Green Lantern #23

The Team
Writer Robert Venditti Artist Billy Tan

Green Lantern under Robert Venditti is obviously building towards something, I just cannot quite tell what yet. These pieces are said to be steering towards a much needed crossover in october. At SDCC the writers and artists teased that the upcoming Lights Out story is going to add something substantial to the GL mythos. Currently I am counting the months down until that new story, so I have a reason to care about this series again. Under previous writer Geoff Johns, there was always a sense that this story was building towards a grand finale that was to be set into place. Hopefully in a few more issues Venditti will have his hooks sunk into the readers.

Proxim introduced in the previous issues of this series has now escaped and the fight between her and Jordan is interesting. The problem is that readers are not really shown why she is such a big threat. She seems to be capable of murdering people, but so do many superheroes in the DC Universe. While she is murdering many innocent lanterns she also seems to be more of an anti-hero, as she is helping her people. This kind of behavior is very similar to that of Sinestro when he first decided to help Hal Jordan in the series. If this is where the title could be going forward the end result could be very interesting.

Billy Tan does a good job rendering the super heroic actions of the light-smiths in this issue. While most of his people are beginning to look better, the artists backgrounds are also make the title look ugly. Colorist Alex Sinclair is partly to blame for this, as he is using the same color palette for previous artist Doug Mahnke. While Mahnke defined the visual language of the modern Green Lantern Corps, the same sort of colors may not play to the strengths of Tan. The washed out colors point out more of the flaws in the artwork, that was not intended for the reader to see. When the focus of the story switches over to sector 0563 there are some sparse backgrounds that look incredibly ugly. While this space is supposed to look grimy, the other colors and Tan’s pencils just start to all blend together in a horrific manner. The penciller seems to be getting better at a constant rate, as prior to this series in most cases his pencils were difficult to look at.

Towards the end of this comic another flash of Relic is shown. The new villain shows off some of the other Lantern corps. that are missing from the title. Hopefully in the coming months the scope of this story will continue to grow in a similar manner. Jordan is officially searching for a Star Sapphire which may prove interesting to the other characters in the saga. It is also a big mystery towards where exactly some of these recruits are heading towards. In the first issue readers are teased with Jordan in a disaster scenario heading for impending doom. Hopefully the moment with the character is not too far away anymore. So the question remains, what is Venditti heading towards and when he gets there will readers still care?