Thursday, February 11, 2016

Green Lantern Corps: Edge of Oblivion #2 Review and *SPOILERS*



Saving Douchebags, Who Don't Want To Be Saved


Written By: Tom Taylor
Art By: Ethan Van Sciver, Jason Wright, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: February 10, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Take my hand and journey with me to the Universe that existed before our own.......... and when I say "our own", I mean our heroes' own.  That's right, we're dealing with a Universe that's destined to die to create the one we all know and love, where Batmen swing through the streets of Gotham and Supermen lose their powers and have their identities revealed, destroying their lives........... okay, maybe not that last part because no one loves anything about that, but what I'm getting at is our Green Lantern Corps are stuck in a Universe that is on the......... edge of oblivion and they, with a city the size of a planet are all that's left in this barren void as they try to find a way to survive and for our Lantern heroes, they're trying to pull a Dr. Sam Beckett hoping that they might make it home....... possibly with some kind of leap............ Man, I miss Quantum Leap.  So our Corps, with this planet full of strangers will need to work together to find a way out of this Universe, but from what we saw in the previous issue with Muk Muk being murdered by some mysterious attacker, well I'm guessing that teamwork will be a difficult proposition.  Let's jump into this issue and see what's what and if we can find out who killed poor Muk Muk and broke my heart.  Let's check it out.


Explain It!:

Our issue begins with the planet Perduron and Mogo just kickin' it through space, while Mogo is doing it's best in acting the part of the Midnight Special, shining it's light down on you, me, all the lost lanterns still out there and pretty much anyone else who has fond memories of Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks belting that beautiful song out........... Yeah, I want to watch The Twilight Zone movie........ You know what?  Have a taste and have a good time with it.


So yeah, talking about things that aren't about The Twilight Zone movie, we've got our Lanterns discovering the dead body of Muk Muk and Guy Gardner just looses it on Kilowog for being so adamant about protecting this planet full of people, who they knew nothing about and their friend and fellow Corpsmen having to pay the price for his ignorance.  Yeah, it's a rough go for Kilowog, who doesn't deny what Guy's throwing at him, but he's not about to stand around and feel sorry for himself, instead he goes to those two giant ass protectors of this planet to find out who the hell killed our little fish friend.  As it turns out, Perduron has a deep dark secret and apparently it's all about how it houses something old and evil within it that wants to destroy everything......... Yeah, that's a bit of a deal breaker to me when it comes to working together.  Our heroes don't really get a chance to worry about this big bad evil though, who apparently has half the populace of this planet on it's side because out of nowhere Perduron and Mogo come across a giant rift in space............ which is so massive that I have no idea how they didn't notice it before they got right up on its ass.


Like Mogo, this Perduron seems to be alive as well because when it comes upon this rift, the world shakes and the giants tell us that the world is afraid and puts its world engines into overdrive in an attempt to flee this possible entrance into nothingness.  Perduron doesn't get very far though because apparently this rift is exactly what this old evil thing wants and she sends one of her followers to pull a kamakazi into the planet's engines, stopping it in it's tracks.  Obviously we have a dilemma here because on top of the planet being stuck in place, the rift is starting to get bigger and it's sucking them towards it, kind of like a black hole, only a rip in reality that's all types of rainbow looking.  With this, John Stewart takes a handful of Lanterns who like him, dig engineering so that they can fix the world engines, while the rest of the Lanterns try to create a barrier in front of the rift to stop all that sucking going on.


In the end, this evil being sends out another of its attack ships, but instead of going all suicide bomber on our heroes, it fires missiles at Guy, Arisia and B'dg, causing their section of the barrier to disappear, but before they could get all sucked in, one of the giants grabs them like a big strong lover in the night, who reassures you that everything is going to be alright........... That's a thing right?  The attacker continues though and before it could fly right into the giant's face, Guy sends out a blast that destroys the ship, but still causes fire and debris to rain down on our giant friend, which causes him to drop Arisia and B'dg into the rift......... and as far as we know, into nothingness.


As our issue closes, John Stewart and the engineer Lanterns fix the planet's engines, but Guy is left dumbstruck at the loss of his friends and when Kilowog tries to get him to accept the fact that they're gone......... Well, Guy's not into that and he just turns around and slugs the shit out of our big pink buddy.


That's it for this issue of Green Lantern Corps: Edge of Oblivion and while I love the artwork in this issue and want to tie Ethan Van Sciver to a desk and force him to be on a Green Lantern book for the rest of his life.......... since I love the way he draws these characters, not because I'm some sort of sick deviant or anything.  I have to say that I found myself yelling at this book out loud........... because sometimes I yell at the books I'm reading and because we're given this exposition about how our Lanterns are helping a world that is half comprised of people who just want death and destruction and the ultimate goal of our heroes is to take this planet and them back to the Universe we all know and love.  This is a quick fix in my mind because they could just take the people who don't want to see the end of all things and place them on Mogo, but before reasonable action can take place, a giant ass rift in space and time is revealed and I don't know if that happened out of nowhere or if this thing somehow snuck up on everyone, but everything is just too convenient.  As soon as we find out about this great evil that wants everyone to be sucked into oblivion, some such occurrence of oblivion comes out of nowhere and forces the story to be halted so that our heroes can fix the problem, while possibly killing off two beloved characters.  Yeah, I don't believe they're dead, but having this issue solely for shock value feels a bit cheap and it doesn't get us any further than we were before with our heroes being stuck in a dangerous place, that they need to escape from.  So yeah, I wasn't a big fan of this issue, but Guy Gardner had some excellent moments here that really allowed him to shine and show how bad ass he truly is.  One last problem I have because it was fully revealed here is that our big ending to Lost Army with Mogo being transformed into an entity that can harness every spectrum and Two-Six becoming a Blue Lantern is fully ignored in this series and that's a bit disappointing since that aspect was what I considered the best part of the Lost Army story............. yet somehow Guy Gardner retains his Green Lantern status............ Yeah, I don't get it.

Bits and Pieces:

While the artwork and colors in this book are beyond top notch, I have to say that the story is conveniently stalled so that we can have ourselves a token action sequence, complete with a shocker ending.  That's par for the course though, but this situation does little for me than make me question how bright our heroes really shine....... mentally.  This series is still moving a lot faster than Lost Army ever did though and for that I'm grateful, but some of the best aspects of that story even though this is a direct continuation are left behind and I'm just left scratching my head at the deliberate omission.  This is still an enjoyable issue, full of Lanterns doing Lantern things, it's just a little sparse on the forward momentum.

6/10

1 comment:

  1. What has been up with Kilowog lately? I see that Guy has had enough of his crap. I am hoping that Arisia is not dead and they end up finding her.

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