Review:
Writer Len Wein and artist Dave Gibbons are both highly regarded for their comic book work over the decades. Wein is perhaps best remembered for co-creating the Swamp Thing for DC Comics, and Wolverine and several other key X-Men characters for Marvel Comics. Gibbons most famously teamed with Alan Moore in the Watchmen series, described as "one of the most important literary works the field has ever produced" (Paul Levitz)
Despite these accolades and accomplishments, these Green Lantern tales are not among their best work. And yet even in the midst of standard mid-80s superhero fare, there are memorably transcendent moments.
This book is the first of three volumes that collect #172-200 of the ongoing Green Lantern series that started in the late 1960s. It was a critical couple years in the Green Lantern universe, moving Hal Jordan out of the centre and letting other Earth-born ring-wielders take centre stage. It all culminated in the series switching to become the Green Lantern Corps with #201, kicking off a more team-based series with more extra-terrestrial characters.
Wein dazzles with a poetic touch in the narrative-heavy sections. Exhibit A is the repeated use of a newspaper image in #175, as he takes a potentially trite and contrived idea into the backbone of the story. And the personal tension and internal turmoil that leads to Hal Jordan's resignation as Green Lantern is nicely built over several chapters.
Where he falls short of his reputation are, first, how small-thinking Hal Jordan becomes upon his return to Earth - having seen the universe, it is unexpected that he would become so focused on the problems of one company in once city on one planet; and second, the middle section of this collection is decidedly ho-hum standard superhero fare, especially the chapters with the Javelin and the Demolition Team.
The Shark chapters pull that way too, but Wein manages to mitigate the worst with the newspaper and the inner-mind battle. Wein also gives characters different accents - Irish, southern USA, east-coast USA, which injects more variety into the voices but becomes too cute.
Dave Gibbons nails the art in the Shark chapters. The inner-mind battle especially stands out, with its jagged tooth-like panels and reduced colour palettes. Some other charming touches show up too, like the Flash with one leg casually draped over the arm of an easy-chair. And he is reasonably restrained with the light constructs created by the power ring. But much of the rest is cookie-cutter work and some secondary characters are hard to distinguish - good thing they rarely change their clothes, so we can tell them apart!
Reading these 40-year-old stories today, they are obviously dated and did not always age well. But there are some sparkling moments and it sets up a key moment of succession in the Green Lantern character, a radical change that did not come with any attempts to kill off a character as historically significant as Hal Jordan.
Description:
In 1984, DC Comics introduced British artist Dave Gibbons to U.S. readers with Green Lantern #172, the start of a popular run by Gibbons and writer Len Wein, best known as the creator of both Swamp Thing and Wolverine. Over the course of thirteen action packed issues, Green Lantern battled some of his greatest foes, clashed with the Guardians of the Universe, and was replaced by another human Green Lantern - John Stewart! This title is a showcase for the art of Dave Gibbons, who moved straight from Green Lantern to Watchmen, the best-selling graphic novel of all time. Gibbons returned to the world of Green Lantern in 2007 as the writer of the new series Green Lantern Corps.
Collects: Green Lantern (vol 2) #172-176, 178-181
Authors: Len Wein
Artists: Dave Gibbons
Published By: DC Comics
Published When: Nov 20, 2012
Parental Rating: PG-13
ISBN: 978-1401241667
Pages: 192 pages
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