Category: Random Retrospective

Random Retrospective #23 – Green Lantern Corps #17

Let’s all head back to the crazy days of 2007 when the Green Lantern Corps were facing their biggest threat so far in the form of the Sinestro Corps. Over in the main title, Geoff Johns was laying the seeds of what, a couple of years down the line, would become BLACKEST NIGHT but for now, the whole of the Corps was up against the rogue Lantern and his band of merciless killers as they attempt to take over Earth due to its position at the centre of the multiverse. So what do the Guardians do? They give the go ahead to allow lethal force to be used by the GLC for the first time ever.

Thrown into the mix is one of the new Lanterns, someone who first appeared in the Blackest Night prophecy as first mentioned by Alan Moore:

Yet another seed being planted, making sure that everything Moore mentioned gets put in place before the big event.

After a whole host of individual fights between the GLC and the Sinestro Corps, everyone gets a message to head to New York where the big, final showdown is going to take place. When the GLC get there, they find not only Sinestro but as Arisia puts it . . .

The Anti-Monitor appears in the role of Guardian to Sinestro’s Corps, being brought back a few issues earlier for the first time, if memory serves, since Crisis had happened.

Being the impetuous rookie he is, Sodam Yat attacked the Anti-Monitor head on and is swatted away but, as he’s a Daxamite and on Earth has the same powers as Superman, he’s quickly back up on his feet. And then the Guardians arrive and give him the power of Ion, the Will Entity, that Kyle Rayner had, until recently, been using, which gives Yat even more power.

Which is just as well as the issue ends with the arrival of the other big bad guy at the time:

Yep, Superman-Prime because at this time, DC were trying to prevent paying out to the creators of Superboy so had aged this guy up . . . or something like that; it boiled down to them trying to avoid giving creators money, as per usual.

Legal shenanigans aside, this was a high point for the Green Lantern titles – the Sinestro Corps War and the subsequent introduction of the other Corps, the War of Light leading into BLACKEST NIGHT were all action packed stories that I remember enjoying.

Random Retrospective #22 – Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn II #2

After the somewhat ignominious end of the GREEN LANTERN series post-Crisis, Hal Jordan and the handful of other Lanterns found themselves sharing the pages of the anthology series ACTION COMICS WEEKLY. Christopher Priest (writing as Jim Owsley) did some sterling work putting Hal Jordan back on his feet and with Keith Giffen and Gerard Jones, delivered a new origin for Green Lantern in GREEN LANTERN: EMERALD DAWN which saw Jordan grow up and take responsibility for his reckless actions, including a drink driving charge. But the 90 days jail time overlapped the time he became a Lantern and so this sequel by Giffen and Jones covered his time in jail when he would be simultaneously trained by Sinestro during the nights, while serving time in the day.

Jordan accompanies Sinestro to a meeting between the Khunds, Dominators, and Citadel who are considering an alliance (that will later come to fruition in INVASION!) which the Guardians object to. Despite Sinestro’s attempts at politics, the threat of interference by the GL Corps ends in a predictable fashion.

The alliance is disrupted and despite Jordan saving Sinestro’s life, the senior Lantern is irritated with his student and the disorder he brings. Discounting Jordan’s contributions to the negotiations, Sinestro dismisses him back to Earth and the prison, planning to continue their training the next night. Trouble is, during the time he was away, a new cellmate has been assigned to Jordan.

And that’s going to bring trouble in later issues.

EMERALD DAWN II worked to explain how Jordan, stuck in prison for the first 90 days of his Green Lantern career, became so proficient with the ring and a good Lantern, but it also did a pretty good job of turning Sinestro from a one-dimensional bad guy into someone who thought he was doing the right thing, but ultimately couldn’t see how wrong he was. It doesn’t give him the full back story that Geoff Johns would later develop for him, but the root of it is there, the idea that he wasn’t always just a villain.

As years went by, though, the idea of having one of their major heroes wandering around with a DUI in their history didn’t really work for DC, and the origin was eventually changed again, removing this whole storyline. At the time, though, it was a decent enough story, and the original EMERALD DAWN went on to give us a new, revitalised Green Lantern series as it headed into the 90s.

Random Retrospective #21 – Flashpoint: Frankenstein And The Creatures of The Unknown #2

The results of FLASHPOINT – the wiping clean of decades of continuity and history, the rebooting of basically every character in DC’s pantheon – was divisive to say the least, but the event itself wasn’t that bad. True, the main storyline seemed rushed (there was little to no build up, it just appeared on the horizon suddenly) but while it was running, the rest of DC seemed to grab hold of the concept of a new world and run with it. It was basically a shared Elseworld for a few months, leading to a slew of mini-series and one-shots where, as always, some were better than others. Jeff Lemire’s FLASHPOINT: FRANKENSTEIN AND THE CREATURES OF THE UNKNOWN was definitely one of the better ones.

Lemire reinvented the Creature Commandos and teamed them with a Frankenstein that was straight out of Grant Morrison’s SEVEN SOLDIERS event, a pairing that worked splendidly.

Arrayed against them are the US military in the person of General Sam Lane and the rag-tag group he’s using to track them down, including Miranda Shrieve, the grand daughter of the Commando’s original leader back in World War II.

She’s working under the belief that her grand father was killed by the Commandos and so is more than happy to hunt them down and, in the final battle in this issue, explain her motives to them. Just before she and her squad kill them, however, the foot soldiers are taken out by the appearance of Frankenstein’s Bride.

By the end of the three issue mini-series, Shrieve has been told that General Lane is the real villain and cause of her grand father’s death, and she joins SHADE to work alongside the Commandos.

It was a good short series and, once the New 52 launched, I was pleased to pick up the FRANKENSTEIN, AGENT OF SHADE ongoing that picked up many of the threads here, though always confused why Miranda Shrieve never made the jump from the mini-series to the ongoing.

Random Retrospective #20 – Batman: Dark Victory

Following the success of BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN it was sort of inevitable that Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale would team up again for a sequel, and DARK VICTORY was the result. Picking up after the Holiday murders in the first series, the bad guys are either dead, in Arkham, or disabled – and the same goes for some of the good guys as well, with Harvey Dent’s transition to Two-Face completed by the end of HALLOWEEN and at the start of this series, he’s locked up in Arkham.

There’s a hell of a lot going on in this collection so I’m not going to do a big review of the entire series, but suffice to say not only was the story wonderfully paced, with twists and turns galore, but the art was excellent as well, with splash pages such as this:

Catwoman and her relationship with Batman also got some coverage, the complicated toing and froing between her and Batman, and Selina and Bruce running through the book.

But I think the biggest reveal was the inclusion and introduction of the first Robin. I’m pretty sure I read an interview with Loeb when this series was coming out where he said he’d never really liked Robin so hasn’t used him in any of the previous Batman stories he’d done, but with DARK VICTORY he found a way to bring the character in.

And at the end of the book, the main plot is tied up, though there are enough threads left hanging that there could have been a third (apart from CATWOMAN: WHEN IN ROME) but for whatever reasons, it never happened.

Still, as the final page shows, we’ve got a good idea of where things go from here: