Green Lantern #24

Writer Robert Venditti Artist Billy Tan

Introduction

While I have personally enjoyed the issues of Robert Venditti, after Johns departed the series was feeling slightly dull. In most cases fans scream bloody murder over crossovers in the DC Universe, however in this case a big storyline is exactly what the doctor ordered for Green Lantern. Lights Out is set to begin in this issue, crossing over with all the major lantern books. There is also the promise of change to the franchise. Thus far new scribe Venditti has been writing the title in the shadow of Geoff Johns. This is slightly rough, because the status quota of the book was always challenged during the tenure of the former writer. Major changes to the mythos are promised here, and hopefully there can be a new beginning of sorts for the creatives on the characters. While Relic is interesting aesthetically, readers have not been given a reason to really be concerned about the threat he has had to the universe. In books like Green Lantern: New Guardians the threat was examined further, but left fans of the main title still feeling lukewarm. Another large aspect lacking from the series was the larger supporting cast. Over the past couple of years so many different characters have been crafted for this section of DC mythology,that audiences have begun to miss the other Corps..

Writing

This issue addresses all of my problems with the Venditti run head on with the first page. The storytelling is more clear than ever, and the spectacle is visible from the opening scene. While Johns expanded this universe more than ever with characters and concepts, he never quite broke the entire Green Lantern Corps. down like this. The ideas in here are flowing nicely throughout this first installment of the big storyline. The author does a good job toning down the dialogue slightly that had the potential to destroy this issue if it fell in the wrong hands. The villain in the story is not fully characterized to the best extent but he is still scary. The character does indeed seem like a viable threat to the universe, which is a major achievement by the creative team here.

Art

Billy Tan. Who knew? This artist has been on an incredible rebound from his work a couple years ago. The scratchy style has been further refined to fit better in this mythos. When he initially was announced for the book there was a collective of sighs lingering across the internet, yet he seems like a confident artist fleshing out his style further here. There are a lot of characters on panels, but they are all handled with an impressive amount of care. As slight criticism of the artist, the cover and certain pages look more polished than others. A reader would wonder if the artist is sacrificing quantity over quality in some pages of the title. For the most part Tan packs a lot of detail in every panel over the busy script that he is given. The way he draws Relic is also a visual feast, the artist seems to master rendering the character by not making him look scratchy as human characters do at times.

Conclusion


This is impressive work that proves the first few issues of the series were not the best Venditti and Tan had to offer. They were also not paced very well, except for the slight glimpse of this storyline that the beginning of the book had to offer. If you have been skeptical about this new direction for the Green Lantern mythos, you are going to want to dive in on this issue. The creative team offers the best work that have ever produced on the title to date.


To sound stupidly redundant, I am so excited to be excited about Green Lantern again!