Friday, September 16, 2011

Comics Review: The Good Stuff and Bad Stuff of Green Lantern #1

Rooting for the group of ring-powered superheroes is local comic creator and DC comics fan Aravind Menon, who has mixed sentiments regarding his views on DC 52's "Green Lanterns" #1.

Aravind will also be sending more of this thoughts on more comic releases here as well as his own blog!

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I'm confused. The DCnU has me confused. A lot. And today was the big one. One of my favourite titles of the DCoU (are we calling the pre-Flashpoint DCU that yet?) is hitting up its own #1 this week. And I'm not sure how to feel.

On the one hand, I want it to suck so as to show DC that their little reboot plan sucked as well. On the other hand, I want it to be awesome, 'cause I'm a fan, and reboot or no reboot, I just wanna read awesome stories.

So you can imagine my confusion when I ended the issue with both feelings in my head treating my opinions like a tug-of-war similar to that animation of Peter Parker being tugged on by the Spider-Man costume and the Venom symbiote.

So, first with the good stuff.

Sinestro - In all logic, I shouldn't need to explain this any further. Sinestro is pretty much DC's Magneto. The 2 of 'em are awesome no matter what. Don't believe me? Go watch Green Lantern and X-Men 3. The movies sucked, but these two shone. But for the sake of the DCnoobs I'll go on to explain that Sinestro is a deep and layered character that always has an ulterior motive. And by the end of this issue, we see that he's working towards his latest one.

Hal Jordan - Imagine the amount of relief I felt when I saw that ol' Hal looked NOTHING like Ryan Reynolds. DC's previous announcement of making their characters look visually similar to their movie counterparts freaked the sh*t outta me. And the scene where he pulled that John McClane stunt? Brilliant!! Turns out what Green Lantern needed was for there to be a non-Lantern protagonist. I still count Sinestro as an antagonist, though that could be well argued.

And now, the bad stuff.

Carol Ferris - Erm... what's with the throwing the wine/ champagne/ lemonade/ urine in Hal's face all about? I recall a good 6 years of reading how much Carol wanted to not get back together with Hal. And I get that there has always been deeper feelings and stuff, but marriage? Really? Carol's been feeling so jaded about the whole love thing and all, that this feels really out of place. And isn't she the frikkin' queen of the Zamarons now? So what's with the "not wearing the ring thing?" And before any of you bitch about this being about "new readers" just remember that this title wasn't rebooted. You either reboot or you don't. Don't come giving us half-assed character progression. And least of all with female superheroes.

Hal Jordan - Yes, he makes my list twice. And no, there was nothing bad about the character. I was just disappointed that he was there. As much as I was against the twist(ed) ending of War of the Green Lanterns (Ha! Bet you DCnoobs dunno what that is) I was hoping that this would be a brave new direction to kinda let history repeat itself. To allow the audience to see why Sinestro is both, the greatest and the worst Green Lantern. That being said, I can imagine the new readers being confused with Hal being there in JL, Kyle in Guardians and John and Guy in Corps so having Hal might have been more of a calculated decision than a creative one. Either way, it seems to be pointing towards an interesting ride.

So all in all, I liked it. Johns' is doing what he does best and Mahnke and Alamy don't need to be commented on 'cause they're always brilliant.

Sidenote: I wish they had done the cover instead. I love Reis' work, but Mahnke nails Sinestro in a way not many other artists can. Also, I find it more epic when the cover and interior artists are the same. Comics are books that should be judged by their covers. Even if the characters in them blame their writers.

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