GREEN LANTERN #145
"Battle of Fire and Light"
Neutral (3/10)
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DC Comics
Writer: Judd Winick
Pencils: Dale Eaglesham
Inks: Rodney Ramos
Colors: Moose Baumann
Letters: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Bob Schreck
Price: $2.25 US/$3.75 CAN |
Imagine a boy genius with a foul mouth, and then imagine a writer transforming him into into a sensitive human being. That's what Judd Winick often does with Barry Ween, Boy Genius from Oni Press. Here, though, he takes a much more down-to-earth character -- Kyle Rayner -- and he transforms him into something divine and someone to whom it is difficult to relate. Though the ideas at the heart of the story are intriguing, in the end, it's not a terribly compelling tale given its lack of humanity.
Green Lantern does battle with Nero in space -- green ring versus yellow. Nero is drawing on GL's power, and it promises to lead to a stalemate without end. Nero wants to build the universe anew in his mad image, while Kyle just wants to stop him. Thanks to a sudden appearance by his predecessor (Hal Jordan AKA the Spectre), Kyle faces a new choice. He can go back and hold onto a normal life without the power, or he can transcend his current existence and become something more powerful and not altogether human.
Eaglesham conveys the chaos of the fight between Kyle and Nero... a little too well, actually. The action is quite hard to follow because everything is so busy. There are a lot of ring constructs running about the place. It's also hard to tell when we're seeing the actual characters or just replicas at times.
The Qwardians turn up in this story, but I don't really know why. The Spectre turns up in this story, but I don't really see why. Other heroes don't pitch in to help because they'll "get in the way." Again, I don't see how. Oddities in the plot and script such as these make the cosmic plot all the more difficult to understand or even care about.
It's too bad busy art and some weird plotting get in the way, because there's a clever idea at the heart of this story. Winick has been hinting that something big was happening to Kyle. We've seen that his grip on his humanity has been slipping. Here, he loses that grip entirely, but he seems to give it up all to willingly. It strikes me as a tragedy, but here, Winick hasn't played it up as such.
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