The villain revealed!
Creative Staff:
Story: Dan Jurgens
Art: Marco Santucci
Colors: Hi-Fi
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
What They Say:
Did Simon Baz commit murder? As the clues and evidence stack up, Baz takes off to Earth mysteriously, leaving his partner Jessica Cruz and Hal Jordan to wonder if he’s gone rogue. “Evil’s Might” continues as what’s been affecting the Green Lantern rings begins to reveal itself.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Green Lanterns book hit the ground running once the fiftieth issue hit and Dan Jurgens is definitely doing exactly what I hoped for when I saw his name on the book. I was a big fan of a lot of his stuff during the 90s as there’s an appeal in the style, the characters used, and just the structure of his stories so that even if they’re decompressed it feels like there’s a lot going on. Marco Santucci returns for this issue with the artwork and that’s a big plus as he’s got some solid style and design work here, from the big splash page early on to the smaller panels that the characters’ expressions really come through well. His work on Injustice made me a fan and I’m glad to see him playing in a big field like this.
This issue is bookended with Simon’s story and it’s an interesting one because it does show how trusting he is at this point in contrast to Jessica who questions everything. With the ring directing him to Earth in order to deal with the problems they’re facing with Eon and on Mogo, he does start to pull back since abandoning the group mid-fight really goes against him. But the ring is the authority and he has a hard time questioning that. And even when the ring brings him to the Fortress of Solitude and says they have to break in, he’s not questioning that in the right way. Believing that Superman is trapped in there thanks to the audio/visual that the ring provides, he’s all in to save the man of steel. He just doesn’t realize how much steel there is in this man of steel.
The bulk of the book focuses on the fight over Penlop where there’s the morbid reality that 90% of the world is dead and destroyed. The fight does play out well with some good encounters unfolding, such as Guy going up against Eon while Hal and Jessica fight off Ravagers elsewhere, not understanding how they became all of this compared to a few years prior. I like seeing Kyle and Kilowog working together to figure out how to stem the impact on the world and even though it falls into easy standard combat stuff it works well thanks to the Lanterns themselves being enjoyable to watch push through with a plan. And I like that they do stick to their ethics and help out with the survivors instead of giving chase to the Ravagers as the tide of the battle changes since they know who they serve first.
In Summary:
With a pretty good reveal through Simon’s storyline that has me curious where it’ll go, Green Lanterns moves the storyline forward well enough here. It understands the loss that’s in front of it, acknowledges the events on Mogo that are pretty bad themselves, and puts the core group here through a tough fight with Eon and the Ravagers. It reads smoothly but isn’t a fast read since there’s some good dialogue throughout it and it builds upon what they’re all going through. Jurgens works things just right here while Santucci puts together some good fights with impact while playing well with the powers of the Lanterns themselves.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via DC Universe
Release Date: August 15th, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
