" is all about......... kinda.  Yeah, we find out that the Hell Tower we saw spring forth in the previous issue is the nexus point for Atrocitus' plans and that other term dropped on us last issue, the "Rage Seed" seems to be the ring of power to the Hell Tower's Crack of Doom.  So yeah, drop a Rage Seed down a Hell Tower that's burrowed down to the planet's core........ BOOM!  Red Dawn...... and a new era for the Red Lanterns begins complete with raged out disciples and a new home planet to boot.


Yeah, I don't know exactly how everyone and their sexy ass mamas are getting infected across America, since the Hell Tower is in one location, but as we saw in the previous issue, Jessica Cruz is dealing with a rage outbreak while she was out shopping for towels with her sister and man is she in way over her head.  At first this section feels like the Jessica Cruz pity party bit of the book, what with her not being able to overcome her fear or being able to concentrate enough to create a construct, but it quickly becomes really intriguing when Simon shows up to save the day and get Jessica out of there, but with her sister being one of the infected, she's not about to leave.  Yeah, Simon is still a bit over the top, but it's at least fun and seeing the lengths that Jessica will go...... like actually fighting her partner in order to protect her sister, it really shows how Jessica is already growing as a character and how when the right situation presents itself, she's more than capable of stepping up.


In the end, after a bunch of back and forth about how Simon needs her somewhere else and Jessica refusing to leave her sister, Simon eventually creates a handcuff construct and flies Jessica above the Earth so that she can see...... and understand that things have gotten worse than a bunch of raged out shoppers at her local big box store because the infection continues to spread and as our heroes look down on the Earth, the focal point of the infection becomes really clear as a Red Lanterns symbol is emblazoned on the Earth's surface.


That's it for this issue of Green Lanterns and I have to say that this issue really surprised me in how much it got me to stop being on the fence about this title.  Yeah, even though I was really looking forward to this series initially, the Rebirth issue and the first issue started making me feel like maybe this wasn't the series that I wanted after all, but with this installment my faith has been restored because not only am I a great big fickle mush head flip flopper, but because Sam Humphries gave me exactly what I wanted in dealing with one aspect of all the things he threw at us last issue...... which seriously was too much, but if time is taken to ease us into each concept like this issue does...... well, we might just have a winner on our hands because I enjoyed the story we were given here and found myself really liking the dynamic between our two Lantern heroes.  As like every other issue, I also enjoyed the art in this and hope the art team is able to keep up with this level of awesomeness because while I'm starting to really get behind the story, the art has been the main draw of this book.

Bits and Pieces:

While Green Lanterns seemed a bit bumpy right out of the gate, with this issue it feels like we hit a turning point, where everything we wanted from this series is just on the horizon...... including an awesome dynamic between our two Lantern heroes.  Continuing to be great here is the art team, who makes everything in this book look great and for the first time since this series started, I have to say that I can't wait to see what goes down in Red Dawn.

8/10 

4 comments:

  1. Love how we're slowly getting more and more depth to Jessica as a character and learning about her personality, hopefully this series does the same for Simon who has been woefully under-utilised, can't wait

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unfortunately I'm dropping Green Lanterns it has not been an enjoyable book and with new titles coming every week something had to give and the 2 I'm enjoying the least are this and flash

    ReplyDelete
  3. This issue was better so I have hope that one day GL will return to being my first read on Wednesdays. Did anyone else notice that Simon pulled a Guy face (crazy ass grin) while driving his construct truck??

    ReplyDelete
  4. I liked the banter and personalities more in this issue than the last two for sure. I thought some of the action or construct art was a little hard to follow at some points. Like the stuff with the car...did he run into Jessica? Did he do some kind of powerslide and force her to fly back? I just had that feeling a couple times.

    ReplyDelete