The Green Lantern #11 – Grant Morrison, Writer; Liam Sharp, Artist; Steve Oliff, Colorist
Ratings:
Ray – 8.5/10
Ray: Grant Morrison writes bigger-scale stories than anyone else in the industry, and when he’s on his game the result is truly sweeping. When he’s not on his game, it can be simply confusing. And then you have times when it’s both at the same time, like The Green Lantern #11, a fascinating penultimate issue of the first cycle of his Green Lantern reinvention.
When we last left off, Hal had teamed up with a variety of Green Lanterns from around the multiverse – including the Tangent Lantern, a Bat-lantern, and a stoned hippie Lantern. As this issue opens, they find the location of the missing Lanterns – and the massive golden guardian who is keeping them for some battle to come. That may tie into the opening segment of the issue, where a quartet of hapless Green Lanterns stumble upon a doomed world and encounter Sinestro – and a potentially deadlier villain he plans to unleash. Does this tie into Sinestro’s role in Year of the Villain? I don’t know, but the few scenes he gets are excellent.
I’m not quite as fond of this mysterious guardian, Zundernell. Morrison seems to be going for something between Galactus and the Silver Surfer, in that he’s too powerful and too far gone to really understand humans. But he rambles a lot and most of the most interesting material in this issue has to do with the interactions of the various Lanterns. Carol Ferris – or a version of her from another world – appears, and the dialogue between her and Hal has a lot of clever lines. I was wondering if Morrison would get to dealing with her, since Venditti and the other writers left her in a bit of an odd place in a relationship with Kyle. There’s some genuine gems of scenes in this issue, along with a creepy last-page scene that promises an epic final issue, but at times it feels like Morrison is throwing a hundred things at the wall and seeing what sticks. The good news is, more often than not it sticks. I’d rather have a crazy ambitious comic than one that plays it safe.
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Disclaimer: GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
