Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #43

Writer: Robert Venditti

Artist: Rafa Sandoval

Inker: Jordi Tarragona

Colourist: Tomeu Morey

Letterer: Dave Sharpe

I'm mostly enjoying this story despite some recurring issues that still plague the storytelling. I like the concept of the Darkstars and Robert Venditti made a cool call by making Tomar-Tu the face of them; it gives the group an emotional stake rather than just making them a giant faceless army. Hal is conflicted in viewing his old friend as an enemy.

The art in this issue was fantastic. Much more than usual. The team of Rafa Sandoval, Jordi Tarragona, and Tomeu Morey is producing some seriously stellar work. Sandoval and Tarragona's efforts seem cleaner and Tomeu Morey grounds and tones down her colours in a way I haven't really seen, leading to possibly the best-looking issue of the series yet. There isn't much action here, if at all, but the character acting is solid and the environments are beautiful. Big, big props to the team.

As for the plot, Venditti falls into his usual trappings. Scenes are simply unnecessarily stretched out to fill the issue up. I can back this up. John, Hal, Kyle, and Guy meet with the Guardians at the beginning of the issue and they essentially tell us what happened last issue in addition to a small amount of new information. Also, the Guardians' response takes a bit too long and we end up spending two entire pages on this meeting, followed by a double page spread detailing the entire Corps moving towards the Darkstars. Venditti's page space economy is simply terrible. Here we spend four pages which essentially can be summed up as the Corps thinking about moving, to them actually moving. The eventual meeting with Hal and Tomar-Tu gets more leeway than the previous example since their relationship is clearly the emotional core of this arc. Still, even Tomar-Tu's monologue goes on for way too long, again with Venditti's page-space economy. And of course the ending feels really similar to a lot of the previous arcs we've been getting from this series; Venditti just isn't doing anything interesting with the fun plots he comes up with.

I had some serious problems with Venditti's methods of storytelling but I'm still intrigued by the hook of the story, and the art here has never been better. I can't wait to see what this art team does next if they leave the book with Venditti with #50.