Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Green Lanterns #54 Review



The Phantom Menace


Written By: Dan Jurgens
Art By: Marco Santucci, Scott Hanna, Hi-Fi, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: September 5, 2018


The rings have gone wonky in the Green Lantern Corps and while the rest of our heroes are fighting Ravagers and Eon out in space, Simon Baz has been called away to Earth by the Guardians.  Yeah, none of us bought that, but most of us were shocked to see that Simon was actually being manipulated by Hank Henshaw, The Cyborg Superman.  Let's jump into this issue and see if Simon can overcome or if he's just another victim of this villain.  Let's check it out.

Let me just start off by saying that Cyborg Superman is one of my favorite villains of all time.  That being said.......... there's something that just doesn't feel right about his depiction in this issue.  I mean, we've seen Hank Henshaw use his technopathic powers before to take control of different things since the creation of the character, but for how specific everything had to be for everything to work out to get us from point A to point B....... Well, it feels really forced.  


I mean, we actually have Hank Henshaw breaking down everything he's done to get us to this situation in this issue and it comes off sounding completely ludicrous.  I know, we deal with ludicrous things all the time in superhero comics, but this just felt so forced and over the top.  I will tell you that I did enjoy the cliffhanger, but if you're a fan of Dan Jurgens then you know he always nails the cliffhanger.  It's just that everything else in this issue felt boring in the first half and then the over the top reveal of Hank Henshaw for our second half.  


All in all, I love the art in this issue and I think that the cliffhanger gets one of our main characters back to something that I thought made him special in the first place, but Cyborg Superman felt off and the other Lanterns in this book just came off like jerks and even the voice of reason, Jessica Cruz didn't seem too convinced of Simon's innocents by the end of their throwing shade at the Baz man moment.  Hopefully, things pick up now that the cat is out of the bag, but we still have to figure out who the hell Eon is and I don't see that reveal being all that interesting.  Hopefully, I'm wrong.


Bits and Pieces:

While the cliffhanger in this issue continues to impress, it's the rest of the issue that comes off boring and then odd halfway through in the way it depicts our main villain.  The plot just comes off forced, but hopefully, that doesn't continue now that it's out and about and we can just move on.  I really enjoyed the art here, but this arc isn't grabbing me the way I hoped it would.

5.3/10

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