[SPOILERS ahead]
Sophie Campbell’s Supergirl continues to be a delight, this time with guest-artists Rosi Kampe and Paulina Ganucheau, who do quite nicely) and turning over the issue to the various super-animals that have turned up so far in this title’s brief run thus far.
One particularly fun innovation to a Super-Pets story that I don’t think I’ve seen before is that Ms. Campbell has the animals unable to directly “speak” (or telepathically “think”) at each other, like you would see in the various Pre-Crisis stories. That leaves all the animals unsure of each other’s motives, which leads to some cute moments. Highly recommended, as per usual.
This issue goes hard, twisting some of the supporting characters from previous issues into forms more closely approaching those we are more familiar with from the regular DC Universe, in the worst way possible. Gruesome and brutal, but not in an off-putting way, which is the real trick. Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta know how to keep you hooked and all you want to do is see how it plays out in the next issue. Probably one of the best examples of a serialized story in American comics keeping you invested from issue to issue.
Sometimes I just wish Green Lantern would be on Earth trying to figure out how to keep Goldface from robbing banks. I don’t mind the intra-Corps in-fighting/politics and the Huge Reality-Threatening Battles on occasion, but I’m remembering that bit of business in the ’80s where GL was forced to leave Earth and had to go fight space crime and how unusual that felt.
So what am I trying to say here. Maybe we can…scale things down a bit? The stakes are always enormously high, and it always comes down to armies of space cops shooting beams at whatever. Don’t get me wrong…I’ve been reading Green Lantern comics since about 1981, and I like the characters and the situations and I’m enjoying Sinestro as a “frenemy” type character. I just feel like we’re all just trying to do the “Sinestro Corps War” saga over and over again and could use a little more variety.
That said, the new issue of Green Lantern Corps announces the return of a particular Big Green Lantern Villain that’s an old favorite of mine, and oh Green Lantern, I can’t ever hate you.
The brain-switcheroo in Smallville and Fire and Ice’s sojourn in Hell all come to a swift end in this issue. It feels like it wraps up a little too quickly in this issue, in that I was thinking maybe there was going to be a 7th issue by the time I was 2/3rds of the way through this one. But all the problems are solved and everything’s wrapped up nicely and it’s a joy just to see Fire and Ice — Bea and Tora — just being friends, and that friendship is the real centerpiece of this comic. Well, that and the light goofiness of the Smallville supporting cast. Here’s hoping for a third mini-series.
Wanted to note the passing of online pal Nick, the two of us having followed each other on various social media for some time. I mean, we weren’t close, dear pals, but we traveled in some of the same circles, shared some interests, had friendly interactions. Seemed like a good guy, and I’m sorry he passed so young. So long, Nick.
Green Lantern kind of encapsulates the big two’s comic companies as a whole – it’s always upping the ante, making the stakes bigger to he point none of it really seems to matter that much. I love Green Lantern as a concept, I mean, he’s a space cop with a magic ring that can create anything he can imagine. That specialness loses a lot when there seems to be dozens of them on Earth alone, repeat for Spider-Man, Batman, Xmen – I love all those characters but where do I even begin these days.
Fire & Ice series? Neat!
Even the Green Lantern Corps cover has too many characters on it.
The Absolute Batman cover, in contrast, is really simple and kind of stunning.
So sorry to hear about your friend. That’s way too young to go.
One of my first issues of GREEN LANTERN was #145, with Goldface. I thought he was the greatest GL villain ever… I mean, how could he ever defeat a dude dressed in yellow?
(In my defence, I was six or seven.)
https://www.comics.org/issue/35700/cover/4/
I remember years and years ago when that one customer was killed in a store robbery. The guy who always left giant bottles of soda pop behind.
I liked Morrison’s GL. Lots of GLs from other sector, a mention that many sectors had two GLs, and that Hal seemed to know them all by name.
I like his “so how hard was that?” approach.