Comics are Awesome III

A general discussion forum, plus hauls and silly games.
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andersonh1
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Re: Comics are Awesome III

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The Green Lantern s2 #12 - I hate to put it this way, but this series has mercifully come to an end with this issue in which ... well, something happens and Hal fights Hector Hammond. Morrison's plots this second "season" have been all over the place and confusing, which is a real shame, because the art is great, and his grasp of Hal's character and history is very strong. I've read all the Silver Age Green Lantern and a random smattering of Bronze Age, and I've read JLA through issue 146 thanks to the omnibus. So when Morrison incorporates a character or a plot point from these 60s and 70s issues, I often recognize it, and it's great to see all of Hal's printed history treated as relevant and valid. The bronze giants come from a Silver Age Flash story, and Morrison even references a Jack Kirby Green Arrow issue at one point.

But the plots and dialogue have been gibberish, to be blunt. I'm sure they make sense to Morrison, and I'm sure I could work hard and decipher them (and I probably will go back and re-read this now that the series has ended to see how it works all in one sitting). So all that great character work and incorporation of Hal's history goes to waste because I can't really tell what's going on half the time. The book started out well, and the first 12 issues were pretty good, and so was the annual and the miniseries, it just went off the rails in the second 12 issues.

I don't plan on buying the next Green Lantern series. I like John Stewart, but not enough to buy a series where he's the sole lead character. I pretty much buy GL when Hal is the main character in the book, or part of an ensemble as he was when Venditti was writing. My monthly comic book reading is down to four books right now: Transformers, TF Escape, Beast Wars and Fantastic Four. I might try the Flash for a bit since it looks like Wally West will be the main Flash for a while.
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andersonh1
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Re: Comics are Awesome III

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Green Lantern #1 - I thought Grant Morrison's series was great when it started, and really off the rails and confusing by the end, but if nothing else it was distinctive. It stood out from the type of series that both Geoff Johns and Robert Venditti had written. Now we're back to a more standard space opera GL book written by Geoffrey Thorne, in which John Stewart appears to be the main character. And it feels like deja vu with Oa under attack, just like Venditti's first issue, down to the flashback to show how we got to that moment. Hal's in the book, and despite the writer's comments on the character, he comes across in a good light here. I have no idea who "Teen Lantern" is, I don't care one bit about Simon Baz, so I don't know how interested I am in following this series. I do like that John's time as a Guardian is mentioned (that's how the Mosaic series ended, and it's been virtually ignored ever since). The dialogue is functional at best, and the supposed death of a Guardian at the end of the issue is a cliche at this point. It's nice to see that recovering the Starheart is apparently motivating the assassin. Morrison is not the only one who can mine past continuity.

I don't know, it feels like a return to a more standard Green Lantern Corps series, but it lacks an intriguing hook to keep me interested. Killing a Guardian is played out, the Guardians keeping secrets from the cosmos and the Corps is played out, and both appear to be at the center of the plot here.
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Ursus mellifera
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Re: Comics are Awesome III

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Sounds like I should be glad I stopped reading GL after Blackest Night ended.
Check it out, a honey bear! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinkajou
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andersonh1
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Re: Comics are Awesome III

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Ursus mellifera wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 9:04 am Sounds like I should be glad I stopped reading GL after Blackest Night ended.
I thought Geoff Johns ran out of gas at the end, but I enjoyed most of Venditti's run (it was the only New 52 book I didn't drop) through the end of the New 52 and into Rebirth when it was Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps. And Grant Morrison started out well, and even when his plots went off the rails his grasp of Hal Jordan as a character was very strong. So it hasn't been all bad by any means, the quality has been up and down (mostly up, in my opinion), so maybe this new series will be better than it appears to be on first impressions. It's not bad, it just feels rehashed.
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Re: Comics are Awesome III

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I would never have thought there would come a point where I'd be reading more Marvel than DC, but it's happened. Of course when I'm buying one Marvel series and zero DC series, that's not saying much for the output of either company. I'm just not paying $5 per issue for a monthly book. The occasional double sized or anniversary issue, sure, but not every month. Green Lantern, Flash (now starring Wally West, so I'm interested), Detective Comics and Action Comics are all $4.99 an issue, and it's just not worth it.

Fantastic Four 33 - Bride of Doom part 2 - Reading the early Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Fantastic Four has made me a fan of this group of characters, so I've been buying the current series by Dan Slott since around issue 9. The current story has a bit of a soap opera feel to it, with Doctor Doom wanting to get married to Latveria's sole super-hero, Victorious. He offers to forgive all past offenses against him at the wedding as part of his country's custom, and wants Reed to be the best man. The soap opera part comes in when Victorious confesses that she slept with Jonny Storm, so the marriage is off and Doom plans to kill all the guests, which include the FF, Namor and Black Panther. End of the issue. It wasn't hard to figure out that Johnny was making a big mistake, but boy is he an idiot sometimes. This series has pretty much taken the place of Rebirth-era Superman as the "family" book of my monthly reading, and it's pretty good.
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andersonh1
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Re: Comics are Awesome III

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Sparky, interesting analysis of Morrison's Green Lantern run here on a blog I read sometimes: http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2021/02/the- ... e-end.html

I haven't been reading the current GL series. Too many characters I care nothing about headlining the book. I miss a good Hal-centric Green Lantern series.
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Re: Comics are Awesome III

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Thanks, that was a pretty interesting read. I didn't finish Morrison's run on Green Lantern, but I'd have to agree with the sentiment that perhaps he (and the medium) is on a path towards disenchantment.

I haven't read the current Green Lantern series either. I gather the Guardians had decided to reorganize how the Corps police the universe, but then the Central Battery mysteriously exploded. So a bunch of GL's died, and those who remain only have whatever charge they've got left. I feel like they've more or less done this story already. And they've introduced a couple more GL's from Earth for some reason. I think they're up to like 8 now? I guess Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz have already been relegated to background characters despite only being introduced about 9 and 7 years ago respectively.
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andersonh1
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Re: Comics are Awesome III

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Sparky Prime wrote: Tue Aug 17, 2021 1:32 pm but then the Central Battery mysteriously exploded. So a bunch of GL's died, and those who remain only have whatever charge they've got left. I feel like they've more or less done this story already.
I was going to say, feels like we've seen all of that before. How many times have the writers destroyed Oa and/or the central power battery? How many times has a big chunk of the Corps died?
And they've introduced a couple more GL's from Earth for some reason. I think they're up to like 8 now? I guess Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz have already been relegated to background characters despite only being introduced about 9 and 7 years ago respectively.
Yeah, they're really overdoing it now. How many human Green Lanterns do we need? And the newer ones are all kids or teens, aren't they? That doesn't even make sense given the law enforcement function of the Corps and how dangerous the job is.
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Re: Comics are Awesome III

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andersonh1 wrote: Wed Aug 18, 2021 8:30 amYeah, they're really overdoing it now. How many human Green Lanterns do we need? And the newer ones are all kids or teens, aren't they? That doesn't even make sense given the law enforcement function of the Corps and how dangerous the job is.
One of them, Keli Quintela, is 11 years old, first introduced in Young Justice. Similarly to Hal, she stumbled across a dying Green Lantern (who used a power pack and gauntlet for some reason, which looks oddly similar to Krona's gauntlet, but I don't know if it's related or not) to become a Lantern. She somehow hacked the battery to do whatever she wanted it to do, without the Corps' knowledge. The Corps eventually found out about her anyway of course. I guess technically, she's not officially a Green Lantern, but she was recently sent to Oa for training.

And then there is Sojourner "Jo" Mullein. She's apparently ex-military and an ex-cop. She was recruited by a Guardian for a special mission in the "Far Sector" for a year and I guess recently returned to Oa. She was also given a new type of Green Lantern ring that doesn't need a power battery to recharge, it just recharges incrementally over time on its own. Although this means it isn't as powerful as any other Green Lantern ring and takes longer to recharge when fully depleted.

Edit: I found a little background for Keli Quintela's battery/gauntlet. Apparently the similarity to Krona's gauntlet has been noticed by the Guardians, but they've confirmed it is still safely locked away in Oa's vaults. So it's a mystery where Keli's gauntlet came from.
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Re: Comics are Awesome III

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And of course Hal disconnected the gauntlet from the backpack before locking it up in the vault, so Krona's gauntlet might not even be functional at the moment. I think the last we saw it, it was flaring up with power as if to indicate that the bad future where it became sentient could still happen, but then nothing further was done with it.

It's interesting that the current writer is making references back to Mosaic with regard to John Stewart. That series always seems to be ignored, while the destruction of Xanshi gets brought up over and over. Did they ever explain what happened to the Mosaic cities? Did Hal as Parallax remove them from Oa? Did they all die when Kyle destroyed the planet? It was a huge dangling plot thread that I never read a resolution to. Maybe they'll address that here, as well as the fact that John was once a Guardian.

edit: found the answer. When John Stewart joined the Darkstars, it was addressed. Hal destroyed the cities as Parallax, but not before the Guardians had returned all the inhabitants of the Mosaic to their own worlds. It's covered by a few lines of dialogue, but that's better than nothing.

https://www.cbr.com/wait-wasnt-john-ste ... -universe/
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