Retro Comics are Awesome

[andersonh1]

I don't know how retro eleven year old Green Lantern comics are, but I've been enjoying the "Green Lantern by Robert Venditti" omnibus. Hard to believe that it's been 11 years since Geoff Johns's final issue and Robert Venditti taking over the series. I remember a lot of griping about the "Lights Out" story and the concept of an emotional reservoir that can be tapped dry, and I tend to agree that it doesn't really make sense. I would think all the various people in the universe would generate emotion, making an inexhaustible supply. Maybe the Lanterns were using it up faster than it was generated? But that aside, the story is good and Relic is a good antagonist, acting on what he thinks are good motives: trying to prevent the death of this universe for the same reasons his universe died. The omnibus includes both the Green Lantern issues, which I have read, and the Green Lantern Corps isses, which I have not, along with a few issues of Red Lanterns and New Guardians where they are apparently important to the storyline. I'm still not a big fan of the way Billy Tan draws Hal, but I like Bernard Chang's art on GLC. I wish they would get someone at his level to draw the current series. The art in the current book is not impressive at all.

The paper in this book is good, but the volume is noticeably thinner than many others on my shelf, despite being 850 pages. I can't complain, I like seeing less shelf space taken up. I think a volume two is on the way with the New Gods storyline and the Renegade story arc, and then hopefully we'll get Hal Jordan and the GLC collected at some point. I'm wondering if Lost Army and Edge of Oblivion will be in the second Vendetti volume since they were concurrent with "Renegade"?

[Sparky Prime]

I remember a lot of griping about the "Lights Out" story and the concept of an emotional reservoir that can be tapped dry, and I tend to agree that it doesn't really make sense. I would think all the various people in the universe would generate emotion, making an inexhaustible supply. Maybe the Lanterns were using it up faster than it was generated? But that aside, the story is good and Relic is a good antagonist, acting on what he thinks are good motives: trying to prevent the death of this universe for the same reasons his universe died.

I liked the idea of Relic. His backstory is a bit similar to Galactus, albeit without Relic being reborn as a force of nature compelled to consume life, flipped to trying to save this universe from the fate of his universe instead. But, yeah, the idea of the emotional reservoir didn't make any sense. Venditti obviously used it to walk back some of the concepts Johns introduced, getting rid of the Entities (minus Parallax) to 'refill' the reservoir. I'm glad the recent stories once again walked that back and restored the Entities... Including Parallax who apparently died in the meantime and the Entities fear made a new Parallax? The last reference I can find to the original Parallax was that he was captured in a Yellow ring by Superman.

At any rate... I'd love to see Relic appear again someday. Be interesting to see what else they can do with the character who is from a previous universe.

[andersonh1]

I remember a lot of griping about the "Lights Out" story and the concept of an emotional reservoir that can be tapped dry, and I tend to agree that it doesn't really make sense. I would think all the various people in the universe would generate emotion, making an inexhaustible supply. Maybe the Lanterns were using it up faster than it was generated? But that aside, the story is good and Relic is a good antagonist, acting on what he thinks are good motives: trying to prevent the death of this universe for the same reasons his universe died.

I liked the idea of Relic. His backstory is a bit similar to Galactus, albeit without Relic being reborn as a force of nature compelled to consume life, flipped to trying to save this universe from the fate of his universe instead. But, yeah, the idea of the emotional reservoir didn't make any sense. Venditti obviously used it to walk back some of the concepts Johns introduced, getting rid of the Entities (minus Parallax) to 'refill' the reservoir. I'm glad the recent stories once again walked that back and restored the Entities... Including Parallax who apparently died in the meantime and the Entities fear made a new Parallax? The last reference I can find to the original Parallax was that he was captured in a Yellow ring by Superman.

At any rate... I'd love to see Relic appear again someday. Be interesting to see what else they can do with the character who is from a previous universe.

I agree, I think there's potential there. Relic is hostile, but he has good motives for his actions. That's an interesting combination. When did we last see him? Was it when he was studying the Source Wall during the Renegade storyline?

I'm enjoying the omnibus. I really should have been reading Green Lantern Corps at the time. I was missing out on half the story. But at least it gives me something new to read now. I'm in the early stages of the Durlan plot to destroy the Corps, a storyline I enjoyed quite a bit. Chad and Mark over on the Lanterncast thought it dragged on too long, but it never bored me.

[Sparky Prime]

When did we last see him? Was it when he was studying the Source Wall during the Renegade storyline?

Yeah, I believe so. I haven't seen any references to Relic since then.

I'm in the early stages of the Durlan plot to destroy the Corps, a storyline I enjoyed quite a bit. Chad and Mark over on the Lanterncast thought it dragged on too long, but it never bored me.

It's been years since I read it, but I don't recall feeling like it dragged either. And that was waiting for each issue to come out every month.

[andersonh1]

It's been a while since we were reading Green Lantern, and I left it in what turns out to be the middle of a story, so on to the next part. Green Lantern is still a backup feature on Flash at this point, and it will be that way for a while, judging by the table of contents in the omnibus.

The Flash #221
April-May 1973

Death-threat on Titan!
Script - Denny O'Neil Art - Dick Giordano

Picking up where the last issue left off, Hal fought an alien as Green Lantern and discovered his name on a hit list. He decides his Green Lantern problems are more important than his lack of a job, but his ring is out of power despite being charged only 12 hours earlier. GL recharges his ring and gets it working again. He contacts the Guardians on Oa (said here to be "a tiny planet on the rim of the galaxy") to find out what the problem could be and finds that everyone on the list was a Green Lantern (I tried looking at the names on the list but other than Hal's name they're unreadable, both from last issue and this) and each had a power ring made of a special ore, mined on Titan, Saturn's moon. That's an interesting idea, I had always assumed (to the extent I had ever thought about it) that the ore for the rings came from Oa. So why would certain GLs have rings made of ore from Titan? What's special about it? Is this just a throwaway idea to service this particular plot?

Hal asks for and is granted a return to full duty status, and apparently he's been on leave for two years. No "comic book time" here. Hal heads out into space and is reminded of how amazing it is. He heads to Titan where he is attacked by a satellite built by the Conn Civilization, which wraps him up in a yellow binding and deposits him on the surface of Titan. Two aliens from the same race as the one who attacked him last issue carry a power battery and drain the energy from his ring. I guess it doesn't drain it all or else Hal would die pretty fast on the surface of Titan, but he gets in a fistfight with the aliens, only to be zapped by someone who turns out to be the one he was fighting last issue. These aliens hate the Guardians, who they say exiled them to Titan to mine the ore used in the power rings. They need the gems from the rings to carry out their scheme, to travel to Oa, drain the central battery and kill all the Guardians. Hal, despite being out of power (maybe the reserve is keeping him alive?) uses one of the raw bits of ore on the surface to get just enough of a construct to cut his bonds, after which his fists do the talking for him, as they so often do. He takes out the three aliens and presumably turns them over to the Guardians, though that's not shown here. The story ends with Hal creating a construct monument to the dead alien who tried to warn him last issue.

As a reader of modern Green Lantern, I'm well used to the idea of the Guardians being far from squeaky-clean, but would they really enslave some aliens and exile them to Titan just to mine ore? Maybe these guys were criminals and mining was their sentence. We never get the Guardians' side of the story here, so there's no telling how much truth their is in the accusations. But these blue aliens hate the Guardians and want to kill them, and they've figured out how to use the ore to travel and drain power rings, so they're fairly capable opponents for Hal. If I hadn't read so many of those late Silver Age stories where he deliberately didn't use his ring just because he wanted to punch out his opponents, I'd have enjoyed him winning while powerless a lot more than I did. Because it's always good to see that Green Lanterns are capable with or without the power ring, and that it's not just the power that makes them effective. But I'm done with Hal the brawler, I want to see some cool power ring usage. I did enjoy his awe at being back out in space after so long mainly on Earth.

It's not a bad story, though the ideas about the ore and the aliens who mine it is screaming for further elaboration. There are some big ideas stuffed into a short backup feature, and I'd like to see them revisited down the road.

[Sparky Prime]

and each had a power ring made of a special ore, mined on Titan, Saturn's moon. That's an interesting idea, I had always assumed (to the extent I had ever thought about it) that the ore for the rings came from Oa. So why would certain GLs have rings made of ore from Titan? What's special about it? Is this just a throwaway idea to service this particular plot?

This got me curious as well. Surprisingly, it doesn't look like a subject that is addressed on most sites. The only thing I could find was a reddit post claiming the rings originally were made from rare material, then "Oanite" (Sinestro's original yellow ring being "Qwardamite") and now they're a form of pure emotion somehow processed into a solid form.