In-Depth Review: Green Lantern #28
ROYGBIV & Other Mnemonic Devices of the DCU
Growing up, Green Lantern was my perennial favorite superhero: a normal guy given incredible power fueled only by his imagination and will. But one thing always bothered me: I never really liked green. Why not Blue Lantern? Or Orange Lantern? Or for that matter, Pink Lantern or Off-White Lantern or Chartreuse Lantern?
Two years after the debut of the Green Lantern Corps, the character of Sinestro was introduced, himself a Green Lantern gone rogue and equipped with a power ring of a different color--yellow. But Green Lantern writers would wait another 45 years before exploring the concept to its fullest, and during last year's Sinestro Corps War storyline, Geoff Johns and Dave Gibbons revealed a prophecy in the Green Lantern mythos that predicted a massive war lit by every major color of the visible spectrum: not just the green and yellow to which Lantern fans were accustomed, but also red, orange, violet, blue, and even rainbow stalwart indigo.
Read more without pesky spoilers for you latecomers...
This week's Green Lantern #28 has finally intoduced us to the beginnings of two new shades of Lantern that will play such a major role in the future of the mythology. Rather than spring upon the reader characters and situations with which no one is familiar, Geoff Johns recruits both Laira, a (former) Green Lantern with conspicuous rage issues, and the Controllers, relatives and persistent competitors to the Guardians of the Universe.
As the "Alpha-Lantern" storyline of the last few issues of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps winds to a conclusion, Laira is stripped of her ring and badge after a vicious attack on Amon Sur, Sinestro Corps member and son of the Green Lantern who originally gave Hal Jordan his own ring. After being seemingly attacked on a return trip to her home planet, a blood-red power ring slides onto her finger, expressing Laira's worthiness due to the "great rage in her heart", and we are witness to the first appearance of a Red Lantern.
Though readers assuredly wondered what would become of Laira as her trial came to a close, the appearance of the Controllers is a complete surprise. The Controllers have been in constant struggle in their attempts to surpass the Guardians' own army of Green Lanterns, and they have repeatedly failed, both in their creation of the Darkstars, a rather pale imitation of the GL Corps, and in Effigy, an unstable Earthman given great power only to become a member of the GL rogues gallery. In GL #28, the obsessive alien race gather together to search for a new source for their power and ambitions, a source to be found in the energies of the "orange light". What remains to be seen, of course, is who (or what) the Controllers will choose as their conduit for such power.
Johns and Gibbons have certainly reeled in both older and recent GL fans alike, not to mention hordes of other DC and general comic book fans who, until recently, had never given GL a second thought. And now, fans and newcomers alike will just have to wait in intense anticipation for the rest of the spectrum to unfold.
kid_ampersand
Posted to Review on 12 March 2008
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