Our series on reactions to DC’s September relaunch continues. Last time we looked at the Justice League titles. This time it’s the Green Lantern collection of comics, which appears to be less of a reboot and more of a restructuring.
Green Lantern · Green Lantern Corps · Green Lantern: The New Guardians · Red Lanterns
Green Lantern
Lia: I started reading GL for the first time just before Blackest Night, and kept up with it for a while afterward. Then my shop ran out of a particular issue and I just never bought the series afterward for no particular reason (I’ll probably pick up the missing issues at a con sometime). But I might pick it up again at #1, depending on the direction Johns takes. I liked the other colour corps better than Hal, and they may not be in this series much.
Devin: Don’t care for Hal that much so I won’t be picking this up.
Green Lantern Corps
Greg: I’m glad to see John Stewart make the cut. He’s a strong enough character to warrant his own book, but Tomasi writes Guy Gardner so well that I would have picked up Green Lantern Corps regardless of Stewart. Pasarin is my favorite GL artist right now as well, so nice to see some “continuity” there.
Lia: I like some GLs and not others, so this is a mixed bag for me. It depends on who appears and how Tomasi handles them (and how much they are or are not rebooted).
Devin: I like John and Guy o.k. but not enough to buy a series because of them.
Green Lantern: The New Guardians
Devin: Kyle Rayner is my Green Lantern. I have his entire series and a couple of his action figures as well. After Hal came back and Kyle was forced into that Ion identity I found it difficult to continue caring and have only caught glimpses of him here and there. This is the only series of these four that I have a possibility of picking up and in the end I probably won’t. I’m burnt out on Geoff’s Power Rangers.
Lia: I want to hear more about this title and who’s in it before forming an opinion.
Kelson: I find it interesting that DC is not only picking up right where it left off, but all four Earth Green Lanterns have found a place in the new line-up. Even Kyle Rayner, who I half-expected to be retconned out of existence when initial reports made this sound like a more far-reaching reboot.
Red Lanterns
Lia: I love villains, and am fond of Atrocitus and Dex-Starr and the other Red Lanterns. I’ll be getting this book, although am slightly concerned that the Red Lantern concept can’t stretch far enough for an ongoing series.
Devin: I am definitely burnt out on the multi-colored Lanterns.
Part 1: Justice League
Next up: Gotham City.
I love everything Johns has done with all things Lantern. As long as he is writing the book I’ll be reading it. Tomasi and Bedard had their chances with me throughout BD and WotGLs. Red Lanterns however…I’m gonna give Milligan a shot with this. Green Lantern and Red Lanterns.
The fact the Kyle isn’t being ret-conned out gives me a bit more hope for Wally in the new DCU.
I hate the GL books. Johns successfully brought back Hal and enlarged the GL mythos.
Yet he failed to do the same thing with Flash. Seeing four GL books in this re-launch is like adding salt to the wound.
Well, having multiple ‘officers’ is a chief tenet of the GL mythos. Beyond that, Johns has revamped and added in so many ancillory yet important characters (Sinestro, Atrocitus, etc.) that it’s a REALLY big canvas.
And of course, a VERY popular one. Which is why there are 4 books.
Flash is not a concept that sustains multiple characters so easily – the idea of a family of characters that has running in fast in common doesn’t strike the imagniation. Anymoreso than Green Arrow having a family of people that also shoot arrows.
All the major DC characters have offshoot characters – one-time replacements, legacies and so on. DC has defaulted into this legacy/family model because they’ve created so many versions of every character. But it’s ultimately extraneous; how many different versions of Speedy have there been? It’s awfully silly.
Put simply, not every DC character should have 15 versions of the main character. Here, it seems that 1-2 Flash characters are enough.
It wouldn’t be so bad if Johns played up the differences in style and tactics when it comes to all the different speedsters. Jay, Barry, Wally and Bart all have wholly different styles of fighting with super speed and at one point every active speedster (Jay, Wally, Bart, Max, and Jesse during Waid’s run) all had something distinct that made them stand out as more than just another speedster.
Jay uses(d) his hat coupled with Super Speed as an offensive and defensive weapon. He could fling it like a shield ala Captain America, catch bullets in it and Johns actually did a really cool trick with it in Rebirth when he had Jay use it to create sound as a weapon.
Wally has(d) his mastery over the speed force and his speed tricks (some of which he would pass on later, but still remained “his thing” to steal and lend speed and create costumes out of speed force).
Bart was like a human pinball, unpredictable and effective and he also had the forgotten ability of creating time scouts and could remember everything he could read.
Max took a more mystical approach to the speed force and utilized it more as a shaman, and Jesse was a true student of the game and also had the ability to fly as well as limited super strength.
I feel that playing up these differences was the key to making each member of the Flash family stand out and bring something different to the table.
Johns managed to do this extremely well with the Green Lantern books taking Guy, Hal, Kyle, and John (and Alan) and giving them all a distinct flavor. They all have different ways of designing constructs and different personalities and this was embraced. The same thing needs to be done with The Flash.
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Also some contemporary but careful redesigns would have gone a long way towards getting new readers on board. When people see a new costume it signals a new direction and a new jumping on point. It just needs to be done right with a certain respect and nod to the original design and history but at the same time bold.
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Johns has done an amazing job of expanding GL into a major cornerstone of the DCU. I’ve read a fair chunk of his GL work and have enjoyed it.
(Although I think the multi-colored Corps were exposed too quickly just so they could participate in Blackest Night)
No, what irks me is that Johns obviously wanted to do the same thing for Flash and for WHATEVER reason, he didn’t.
It is hard to personalize two people who have the same power. Maybe more creativity was required (or a new identity). Either way, Flash is now limping along instead of running.
And seeing four GL books when we could have at least one extra Flash book simply irritates me.
They each have unique properties, sure. But this all presumes it’s in the best interest of the concept to make it a sprawling family of speedsters NOW. Because it wasn’t before – for 50+ years the Flash has been a solo book about a guy in a red suit that runs fast and fights goofy (but great) villains. From the 60s to now.
Johns certainly WANTED to go the team book route, using Rebirth and Flashpoint to set that up. But it was always a dodgy prospect, as seen with the whole “team” together at the end of Rebirth. Just…awkward, and – lacking in purpose.
At this point, the Flash concept isn’t rich enough to suggest a family of characters and series. Though DC may still try. Especially since they have a. a bunch of relatively popular Flash characters and b. the need to franchise everything into team books.
Basically: Lots of nice characters? DC’s got ‘em. But a purpose, a direction, buzz and a strong concept? These things are way, WAY more important. And still missing from the recipe.
So…what you are saying is that the current crop of DC writers have less imagination than a good fanfiction writer, because I’ve read some really good ongoing fanfiction where all the speedsters interact. But I guess DC’s talent pool just isn’t what it used to be since Waid’s run. X(
No, I truly believe at this point that the main reason that we are not seeing a Speed Force book despite news of yet more Batman books coming later….is that
THEY DON’T WANT WALLY WEST TO EXIST AS MORE THAN A MEMORY PAST COLD #3.
I started reading Green Lantern again at Rebirth #1 and haven’t stopped since…..Johns is a genius with all things Green Lantern.
The GL Corps has been awesome as well, especially when Tomasi was writing it….so I’m glad he’s back!
I think the New Guardians may just be a book for the most die-hard of GL fans, which means I’ll be buying…I love the concept for this book.
I do share concerns about whether Red Lanterns can survive long-term….but who knows, Punisher is still around….so a long-term book about characters who are wronged, angry, and making others pay for it does sell.
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It seems that the only change in the GL-verse is the numbering.
The Creative team for “GL: The New Guardians” is the same team that’s currently doing “GL Corps”. While the creative team for “GL: Corps” is the current creative team of “GL: Emerald Warriors”.
The New “Rainbow” Guardians were introduced during the “War of the Green Lanterns” storyline, so this actually sounds like they are not changing a thing
I wouldn’t give a … emm, I wouldn’t give a peanut about a Red Lantern book, but Peter Milligan is writing it, so he may actually come up with something interesting… as long as he is not tied up by the rest of the books, it might actually work, because if you are reading the GL books, you might as well use those triangular boxes to organize the reading order… you can’t just read them separately
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