Comics / Comic Reviews / DC Comics

Green Lantern Corps #39

By Andy Frisk
September 1, 2009 - 22:51

Just like in any good, old fashioned, zombie movie, Green Lanterns Gardner, Rayner, Natu, Kilowog, and Iolande, among others are overwhelmed by the massive amounts of reanimated corpses of dead Green Lanterns. The Oan Power Battery Shell is destroyed, so the Black Lantern Rings searching for “FLSSH” face little resistance as they crash into the Crypt of The Green Lanterns, and proceed to command all of the corpses therein to RISE. Particularly painful for Kyle Rayner, is the rise of his former love Jade, the daughter of the Original Green Lantern Alan Scott. This event will prove especially tough for Kyle since he revealed to Guy Gardner on the way back to Oa from Earth that when he gazed into the heart of The Star Sapphire, it was Jade, not Natu (who he led to believe he saw, and has subsequently started a romance with) who was revealed as his true love. Love will have to wait though as the Black Lanterns close in…Meanwhile, Green Lantern Arista is ordered off Daxam by their leader as “We now have powers-powers to protect ourselves from aliens—all aliens. We want you and your ring off our world.” Green Lantern Sodam Yat sacrificed himself, turning Daxam’s red sun to yellow, thus granting all Daxamites Superman-like powers, so that they could save themselves from Mongul, but he couldn’t save them from their own racism and xenophobic attitudes. Speaking of Mongul, he’s set himself up as a dictator on another world, and renamed the Sinestro Corps to the Mongul Corps. It’s a world that Sinestro, recently freed from the conversion chambers on Zamaron, and Lantern Natu will be quite distressed to hear he’s taken over…

Blackest Night chugs along, and more Black Lanterns continue to show up. A few particularly interesting questions come up in this issue though. If Lantern Yat has sacrificed himself, and is dead, where’s his Black Power Ring? Maybe the rings haven’t made it Daxam’s part of the universe yet? Or maybe Yat is “not really” dead? Another question of interest is, now that Daxamites are super powered, is the DC Universe facing the “threat” of another New Krypton? More importantly, what role will these genetic cousins, and descendents of Kryptonians, play in relation to the inhabitants of New Krypton and Mon-El (a Daxamite himself)? One has to assume that they will play a role. Perhaps the Kryptonians of New Krypton will end up on Daxam at some point? Storytelling wise, New Krypton cannot remain in such close proximity to Earth. These are questions for another time though, as Blackest Night will take center stage for the next several months throughout the DC Universe.

Gleason’s art remains strong as ever. His Black Lanterns are depicted as full of decay, and his Green Lanterns glow with life. While he adds plenty of detail to all of his panels, occasionally they are overloaded with images and oddly angled so as to be visually confusing. Part of this visual confusion results from the attempt to depict a swarm of small black rings flying everywhere at once, a difficult task to actualize visually.

Overall, all of DC Comics readers’ eyes are on Blackest Night, and with the popularity of The Sinestro Corps War, Green Lantern Rebirth, and Green Lantern Secret Origin, we can be sure that DC Comics is going to do everything it can to capitalize on this current Green Lantern event. So far this event has been interesting, but so far we’ve really only gotten a great deal of really good art and creepy zombie Lanterns, where we need to start getting a story behind these resurrections that lives up to the level of the art. It’s time for the story to RISE… 

Rating: 7 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12