A new surge.
Creative Staff:
Story: Dan Jurgens
Art: Mike Perkins
Colors: Hi-Fi
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
What They Say:
With the Green Lantern Corps at its weakest, Cyborg Superman and the Ravagers dish out damage across the cosmos! Now John Stewart, the Corps’ last hope, can barely crawl out of his hospital bed!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As this storyline has built well toward the end of the run of the series, Green Lanterns has let the team deal with some real trouble and get beaten down, hard. Dan Jurgens enjoys putting the characters through their paces while being beaten not just physically but mentally as Henshaw has figured out how to win without doing much. This installment keeps Mike Perkins around on the art duties and that largely works well as I dug his layouts the last issue and how he handled all the scenes in space and on Mogo. A lot of it is still pretty solid here but his depiction of John Stewart doesn’t do much for me and it feels like we’ve got a bit less going on when it comes to backgrounds for this installment.
Henshaw’s in total victory mode as we can expect here as he’s gotten everyone that’s left in the area rounded up, control of Mogo, and control of the Rings themselves thanks to the Phantom Ring. He’s even to the point where he’s enjoying taunting Hal about what he’s accomplished all while being stuck drugged and out of it by Superman. To make matters worse, he’s not threatening to eliminate Coast City to put things the way he thinks should be, which means threatening a whole lot of people. Having the ravagers wanting in on them and Hal and the rest trying to break through Eon’s barrier, it’s pretty standard stuff but it works well after all that we’ve been through. The Lanterns are most definitely at a big low point here with few options.
The arrival of Simon Baz thankfully is undetected and he’s learned enough to not just blaze right in, which leads to him watching from afar. Baz has largely come across well in the run that I’ve read so far though his easy trust in the rings even when they seem so off base is problematic. What we get here is that he’s able to try and wake up John Stewart for help since John knows how to deal with things sans rings. And Baz does as well once they get their hands on some weapons. It’s a lot of crazy chaos once that gets underway and the tide turns – even as Mogo starts to instinctively react – but I loved the small moment where Jess is just thrilled to see him come to their aid and even Guy admits that he was wrong and glad for things to unfold as they are. Of course, this is just a small moment of brightness set against a darker moment to come as we get closer to the end of the series.
In Summary:
With this book, I’m mostly just looking for action and events to unfold as opposed to strong character material. Jurgens is a writer I like a lot in the kinds of tales he comes up with and the scale of it all so this works well with him working with Henshaw once again and messing with the Green Lantern Corps. We get good stuff out of most of the casts that’s here with Stewart and Baz getting a solid piece of attention as they save the day. It’s fairly standard structure material and there really aren’t any surprises but what we get is a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to seeing how it all wraps up.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via DC Universe
Release Date: October 3rd, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
