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Review: Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #40

By Philip Schweier
March 14, 2018 - 08:56

It always happens: someone accustomed to making their own command decisions (Capt. Kirk, James Bond or John Stewart) must yield to a higher authority (Starfleet, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the Guardians), and comes up with some work-around that enables them to nullify a direct order. Kudos to Stewart for not being a lap dog, but if he’s going to defy the Guardians, why did he bother to put them back in charge? Because the writer dictated it. I wouldn’t mind so much, but for it to happen so soon after them resuming their former authority seems questionable at best.

MEANWHILE… Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner, Killowog and others have gone to rescue Jal Jordan from Zod, so much of this issue is pure battle between Lanterns and Kryptonians. But thankfully, neither side is recycling the same tactics and subterfuge to achieve their ends. Matters get a little more creative than that, though I am at this time a little uncertain for what exactly has happened, or what it means for the Lanterns involved. Details to follow, I guess.

But getting back to the Guardians, it seems it’s business as usual with them, something we’ve been seeing since the Silver Age. They’re omniscient, all knowing, full of themselves and their superior intellect. They expect the Lanterns to do their bidding without independent thought, yet the Lanterns constantly prove them wrong. A few issues back, the Guardians once more took charge of the Corps, and wasted no time demonstrating their ineffectiveness in a crisis. When will they learn? After more than half a century, it’s downright tiresome. I was hoping Venditti wouldn’t go down that all-too-familiar path, but he did.

Kudos to DC for pitting the Lanterns against Zod and Family, but for anyone who has read recent issues of Action Comics, we have a pretty firm idea of how all this turns out. I’d appreciate it if next issue we get considerably closer to the end of the current story arc.

Rating: 5/10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12