Green Lantern: New Guardians #1 Review
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 05 October 2011 01:00
- Written by Kevin
The Green Lantern franchise has become DC Comics second biggest franchise over the past few years. Even though his role as the #1 Green Lantern has been taken from him, Kyle Rayner is still a character that has maintained a high stature in the Green Lantern Corps. Kyle has always been my preferred Green Lantern and I was happy to see him get his own title in DC's New 52 with Green Lantern: New Guardians. As the main headliner of this new team book can Kyle see the success the main title is getting? Let’s find out with Green Lantern: New Guardians #1.
Creative Team
Writer: Tony Berdard
Artist: Tyler Kirkham
Inker: Batt
Colorist: Dave Sharpe
Story Rating: 6 Night Girls out of 10
Art Rating: 6 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 6 Night Girls out of 10
Synopsis: At some point in the past the entire Green Lantern Corps and Guardians have been killed with only Ganthet left standing. He creates the last Green Lantern ring and heads to find the final Green Lantern. His journey has him end up on Earth were he meets Kyle Rayner and makes him the final Green Lantern.
Shifting to the present, on Xylon Expanse where a Sinestro Corp member attacks a spaceship. As he attacks relentlessly until his ring leaves him for unknown reasons. He is then killed by those he was attacking.
On Planet Krod, a Red Lantern is destroy the planet. His ring also leaves him and he dies due to the effects of being a Red Lantern leaves its former wearer.
In Space Sector 22, a Star Sapphire is defending a space crew from an attack. Her ring also leaves her. Before dying she is saved by Star Sapphire Fatality. Once she destroys the attacker she chases the ring.
On Earth, Kyle Rayner saves some construction workers. As he is being thanked by a crowd of people, the rings from the Blue Lanterns, Star Sapphire, Red Lantern, Sinestro Corps, Indigo Corps and Orange Corps appear and choose him as the new wearer. Suddenly Arkillo, Bleez, Fatality and Munk appear ready to attack Kyle. End of issue.
Commentary
The Good: Green Lantern: New Guardians #1 delivered a fast paced set-up issue. Tony Berdard does a solid job introducing all the players of this team title. At the same time, this book does nothing special that makes it stand-out from the pack of 52 new #1 issues.
Berdard has shown through his previous Green Lantern Corps run that he has a good handle of how to write the Green Lantern universe. Though this issue was not overly impressive, Berdard showed he knows how to have a cosmic vision for this title. This is important for this title as it will be one of the titles not set on Earth. This is how it should be as not every title needs to be based on Earth.
While we did see Kyle having adventures on Earth, Berdard smartly built the mystery of other Lantern Corps members losing their rings as more of a cosmic threat set outside Earth. Bedard set it so we do not know what is going on with the rings. Instead, he just teases that there is some sort of connection to Kyle. This is a good way to build a mystery and have a reader coming back to know is actually going on.
Also, I liked that Berdard quickly established the fact that this will be Kyle Rayner’s book by retelling his origin in the first few pages. For new readers, they may not know who Kyle is, especially those that do not read comics. So for them, Hal Jordan and John Stewart may be the only Green Lanterns they know. And here Berdard does a good job summarizing Kyle’s origin and showing the creativity the character has with his artistic background.
Berdard also does a good job giving us a brief look at the different types of characters that will make up this title. Though we did not see much of all the players get much screen time, they each have unique looks that will be fun to see how they are developed.
Tyler Kirkman delivered some very clean looking artwork. Kirkman’s art was not given much for it to shine since he is a high action artist. He did show some burst of cool action and creativity with the constructs for Kyle but nothing that stood out as great. Hopefully, Bedard will give Kirkman some more action scenes because that is where his art shines.
The Bad: With this issue setting up the members that will make up New Guardians it felt as though the retelling of Kyle’s origin could have been better used to establish more of each character's personality. Sure it was cool to see his origin be retold, but for a first issue as a reader we want to be able to quickly draw connections between each team member.
This issue largely failed to do that outside of Kyle. Yes, each member had a cool look but that is all they have. This is simply not enough. As a team book, there should be more of an established character base for each one of them. We know that in teams there are distinct roles each member will play but we do not get much of feeling of what role each one will play.
Overall: Green Lantern: New Guardians #1 set-up the ground work for this new team series that will be part of the Green Lantern franchise. Though I was not overly impressed with the issue Tony Berdard did enough that I will come back for more. Future issues will have to develop all of the characters that make up this book but they have interesting enough looks that Berdard will have a lot to play with. If you are a Green Lantern fan this book is a good pick up. For non-Green Lantern fans this is more of a browse issue since this will not be for everyone.
Green Lantern