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JUST IMAGINE STAN LEE WITH DAVE GIBBONS CREATING GREEN LANTERN
Not Recommended (2/10)
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DC Comics
Main story
Writer: Stan Lee
Pencils: Dave Gibbons
Inks: Dick Giordano
Letters: Bill Oakley
On the Street...
Writers: Michael Uslan & Stan Lee
Pencils: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
Inks: Josef Rubenstein
Letters: Phil Felix
Colors: Alex Sinclair
Editor: Mike Carlin
Price: $5.95 US/$9.95 CAN |
Main story: I'm sorry to say it, but Stan Lee is far too out of touch of the sensibilities of modern comics storytelling. His plots are cliched and obvious, and the dialogue inconsistent and false in tone. It was true of last month's Just Imagine... Superman book, and it remains so with this new -- if rather forced -- twist on Green Lantern.
Archaeology professor Len Lewis travels to Africa in search the fabled Tree of Life. He's not the only one looking for it, though. The Rev. Dominic Darkk desires the power of the Tree, and he's dispatched two agents -- mercenary Cragg Crogor and one of Lewis's students, Cathy Warren -- to help him get it. They fail, but Lewis finds himself mortally wounded near the roots of the Tree itself. It merges with him, transforming him into a living battery of power.
When I heard Dave Gibbons would be pencilling this story, I was actually looking forward to it. Most think of Gibbons as the brilliant artist who drew Alan Moore's Watchmen, but I remember his work on the Len Wein run on Green Lantern with fondness as well. His stuff here is light and fun, but his pencils don't mesh well with Giordano's inks. Their collaboration is oddly sketchy, and it just doesn't work with the tone of the story.
"Cragg Crogor"? "Crumbbums"? "I ain't never felt such force"? Yes, the comic-book industry owes a lot to Stan Lee, but his writing just doesn't hold up today. It literally made me wince a couple of times.
On the Street: Teamed with Uslan, Lee comes up with a better script in this shorter story, but only slightly so. In this back-up feature, Uslan's plot tackles the issue of regular folks abdicating responsibility to those above them, those in authority... in this case, super-heroes. It's a good story concept, but it's been handled better than this, most recently in Joe Casey and Mike Wieringo's "Shipbuilding" in Adventures of Superman #596.
The Garcia-Lopez/Rubenstein collaboration works nicely. It certainly looks cleaner than the art in the main story. Still, it's hard to really get into the art when the script isn't all that engaging.
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