Tag Archives: Hal Jordan

Feb 18 2013

Cram Session: The Rise of the Third Army

It can be hard to keep up with all the comics you love. But it’s damn near impossible to keep up with all the comics you’re interested in.

Retcon Punch got you covered.

You’re planning to read the Wrath of the First Lantern, right? It’s Geoff Johns and company’s last hurrah with those characters, so you BEST to pick it up. But if you want to understand every second of that even — and we know you do — you’ve got to get a grip on what came before. If you missed any part of the Rise of the Third Army (and we pay attention to our analytics – none of you are reading Red Lanterns), we’ve got like 20 issues worth of dense GL plotting to catch you up on.  

Jan 25 2013

Green Lantern 16

green lantern 16-3rd

Today, Patrick and Shelby are discussing Green Lantern 15, originally released January 23rd, 2013. This issue is part of the Rise of the Third Army crossover event. Click here for complete Third Army coverage. 

Patrick: At the beginning of this issue, Simon Baz takes a thorough tongue-lashing from (adorable) veteran Lantern B’dg. The little guy is all about the accusatory questions: “Who are you?” “Where’s your lantern?” and, my personal favorite:

b'dg thinks Baz is a bad green lantern

But Baz isn’t bad; he’s just new to the position. Everything from fighting bad guys to trusting his powers to meeting the Justice League is new to him. And in a medium so caught up in what is old — and especially caught up in the task of making old things new again — it’s interesting to see what such a fresh character is capable of.

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Dec 21 2012

Green Lantern 15

green lantern 15 3rd

Today, Mikyzptlk and Shelby are discussing Green Lantern 15, originally released December 19th, 2012. This issue is part of the Rise of the Third Army crossover event. Click here for complete Third Army coverage. 

Mikyzptlk: When it comes to big events like Rise of the Third Army, pace is a very important thing. If an author moves too quickly, they may run the risk of undermining the scale or importance of the story. If they move too slowly, they may start to bore or even frustrate the audience. We are now 4 issues into the event (not counting the tie-ins) and series writer, Geoff Johns, has slowed things down a bit too much for me to really enjoy this issue as much as I wanted to. Continue reading →

Oct 5 2012

Green Lantern 13

Today, Drew and Shelby are discussing the Green Lantern 13, originally released October 3rd, 2012. This issue is part of the Rise of the Third Army crossover event. Click here for complete Third Army coverage. 

Drew: Who does a fugitive turn to for help? It’s a question we’ve seen a million times, as characters keep getting wrongly accused and keep needing just one chance to clear their names. It’s a compelling story, but it isn’t exactly the most relatable reason to have a character reach out to someone. With Green Lantern 13, Geoff Johns avoids this issue by recasting the question as the much more relatable “who do you tell when something big happens in your life?” The result is a story that keeps the focus tight on Simon Baz, even as the action continues to balloon. Continue reading →

Sep 26 2012

Green Lantern: New Guardians 0

Alternating Currents: New Guardians 0, Drew and PatrickToday, Drew and Patrick are discussing Green Lantern: New Guardians 0, originally released September 19, 2012. Green Lantern: New Guardians 0 is part of the line-wide Zero Month.

Drew: Green Lantern subverted our expectations for zero month, delivering an origin story for a brand new Green Lantern, but one that cleverly fits within the overall narrative of the series. As DC’s Chief Creative Officer, Geoff Johns likely played a key role in determining if and when the event took place, so it’s understandable that he would come up with something that was largely an exception to the rule, both in terms of narrative elegance and the concept of a “before issue #1” story. What’s brilliant about Green Lantern 0 is that it really couldn’t have been any other story — Johns killed the hero in the previous issue, eliminating much narrative interest in returning to his past. Green Lantern: New Guardians 0 pulls a very similar trick, but as a team title, it doesn’t need to go through the trouble of “killing” the hero — simply dissolving the team will do just fine. Continue reading →

Sep 7 2012

Green Lantern 0

Today, Patrick and Shelby are discussing Green Lantern 0, originally released September 5, 2012. Green Lantern 0 is part of the line-wide Zero Month.

Patrick: John Stewart was a member of the United States Marine Corps, but he’s never been trained in counter-insurgency. Kyle Rayner was an artist, but he’s never done freelance work designing a website. Hal Jordan was a test pilot and just like the early astronauts, he wowed the world with his bravery in the face of the unknown. Whatever the relaunch did accomplish, it utterly failed to update the Green Lanterns of 2814. None of them are creatures of the 21st century. And it is in that spirit that we meet the newest Green Lantern: a middle-eastern born American citizen, who grew up in a post-September 11th America and who was laid off when his Dearborn, Michigan automotive manufacturer shut down in the economic collapse. Simon Baz is interesting less because he’s new and more because he’s current.

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Sep 3 2012

Green Lantern Annual 1

Today, Drew and Peter are discussing the Green Lantern Annual, originally released August 29th, 2012. This issue is part of the Rise of the Third Army crossover event. Click here for complete Third Army coverage. 

Drew: I have a confession: before the relaunch, I had never read a single comic written by Geoff Johns. Moreover, I had never read a Green Lantern story of any kind. However, all of other Retcon Punchers had read all of Johns’ work on Green Lantern, from Rebirth through Brightest Day, so his titles came with very high praise. It quickly became clear why: he’s unrivaled in developing complex mythologies. His work on Green Lantern has broadened its universe immeasurably, nesting decades of comics history into an elegant mythology that manages to make more sense than it has any business doing. At the same time, his tendency to draw out individual plot points to take up entire issues occasionally tried my patience. The Green Lantern Annual finds Johns at his best, delivering all of the insane mythology and plotting, and doing so at such a breakneck pace to please even the most impatient readers.

Oh, and GOOD GOD are there ever plot points to spoil here, so read the issue first, or proceed with caution.

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Aug 16 2012

Green Lantern 12

Today, Peter and Shelby are discussing Green Lantern 12, originally released August 15th, 2012.

Peter: Geoff Johns has singlehandedly changed the Green Lantern Universe. Everything we know and love about that particular universe, with it’s own expansive mythology, he created. He has taken Green Lantern books to new heights with stories like Rebirth, Sinestro Corps War, Blackest Night, Brightest Day, and the War of the Green Lanterns. Now he is poised to turn it all on it’s head again. Everything we know about the Green Lanterns, the Guardians, Hal Jordan, Sinestro and everyone else is coming crashing down out of the sky.

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Jul 25 2012

Green Lantern 11

Today, Patrick and Shelby are discussing Green Lantern 11, originally released July 25th, 2012.

Patrick: Green Lantern has long been a game of science fiction escalation. You could make the argument that all serial narratives eventually encounter the problem of having to out-do what they’ve previously done, but I think this series – especially under the pen of Geoff Johns – makes a specific point to jack the stakes up to such a fever pitch as to make earlier adventures trivial by comparison. As the guardians stand on the cusp of releasing their Third Army and Black Hand returns to Earth with a hankerin’ for genocide, this series is wound about a tightly as possible.

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Jun 15 2012

Green Lantern 10

Today, Patrick and Peter are discussing Green Lantern 10, originally released June 13th, 2012.

Patrick: Before the relaunch, Blackest Night and Brightest Day cast a enormous shadows over the entire DC Universe. While much of that shadow receded in September, with most of the lingering vestigages hanging around the Green Lantern books. Understanding the existence of any non-green, non-yellow lantern corps requires knowledge of the Night and Day but writers have been cagey to reveal how much of that old mythology remained canon. With the events of Green Lantern 10, it would appear that we’re heading for a big exploration of those events as the universe makes the same mistakes over and over again.

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