Nearly a decade ago, Geoff Johns rebooted the Green Lantern universe with the six issue mini series Rebirth. It brought back Hal Jordan, the supposed greatest Green Lantern, after his fall from grace with Parallax and his time as the Spectre. Johns was looking to restore Jordan to greatness. After nine and half years and stories that included the Sinestro Corps War and Blackest Night, Johns is bringing his time with Green Lantern to a close. Did he restore Hal Jordan to greatness?
Yes. A little too great if you ask me.
My intrepid editor Andy Hunsaker is not a Hal Jordan fan. I am. That being said, we will both have reasons to take a slanted view of Green Lantern #20, the final act in what has largely been an epic love letter to Hal Jordan. Not even the reboot of the entire DC Universe could shake Johns’ dedication to Jordan. Green Lantern remained one of the only series whose timeline was not really affected by the New 52. The final battle in this letter involves the First Lantern.
Stepping outside the enormity of closing out a near decade long involvement with Green Lantern, I’ll be the first to admit the First Lantern yarn is a difficult and convoluted one. Apparently, the First Lantern was there when the Guardians gave up their emotions and created the first ring. Now he has escaped and is looking to rewrite reality. Why he wants to do this is never really explained, and the reveal of a second set of almost Hippie-esque Guardians, who were watching the First Lantern in a space box, is a little fuzzy as well. From a storytelling point of view, it seems Johns was rushed to get this whole thing wrapped up.
The First Lantern heads back to Oa to end reality, or something like that, and he’s met with all the various lantern shades as well as Sinestro, who is dedicated to taking the First Lantern out for good. Meanwhile, Jordan has killed himself in order to possess the black ring, because that will somehow stop the First Lantern. As is usual with final battles in GL, all the lanterns show up and combine powers to stop the bad guy.
Green Lantern #20 is a pretty bloated spectacle. Johns throws everything at you but the kitchen sink. All the colors of lantern are there, Kyle Rayner has become the White Lantern, Parallax gets involved, Nekron is woken up – it’s as if Johns wanted every aspect of his nine and half years to be involved in taking out the First Lantern. I understand the motivation here, but it’s way over the top. It’s too obvious that Johns is parading around is entire run, and it makes the fall of the First Lantern look like little more than a plot device for Johns to say “Looky what I did!!”
Oddly enough, all the fanfare isn’t really the story here. The story ultimately becomes about Sinestro and Jordan and their friendship. I won’t give the big spoilers away, but Johns really puts a nice cap on his desire to humanize Sinestro. Personally, I found the whole Sinestro aspect of Johns’ time with Green Lantern much more interesting than the Hal Jordan mythology, and I suppose it was because Jordan never really grew as a person or a character. As many trials and tribulations as he went through, Jordan never really seemed in any trouble. Even killing himself to commandeer the black ring is brushed off with great ease. If you go back and re-read Johns’ entire run, focus on Sinestro. He’s the complex character. Jordan is too easy to take seriously.
The art is cobbled together from all the people who have worked with Johns. Doug Mahnke, who turns out some incredible stuff, takes care of the lion’s share, but panels and pages from Ethan Van Sciver, Ivan Reis, Patrick Gleason and more adorn the book. While the artists who helped in this series are amazing, we can’t lose sight of all the colorists that put time into GL and the surrounding titles. The Green Lantern Universe is all about color, without it nothing would work. So hats off to those great men and women as well.
Over the last ten years, I have had ups and downs with Geoff Johns and his Green Lantern run. To this day, I find Rebirth boring, but I love the Sinestro Corps War, Blackest Night and even War of the Green Lanterns. Everything past the New 52 reboots, in my opinion, has been garbage. Still, Johns has stuck with a series that, when he took it over, nobody cared about. In his time, he has given us some amazing work, expanded Sinestro, brought new colors to the corps and even managed to shake up the Guardians idea. Green Lantern #20 may be an overblown finale, but if anybody deserves it, Geoff Johns does.
Issue #20
(3 Story, 4 Art)
Overall series from 2004-2013
(4 Story, 5 Art)
