Absolute Green Lantern #10 – Al Ewing, Writer; Sid Kotian, Artist; Pressy, Colorist
Ray – 10/10
Ray: For the first arc of this series, the biggest threat was cosmic in nature. But now, the Lanterns are becoming public knowledge – and with that, human villains are emerging. As a rule, just about every Absolute villain is more vile than their main-line counterpart, and Hector Hammond is no exception. Blessedly free of his stupid giant head for now, this corporate mad scientist has taken it upon himself to master this new energy – starting with experimenting with the black ooze that Hal Jordan was previously possessed by. He’s gotten his hands on the sample, and he’s gotten his hands on Todd Rice – but the Obsidian that emerges from this experiment is unlike anything we’ve seen before. It’ll probably be a while before the nasty results of this experiment make it to the public eye, but Jo Mullein has bigger things to be concerned with – namely, bleeding out on her kitchen floor.
Jo has been targeted by Goldface, a z-list villain in the original verse turned into a ruthless assassin here. It’s almost brilliantly simple that he uses solid gold bullets, bypassing the Lantern’s protection and making Jo vulnerable to what would otherwise be a pretty low-level threat. With her powers not working, she’s forced to resort to some old-school army medicine to save her own life and fend off the villain just enough for the cavalry to arrive. This is one of the most intense and violent issues of the series so far, with the stakes sky-high despite the lack of a huge-scale villian for much of the story. There are also some great flashbacks that show Jo’s complicated past, and the addition of Simon Baz – here a magic-afflicted agent with a very interesting reason for his mask – continues to add new wrinkles. It feels like unlike the other books in the line, we’ve barely scratched the surface of the mystery here.
To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.
GeekDad received this comic for review purposes
