“Mind Games”
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeremy Adams
Art: Jack Herbert
Colors: Romulo Fajardo Jr.
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
What They Say:
Everything is emotional as Hal makes his way back to Kyle, Superboy, and Odyssey, who attempt to fend off attacks from the Sorrow and an even bigger threat—Starbreaker! Make way for a cosmic battle for pieces to a new power battery that spells doom for the universe.
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 a pretty solid run of artists across the series so far, this installment brings us someone new to handle this particular tale with Jack Herbert. 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 a number of stories going on in this issue, it’s at that point where it’s trying to do too much and doing none of it well. It’s moving everything along but it’s so much across the book that it doesn’t land as well as it should as it goes from one end of the galaxy to the other. Kyle and his group dealing with Starbreaker and Sorrow goes about as poorly as you’d expect as Sorrow is able to finesse the Source out of Odyssey while Starbreaker keeps the other two occupied. Hal arrives just in time to help the guys but it’s all bad for Odyssey since she’s lost the item and there’s deeper material to her story that hasn’t been covered yet. I do like the growing closeness we see between her and Kon as his awkwardness is a delight and the small quiet time we get between the two is good. But the book lacks a lot of good quiet time for the characters and that just impacts the relationships a lot.
While there’s some story movement about the idea of getting the old batteries back into play to help balance out the emotional spectrum. It’s a big idea that involves sending Kyle and his team to Reach space to find nth material to handle it. But while that’s going on, Hal is back on Earth to fill in Terrific on things and reconnect with Carol in hopes of having her come out with her to space. The problem is that she’s really enjoying getting herself established as a hero here and not just Green Lantern’s girlfriend and is working well with the League. But they also come across a big problem when she takes down a local superpowered criminal, only for the DEO to show up with Mr Bones. He’s got Hammond working for him which is a huge red flag and sets up the main thrust going into the next issue as he’s trying to get back to his old self. The only plus to this is that it brings in Dove but the whole thing just feels like it’s running at 3x speed to tell its story on top of Hal trying to fill Carol in on what he’s been doing in space.
In Summary:
There’s just too much going on here. It comes across as a jumble with no room to breathe and all of the stories suffer because of it. The balance and pacing issues just make for terrible characters almost across the board and little lands even if the actual ideas are solid. And then adding in a new storyline with Dove, Bones, and the DEO while focusing on a classic Green Lantern villain with Hammond? It’s just trying to do too many things when it needs a lot more focus to everything. It’s frustrating because I do like the idea of seeing how to handle the situation with the emotional spectrum. I want to see more of each of the storylines outside of the DEO thing and that frustrates me because I am a Mr. Bones fan and want to see what’s up with that. But it doesn’t fit into what this series has been doing for a while and just feels incredibly forced.
Grade: C+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics
Release Date: March 26th, 2025
MSRP: $4.99
