“Defenses Down”
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeremy Adams
Art: Fernando Pasarin, Oclair Albert
Colors: Romulo Fajardo Jr.
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
What They Say:
HAL JORDAN IS THE LATEST CASUALTY OF AMANDA WALLER! De-powered and back on Earth, Hal needs to find a way to get to the new power battery and recharge—but Thaaros has other plans, and now Hal is being hunted by the most dangerous aliens on the planet!PLUS: The secret origin of LORD PREMIERE THAAROS, ruler of the United Planets, is at last revealed!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Green Lantern continues to be a favorite of mine going back decades but I haven’t read much since the Flashpoint reboot over a decade ago. I’ve enjoyed the character in a bunch of the non-continuity books over the years and have decades of prior reading of Hal and most of the gang. This series has Jeremy Adams stepping in to guide Hal to a new place in the DCU and it’s my first time reading their work, which they handle well here. With this installment and it being a tie-in, we get a new art team with Fernando Pasarin and Oclair Albert taking over the duties and doing a solid job of it. There’s a good dynamic look to the action here, the designs are great, and with the color work from Fajardo Jr, it delivers a solid experience without overdoing the green.
With this being a tie-in, there’s a decent chunk given over to various playing out in that storyline but they’re more like montage pieces. And since I’m not following the Absolute Power event, it’s easy to just gloss over that (and the decent if forgettable backup story from Marc Guggenheim we get as well). Thankfully, there’s enough of the main series storyline playing out here so that you don’t feel like it’s a massive detour to something you’re not interested in. For Hal, he’s mostly locked up by Waller and she has King Shark torturing him, which he’s just laughing about and powering his way through which frustrates everyone. It’s a good reminder of how far Hal will go toward the goals he’s after and with Carol having come back to him previously and admitted her feelings toward him, he’s very intent on surviving and getting out of this situation. Which does look tough.
While the book places some jumping-off points to other books with the event tie-in, there are two other areas that unfold well for the main story. First, Jo makes her way back to the remaining resistance members on Oa and they’re trying to figure out how to best deal with what’s coming next with Hal gone and the others captured. The interesting part is seeing Kyle continue to break down as the emotional spectrum basically overwhelms him as a kind of conduit to the larger thing that Thaaros is running. Thaaros, for his part, starts to become someone you get a better handle on as he’s going for the ‘Only I can right the universe” mindset with his view of how the Guardians and others never did what was needed to bring peace and order to everything. It’s a familiar riff but it’s welcome to have it finally laid out clearly with at least some of his motivations for this even if the actual mechanism to do so it still a bit unclear when it comes to the power batteries and his corruption of the Corps.
In Summary:
I wasn’t expecting a lot going into a tie-in book to a summer event and there are pages where I just glazed over in regards to the story because it felt so disconnected from what’s going on here. Tenuous links at best. But the book did more than I expected by carrying on the main story with Hal in Waller’s grasp and seeing events both on Oa and with Thaaros. We also get some new movement forward for Nathan that could be interesting if it’s actually part of the ongoing story and not just something from the event tie-in aspect itself. Overall, a good issue with too much given over to the event.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics
Release Date: July 10th, 2024
MSRP: $4.99
