Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Green Lantern Corps

New For Patrons: Guide to The Green Lantern Corps

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Today I have the first in a series of long-awaited and much requested DC guides for ALL Patrons of Crushing Krisis…

Green Lantern Corps – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

I made my first serious try at creating a Green Lantern guide almost exactly a year ago this week.

It took me over three hours just to make an outline.

Green Lantern doesn’t have the most comic titles or comic appearances of the many major stars of the Big Two. What it does have is the most characters we could be referring to when we simply say “Green Lantern.”

Spider-Man? It’s Peter, Miles, or maybe Ben Reilly. Batman? Usually Bruce, unless it’s Azreal or Dick. Wolverine? Laura or Logan, because none of us seriously called Daken that. There are a lot of Flashes, but “Flash” almost always means Barry or Wally. Even Robin usually refers to Dick, Jason, Tim, or Damian – four isn’t that many. It’s probably Captain Marvel who creates the most confusion, but these days it almost certainly means Carol Danvers with little room for ambiguity unless we’re in a flashback.

But who do we mean when we say Green Lantern? Do we mean the Golden Age Alan Scott? The classic space cop Hal Jordan? Upstart Guy Gardner? The cool, collected Jon Stewart? The sudden hero Kyle Rayner? Jessica Cruz? Simon Baz? Jo Mullein? Tai Pham? Kilowog? Sinestro?!
The problem I was having was that a guide simply titled “Green Lantern” had to mean all of them, or else it wouldn’t be useful.

I chipped away at it month after month, each time hoping I’d have a new guide to deliver and each time barely making a dent. While I gradually put in enough work hours to make my way through all of the many Green Lanterns and their titles, the guide just became more and more gargantuan in the process.

This weekend, I decided that one way or another this Green Lantern guide was going to get done before a new week began. I researched. I linked. I found images. After a full 12hrs of nothing but Green Lantern, I finally finished. And the guide was unreadable. It wasn’t quite the mess of my legendary Spider-Man guide, but it was close. [Read more…] about New For Patrons: Guide to The Green Lantern Corps

Back Issue Review: The Flintstones, Green Lantern Corps, Eugenic, Space Battle Lunchtime, and more!

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Welcome to our second pilot post of Back Issue Review, where I give you the run-down on all the not-new comics I read this week. (Did you miss last week’s edition?)

I know the knee-jerk reaction for a lot of readers to a post like this might be to say either “I don’t read comics” or “I’ll just tune in when you talk X-Men.”

My reply to you is that comics as a medium is so much more than what you’re seeing on the big screen or in the pages of X-Men books.

I’d love to connect you with a new favorite read, but also with a wider awareness of the medium.

Today’s back issue review includes write-ups on:

  • After Eden (2017) #1-4
  • Captain Canuck (2015) #3
  • Centipede (2017) #1
  • Cowboy Ninja Viking (2009) #1
  • Eugenic (2017) #1-3
  • The Flintstones (2016) #1-6
  • Green Arrow (2016) #10-11
  • Green Lantern Corps (2006) #1-3
  • Grimm Fairy Tales: Return to Wonderland (2007) #4-6
  • Jonesy (2016) #1, Scalped (2007) #1
  • Space Battle Lunchtime (2016) #1-8
  • X’ed (2015) #1-4

That’s a lot of indie comics and absolutely no Marvel!

Please let me know if you like this this post – it’s the second pilot of this new weekly series, but there’s no guarantee it will be back for more.

And now – let’s get to the comics! [Read more…] about Back Issue Review: The Flintstones, Green Lantern Corps, Eugenic, Space Battle Lunchtime, and more!

DC New 52 Review: Green Lantern Corps #1

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Green Lanterns are like Jedi. They are a select few, each wielding an ancient force to defend the universe from evil, fear, greed, and tyranny.

The thing about Jedi is that they were always much cooler when they were rare. In the Original Trilogy we had two good ones and two bad ones – that’s it! When they were plentiful in the prequels they were much less cool – though Team Sith retained their awesomeness by only fielding a handful of dark mirrors of the Jedi.

I suspect the same holds true for Green Lanterns. First we had one on Earth. Then they were a galaxy-wide operation, each responsible for a sector. Now we’ve got multiple lanterns in each sector, multiple colors of lanterns, and gangs of lanterns trolling through space looking for a fight.

And we have this book. Green Latern Corps. Last week established my distaste for the Green Lantern mythology not once but twice, as well as my dislike of the other book out from writer Peter J. Tomasi. This book features both, plus scads and scads of Lanterns.

Let’s just say I’d rather rewatch The Phantom Menace.

Green Lantern Corps #1

Written by Peter J. Tomasi, art by Fernando Pasarin & Scott Hanna

Rating: 4 of 5 – Excellent

In a Line: “I can’t unplug – I can’t relax – I’m always waiting for the next mission or something to go wrong so I can power up.”

#140char Review: Green Lantern Corps #1 bucks the trend of boring GL relaunch books by introing 2 interesting heroes & a intriguing bloody mystery. Loved it.

CK Says: Buy it.

Green Lantern Corps #1 is everything a debut issue of a new team should be. It has a disturbingly bloody mystery, a glimpse at the home life of our heroes, and the conception of their new mission as a team.

Yet, it’s not the shock of the bloody spectacle that makes the book a delight. My faith in writer Peter Tomasi was low after Batman and Robin, but if anything it seems like he’s true to the voices of characters and Robin is simply annoying. Here he perfectly captures the different brands of angst of my first and least favorite Earth Green Lanterns, respectively, and finds a way for them to mesh together perfectly.

A sad sack Guy Gardner in a baseball cap is a treasure, sitting alone in a planetarium using his ring like a digital watch, later acquiescing to showing a waiting room of dudes something green. His bulbous-nosed face seems to be fixed in a permanent state of half-smirk, half-frown. A self-righteous John Stewart seems more handsome and muscular than in the past.

A bit of reflection between the pair of them while seated on an orbiting satellite is one of the best hero-on-hero dialog scenes so far in the relaunch – because both characters are humans first and heroes second.

Speaking of space, I’m hugely excited for more space art from Fernando Pasarin. He draws a GL Sector House like Firefly meets Star Wars – dilapidated high tech, and not too alien (even though there are aliens in it). The two alien GL’s fight with an unseen foe is like a light saber duel in slow motion, each panel a glistening freeze frame of cinematic action.

Guy and John’s entrance into Oa is both funny and epic, and the splash page of their space-faring team (and subsequent witty ground-level shot) had me staring for minutes. An act of silent genocide against a race of chubby blue otter people has an eerie gravitas that harkens back to Dark Phoenix wiping out a planet of peaceful broccoli-headed people.

That’s all surely abetted by inker Scott Hanner & Gabe Elateb’s colors, both of which are fantastic throughout the issue. This is a phenomenally matched art team that can make an interview as a high school gym teacher look riveting. Literally – they did that.

It’s really a pity that the interior team didn’t handle the cover, which is just average.

I never found myself stopping to ask questions about the mechanics of being a Lantern like I did in the other two Lantern books so far. Not only does Tomasi neatly answer a lot of questions in dialog, but his plot is so kinetic and so adroitly illustrated that the reader has no reason to pause and reflect on the missing pieces.

This is a fun, thrilling, gorgeous issue with nary a flaw, and it left me excited to read a second one – even if it’s about my least favorite line of heroes in the DC Universe. I suggest you give it a shot.