There's a fine line to be walked when doing a story centering on real issues. Too many writers fall into the trap of turning the book into a Lifetime movie of the week or afterschool special, losing characterization and focusing too much on preaching to the audience. Winick gets close to this a couple times in the issue, but in general manages to keep the reader in the moment, angry at the specific people who did this to a fictional character and relating that to the horrible realities that gave rise to the story without preaching the obvious like "gay bashing is bad." While the story pushed all my buttons as it should, and had me all the way through, though, we have all seen the "hero pushed to his limits by a personal tragedy" story before, and Winick follows that script a little too closely.
It's the mark of this creative team's talent that this issue made me angry, and that I wanted revenge for a fictional character by the end of the story. This kind of thing happens in real life, and it's often just as brutal and stupid, and Winick conveys the event as though it had happened to real people. The blame that Terry's boyfriend puts on himself, the seemingly callous cops and the cruelty and stupidity of the whole thing comes through very clearly.
Getting the reader into that mindset is important, because the focus of this story is really on Green Lantern suffering a personal tragedy and how he reacts. This is a story that has been done before, as the hero is pushed to a bloodlust that is unusual for him or her and they must confront not only the villains of the piece but their own helplessness to protect their loved ones and their personal demons. Winick, Eaglesham and the rest of the creative team do a fantastic job in showing Kyle's anger with a creepy and brutal interrogation sequence, and they do not shy away from showing Green Lantern just a little out of control in his response, as any human being would be when their friend is hurt.
Unfortunately, the conclusion of that story is a cliche by now. We all know that the hero isn't really going to push that far, that they won't cross the line that they have set for themselves. And while this is part and parcel of what makes them heroes, it also makes for a predictable and boring ending to the confrontation. There's plenty of catharsis, both for Kyle in terms of the story and the creators (and readers) in terms of striking back in print at the real life gay bashers and other monsters of the world, but the finale rings false, and more importantly, it carries no element of surprise at all.
It would have been easy for this to turn into "a very special issue of Green Lantern," but Winick and company instead deliver a powerful story of a hero who has suffered a personal tragedy, focusing as much on the human reaction as the social obligations. In fact, it was only diminished by the fact that this kind of story has been done many times before, and so the plot itself is a bit predictable, not matching the strength of the artwork or the characterization.
