REVIEW: Green Lantern - Rebirth

Reviewer’s note: This is part 3 of my series of Green Lantern Related reviews. While the first two covered the Movie and the Emerald Knights dvd this one will cover the story that led to the current revival in popularity of the character. I present my review of Green Lantern: Rebirth…..

Geoff Johns – Writer
Ethan Van Sciver – Pencils issues 1-6, Inker for issues 1 and 6
Prentis Rollins – Inker issues 2-5
Mick Gray – Inker issues 5-6
Marlo Alquizo – Inker issue 6
Moose Baumann – Colorist issues 1-6

In the early to mid-90s DC Comics decided they wanted to freshen things up for some of their titles one of which being Green Lantern. At the time the main Green Lantern was Hal Jordan. They decided it was time to put a new character in the spotlight as Green Lantern but there was a hard decision to make. How do you make this one most impactful? There have been Green Lanterns before who had taken over the title only to be quickly replaced by Hal Jordan once again.

So it was decided to do a storyline that tied into the Reign of the Supermen story where Cyborg Superman and a villain named Mongul nuked Hal Jordan’s home city of Coast City killing everyone presently there. After establishing that key secondary characters in the GL series were out of town at the time they started a controversial story known as “Emerald Twilight” which involved a grief stricken Hal Jordan to have a mental breakdown which led to the killing of many Green Lanterns and most of the Guardians before he became the villain known as Parallax. Ganthet the lone surviving Guardian ended up making one last ring to give to artist Kyle Rayner. A few years later DC ended up killing off Hal Jordan altogether in the story “The Final Night” which was meant to be a final moment of redemption for the former Green Lantern.

Over the course of the next decade Kyle was leading the title and Hal Jordan’s spirit was bonded to the hero The Spectre. Finally in 2004 it was decided to bring Green Lantern back to it’s roots which included giving Guy Gardner his Green Lantern ring back and bringing back the Green Lantern Corps. The biggest part of this was that they would be bringing Hal Jordan back to life. How would this be possible though? And why would he be accepted as a hero after all the blood on his hands from his time as Parallax?

Thankfully for us the writer for this story was Geoff Johns. The first order of business was to make a reasonable explanation for what Hal did that would acknowledge that he did what he did but also clear his name from it. He did this with the revelation that Parallax was the name of an entity that was possessing him through his ring with the aid of the newly returned Sinestro(Parallax is the entity of fear and was why the ring couldn’t affect anything Yellow).

Sinestro decided he wanted to get back at Hal Jordan for exposing his abuse of power when Sinestro was part of the GLC. His way of doing so was having Parallax influence Hal through his ring to make him more prone to fear so when a big enough moment happened he would snap which is what ended up happening.

This leads to a fight between Hal and Sinestro that while not that long is a nice moment for fans of the Green Lantern mythos.

Also of note is Batman being overly suspicious of Hal which shouldn’t be considered much a shock after “Emerald Twilight” and “Zero Hour”. Even when Hal was resurrected in this he tried to apprehend Hal which led to one of the funniest moments of the whole mini-series…

It leads to a final battle that is well written and thanks to Geoff Johns’ MO of leaving hints for future storylines ends up setting up parts for a storyline as far as 6 years later. It involves all 4 earth lanterns Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner(the one from Batman: The Brave and the Bold), and John Stewart(the black one from Justice League Unlimited), and alien GL Kilowog facing a Parallax possed Guardian…

The strongest part of this mini-series is the writing of Geoff Johns. While he already was starting to get a really good reputation in the industry for his work on The Avengers and Teen Titans it was Green Lantern: Rebirth and his subsequent run on Green Lantern that has made him a star in the industry. He writes captivating stories and does events and miniseries as if they were an epic summer blockbuster. He isn’t afraid to give the artist splash pages to showcase their ability. As a matter of fact Geoff Johns loves the use of the splash page which leads to some beautifully drawn moments in Rebirth. He also is not afraid to do retcons to help his storyline. While this ends up pissing off a good portion of fanboys I find no problem in this especially considering the amount of times continuity has been changed company-wide in comics. Another great aspect of the writing is the pacing here. It doesn’t feel like the story drags on at all and every big moment ends up being a huge payoff.

All in all not bad for a writer who originally considered comic writing as “something to do on the side” while writing TV and movie screenplays.

Ethan Van Sciver(also known for his work alongside Grant Morrison on New X-Men) did a really good job with the art here. Though at times the art looked odd those moments never got distracting.

Overall I will rate this story a 5 out of 5 based on spectacular writing and really good art. I strongly suggest you read this and Sinestro Corps War..

Written By: Mike Falcone
Twitter: @BrainstuFalcone

TOPIC: Superman's Citizenship

Dear DC,

You missed it, big time. You also forgot too much history that some of us didn’t forget. Superman is and always should be an American citizen. This isn’t a discussion about socialism or politics in general. This is about a boy and his comic book hero. I do not dispute that Superman helps with crisis around the world. What you forgot is that he doesn’t get involved in politics. This isn’t Watchmen!



Superman doesn’t renounce his citizenship anymore than does the Statue of Liberty! He is a symbol of American ideals. This is what countries aspire to be, democratic and free. I read where a journalist said that we are making too much of this. As a true comic book fan I have to disagree. Here are a few things that I would like to bring to the table:

The comic book is historically an American medium. We fostered it. We nurtured it. It's way of telling stories graphically that has been adopted the world over. There is some dispute over the genesis of the actual paneled work that we call a comic book (Shirrel Rhoades, A Complete History of American Comic books, p. 3) still, history shows that the comic book is at its core a patently American vehicle.



Superman shouldn’t HAVE to renounce his American citizenship. An American soldier doesn’t have to renounce his citizenship to fight in another country. What you screwed up was treating Superman like he is a vigilante. Superman never would have gone to Iran in the first place! You have forgotten so much history it’s frightening. Does he have to quit the Justice League of America? (Note: “America”)

The Justice Society of America storyline (Note: “America”) (JSA #45 thereabouts) stopping Black Adam from interfering in his country of Kahndaq’s politics was a huge storyline for defining that American superheroes were just an offshoot of America and that we didn’t belong in other countries because it did give us an unfair advantage.



Take a look back at the “52” storyline. There are plenty of heroes that, if done properly in the true spirit of comic books and realism (such that you can), are from other countries (See 52 - Week 10). The Great Ten of China and Russia’s Rocket Reds are examples. A distinctly outside of the box storyline would be for Iran to create its own superhero team. Let Superman be an ambassador for America to go into other countries. To renounce his American self actually goes more against his character than treating him like some political pawn. Ma and Pa Kent raised him better than that. Superman/Clark Kent would never renounce anything. He wouldn’t feel he had to.

Superman was created by two Americans. Siegel and Schuster were immigrants, of course, as were we all. Yet, they were proud to be Americans. The boy who created Superman not just as a comic book hero but perhaps as a way of getting retribution for his father’s death, would be rolling over in his grave. This renunciation is such a slap in the face of America, the American comic book reading public and Siegel and Shuster that it’s frightening. We have been touting “Truth, Justice and the American Way” not just for the America of today but for the very ideals that our forefathers fought the British empire for 235 years ago.

To quote Joe Simon, the artist-writer who co-created Captain America, “…our work carried with it a particularly American slant. After all, we were Americans drawing and writing about things that touched us. As it turned out, the early work was, you might say, a comic book version of jazz. In the sense, that is, that jazz too was a uniquely American art form (Dan Whitehead, “Kapow! A Talk with Joe Simon,” The Web, simoncomics.com). Superman has always been a uniquely American persona. The ideal that children the world over would aspire to. If we believe in ourselves as Americans then Superman epitomized the hope that we would one day “leap tall buildings in a single bound”.

DC, do the right thing and fix it because I won’t be buying anymore Superman comic books until you do. I am sure that my chump change won’t make a difference but it’s the principal of the thing. I have 20 years worth of comics that I painstakingly collected and found in dusty comic book shops. Superman is my hero. My AMERICAN hero.



Written By: Jerry Browning
Twitter: @Endless102

REVIEW: Watchmen

When you talk Graphic Novels you have to start with Watchmen. This piece of work could be called the greatest piece of visual media of the genre. Strong words, of course, however this is a work unparalleled and a standard by which all other Graphic Novels are measured.

Written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, Watchmen is an in depth look at our world in a fictional Cold War era with real superheroes. The Comedian has been killed and Rorschach the last of the active superheroes suspects that this is no mere homicide. So begins a deeply written exploration into the psychological aspect of super heroism and the world that we and the characters live in. This is not some bad guy versus good guy kid’s story. Watchmen is an adult dark view of the real world with real consequences of average people dressing up to fight crime. The world changes when a real “super-man” actually comes onto the scene. The character of Dr. Manhattan is done so well its missed by most readers (hint: watch the clothing he wears as the book goes on). He is god-like. How would that affect a human being? Read it and find out!

Watchmen is a psychological study of people at its core and a study of the world at most. Alan Moore is pure genius. Watch the words. Watch the pictures. The story is not made up of one or the other it is both. Nothing is insignificant; every line of dialog, every scene from foreground to background is important to the story that we are being told.

There are stories within this story that help with the main plot. Read separately you will find that the Tales of the Black Freighter and Under the Hood are clues as to what the novel as a whole is trying to say. They are not distractions they are specific points of understanding that parallel the premise of Watchmen.

Here is some help for those of you brave enough to take this journey. Pay attention to the genius of Chapter IV, Watchmaker as a study of Dr. Manhattan. This chapter shows with amazing detail how Dr. Manhattan sees the world. Chapter V, Fearful Symmetry is one that the reader needs to look at as a whole. Open the book to page one and then flip to the last page. Notice the panel arrangement? Page two and the second to last page. Back and forth until you get to the center. Piqued your interest yet? Try Chapter IX, The Darkness of Mere Being turn to page 27, the top panel. Now go to the internet and look up “Mars Anomalies Face on Mars” (or something like that). What Alan Moore did for effect and artistry turned out to be an interesting coincidence. These are just a few of the myriad of instances of the mastery of this work.

The end I will not spoil for you. Suffice it to say that if it doesn’t make you think then you probably missed the point. Give yourself a moment to re-read it. The message is there.

The movie is a review for another time. I will review the movie and then write a comparison of the two. For now pick up a copy of Watchmen; take some time, grab a drink, send the kids to bed and immerse yourself with words and pictures in a true literary experience.

WRITTEN BY: Jerry Browning
TWITTER: @Endless102