Synopsis:
Without the Corps… without the ring… without the willpower, what’s left is the Absolute Green Lantern!
Review:
Absolute Green Lantern #1 rounds out the second wave in DC’s grand new experiment and continues the winning streak. The ingredients of the classic Green Lantern story are there – Hal Jordan receives a cosmic boon from a strange alien – but the results this time are far less space opera and more cosmic horror.
Al Ewing’s story begins with a startling mystery, with an exhausted, haunted Jordan wandering through the desert. That mystery quickly escalates into outright horror when a police officer pulls up behind him.
With six books on the shelves now, the Absolute DC playbook seems to be to turn the typical hero origin story inside out. Absolute Batman #1 gave us a working-class Dark Knight as opposed to a rich one; Absolute Wonder Woman #1 makes Diana a witch raised in Hell as opposed to a princess on Themiscyra. Ewing makes Jordan the villain as much as he is the victim here, though how and why is unclear.
The Green Lantern mythos may be fundamentally different in this new universe; it seems to be, given the few context clues. A ring may not be involved, and there may be an inherent duality to the power granted, if it was granted at all. A new hero, Jo, takes the Green Lantern role at the issue’s end, though we know little about her. Her power source appears to be a lantern-shaped necklace. The mystery works in favor of the story, as do the horror elements (a roadside diner becomes the scene of such incomprehensible terror it’s mostly implied).
Jordan is carrying around – well, it looks like Venom goo – in his jacket pocket. The issue leaves it a mystery, but he picked it up trying to help when an alien arrived in Evergreen and mysteriously caused the death of a biker. A dark symbol represents what he’s concealing – a black hole, possibly – and it creates an instant duality between light and darkness, good and evil, complicated by Jordan’s inability to control the power he’s stumbled upon.
Ewing has done terrific work the last few years, most notably the Eisner Award-nominated run on The Immortal Hulk. Horror played a key role there, too, and if that book is any indication, things are going to get rough for Jordan and company. Ewing added significantly to the Hulk mythos during that run, and it’s plain to see from this first issue that he’s going to do the same for Green Lantern as well.
Jahnoy Lindsay’s art is a little rough at first. The lines are so thin and pointed as to appear manga-inspired, but then, as you get into the book, his facility with different faces and bodies comes through. The color work might overwhelm the thinness of his line at times, but overall, the art style is unique.
Absolute Green Lantern #1 is a bold departure from typical Green Lantern lore, though one with tragic echoes. Hal Jordan infamously turned evil in the early 90s, killing all the Green Lanterns and paving the way for Kyle Rayner (and sadly, the Fridging Trope). So far, it’s uncertain if Ewing is playing off that story at all, but it certainly seems that Hal Jordan is in for another dark turn in this comic.
Leave a Reply