Blackest Night

[RJDiogenes]

I want to see it. I do like Green Lantern, but I think he's hard to do right.

[Unicron]

In what way?

[RJDiogenes]

I can't really say for sure. I've liked the character since the 60s, but I've seldom actually bought his books. I like the whole concept, I like Hal Jordan, I like spacefaring adventures, but most of the time I'd pick up a Green Lantern comic and put it back down because the art didn't grab me or the story didn't look interesting. I'd be more likely to pick up Adam Strange or something. The only time I ever bought Green Lantern on a regular basis was when Steve Englehart and Joe Staton were doing it back in the 80s.

[Unicron]

Geoff Johns has done some respectable work in the modern age, and I find the art to be pretty good for the most part. It's helped that the yellow impurity is no longer strictly weaksauce.

[RJDiogenes]

I don't know how I feel about the multi-colored Lantern corps. On the one hand, I like gimmicky things like that-- alternate versions of characters and so forth-- but on the other hand, it seems overdone in this case. Like with the Red Hulk. I don't know.

[Unicron]

It's actually handled in a far less gimmicky manner than you might imagine - the Star Sapphires are the only other corps that really had the same level of organization as the Green Lanterns do, with most of the other corps not really gaining a foothold until shortly before the Blackest Night occurred. It's not clear how long the Indigo Tribe has been around, and many details about them are still being kept hidden. It is established that their rings block out other aspects of the emotional spectrum, which is why they can channel emotions like rage without suffering the negative consequences associated with those emotions. Black Hand is now an Indigo and claims to have had a spiritual rebirth, although he also said that the identity of William Hand no longer existed because it was amoral and villainous. It's been implied that, along with Black Hand, some other members of the Tribe are effectively controlled by the light of compassion and were more dangerous before, but Indigo-1 has only said that they are all "born again."

It's worth noting that in at least two cases - the Atom's breveting during Blackest Night and when Proselyte bonded with paramedic Shane Thompson - they were chosen precisely because of their ability to feel compassion for others. Thompson was seriously wounded on the way to the hospital when his ambulance was hit by a truck; Proselyte temporarily took him as a host while the heroes were looking for Parallax and the other emotional avatars, but Krona later captured it.

[RJDiogenes]

Don't some of them have their own books now, following the latest reboot?

[Unicron]

I think they've made an effort to continue using the newer characters in specific stories, if that's what you mean. Atrocitus has proven to be something of an antihero in many respects; he's fueled by rage and protective of his corps, but he also still strongly believes in protecting life in general and in seeing justice done.

[RJDiogenes]

I just looked it up. One of the new books is Red Lanterns and it's an ongoing. There's also Green Lantern: New Guardians, but I don't know if that has anything to do with the other-colored Lanterns.

[Unicron]

Yeah, it looks like Red Lanterns is part of the New 52 reboot, which I haven't really followed as much. The term New Guardians, as applied to the Lantern Corps, refers to the representative leaders of each of them (Hal Jordan being the GLC's spokesman). Judging from some of the upcoming issues, it would seem that Kyle Rayner took that spot following Hal's removal from the GLC at the end of the War of the GL arc.

[RJDiogenes]

So it sounds like that one must be about all the different colors collectively.

[Unicron]

Got the War of The Green Lanterns arc and I want to get a copy of The Weaponer tie-in. Also time to actually read all of my comics.

[RJDiogenes]

I gave up my comics subscription a couple of months ago to aid in balancing my budget. I mostly miss the nostalgia magazines. I'm thinking about getting some TPBs or archives when I get some Amazon credit through Coinstar.

[Unicron]

Cyborg Superman (Hank Henshaw) has proven to be an interesting villain, since they've expanded him to be more of a direct enemy of the GLC in addition to Superman.

[Shiv'kala]

I felt like the period between Brightest Night and "War of the Green Lanterns" was one of the weakest since Johns took over. "The Sinestro Corps War" was definitely the highlight of his run and Blackest Night was pretty good, if a little overdone. I wonder if I would have enjoyed it more if it was shorter and had less tie-ins. Some of the tie-ins were really well done, though. I wasn't originally going to buy it, but I really liked Blackest Night: Wonder Woman, for instance.

"War of the Green Lanterns" definitely was a return to form, if not quite as strong as BN. I do like the new status quo it created, though something needs to be done about the Guardians. Johns has gone long enough without major repercussions to them. The problem with making the Guardians into the antagonists is the question of what then? Before the return of Hal Jordan, I figured they could use the off-spring of the Guardians and the Zamarons which the Guardians went off to parts unknown with the Zamarons to create at the end of the original Crisis. However, I think the ship has sailed. During his run, Gerard Jones returned the Guardians from their love nest and his original plot for "Emerald Twilight" was to have another group claiming to be the Guardians return and challenge the Guardians that had been in place since he started that run of GL around 1990. However, too much time has passed for Johns to pull that particular rabbit from the hat.