As part of my current effort to get back into DC, I recently binge-read the current run of Green Lanterns, from #1 to this week's #29. This has become one of my favourite books and I will be looking forward to it every month from now on. I have found it a great jumping-on point, and the characters and story are very engaging and manage to grip and entertain while feeling familiar in a 'this is what I buy comics for' kind of a way.
So, the setting. This book follows Earth's 2 Green Lanterns, Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz. If you are in any way familiar with Green Lantern, you'll be wondering 1) Who are they and where is Hal Jordan and 2) why are there 2 of them? The simple answer is that the Green Lantern Corps is operating a little differently to what we're used to, and while the familiar Lanterns are still there, they aren't on Earth and they aren't at the forefront of this story. We have 2 new Lanterns figuring out how to pick up that mantle, and learning how to work together on top of that. So far I have not found any reason to have 2 Lanterns on Earth other than to create conflict as they butt heads, but I can forgive this, as conflict is a useful tool to build great stories with. The art in this book is absolutely sumptuous and Julio Ferreira and Eduardo Pansica have made a bright, eye-catching set of pages in every issue.
Issue #29 sees our heroes thrust back in time to the dawn of the Green Lantern Corps, faced with training the original 7 Green Lanterns first called to the cause. It's a great idea in that it allows our protagonsts to really explore what it means to be a Green Lantern and do some self-discovery off the back of teaching the people they see as legends. It's very clever and Sam Humphries deserves a lot of credit for the execution of this book. I use the word execution because halfway through reading this series, it suddenly dawned on me that this book, more than any other, shows what is wrong with a lot of the current Marvel lineup.
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| I would just use a spray bottle full of cold water, but hey, whatever works... |
For the most part, this comic ticks a lot of boxes for a typical modern Marvel book. For starters the representation of diversity and social issues: Baz is of Arabic descent and gained his ring whilst interned at Guantanamo Bay. Cruz is Hispanic and suffers from crippling anxiety that kept her housebound for 4 years, so while battling supervillains she also has to battle constant panic attacks. Secondly, the familiar hero name given to completely new characters that we haven't seen before. And thirdly, in this issue, the new characters showing the old characters how it's done, à la Marvel Generations. So why am I so sold on this book?
The answer is simple: STORY and CHARACTERS. All of the above are aspects of the protagonists' characters, but they never become the story itself. They are used to flesh them out and make you care about them, so in turn you care about their outcome in the overall story, which is, wait for it, a superhero story with good guys, bad guys, a mystery to solve and adversity to overcome. DC takes Marvel to school with this comic, and shows that you can make a book inclusive, diverse and woke AF without boring your readers into defection.
Pick it up, and devote some time to reading the back issues to get up to speed. I guarantee you won't regret it.
4 / 5
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