Broken Frontier

In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil’s might, beware my power – Green Lantern’s Light!!!

Hal Jordan’s return to the DC Universe as THE Green Lantern is now complete. Having reclaimed his sanity and body, this issue sees Jordan lead the surviving Corps members: Kilowog, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, and Kyle Rayner against the monster Parallax. But not all the other characters are as trusting of Hal as the Corps.

Geoff Johns continues to write a good superhero story. The only problem with this miniseries was that the ultimate moment of it, Hal once again wearing his costume, took place at the end of issue 4. Therefore, the rest of the miniseries seems like a rush to get through the conflict and move onto future Hal as Green Lantern stories. And yet Johns manages to whisk us through this very well. Not once does anything in the story seem forced. He keeps the characters true to themselves, not succumbing to generic banter to move the story ahead. There’s even a funny one-liner from Guy Gardner that seems like the perfect homage to the Giffen and DeMatteis Justice League stories. (Although, from this reviewer’s biased perspective, it is incredibly unlikely that Batman would ever get caught off guard like that.)

I have run hot and cold on Van Sciver’s artwork before, but he has pushed all the right buttons on this miniseries. He captures the absolute grandeur of Hal Jordan and what he means to the DC Universe brilliantly. And that doesn’t hold true just for Hal. All of the supporting characters are drawn to the same effect. Each one captures the look and feel of these iconic characters. His splash pages are beautifully rendered and the action scenes are just what the doctor ordered. This book is almost all action too and Van Sciver handles himself wonderfully. The reader is never confused as to what is going on and understands exactly what happens during this battle scene. This is all accentuated perfectly by the wonderful coloring in the book. Equal parts bright, vibrant, and expressionistic; the coloring in this book follows with DC’s current trend of amazingly rendered artwork. The coloring adds depth and highlights to the work without ever truly calling attention to it.

In the end, the only real problem with this book was its schedule. Due to unforeseen circumstances, Van Sciver was not able to keep up the monthly schedule, leading to other books being published with Hal as Green Lantern before this miniseries was completed (as if we didn’t know anyway). Perhaps that lessened the impact a little bit, and perhaps having the "it" moment of the series two issues before the end did the same, but in the end, it is just really nice to be able to read new Hal Jordan stories.

-Sam Moyerman