All right, The Revolution has fallen behind in reviews this week. One major reason is the monster cold that flat out kicked my ass on Friday. I spent all of Saturday and Sunday passed out in bed. The good news is that the fever broke last night and I woke up today feeling great. The bad news is that I woke up feeling great just to go back to work on a Monday morning. Yay.
Anyway, let’s turn our attention to Green Lantern Corps #18. This has been an action packed and exciting read over the past several issues. Green Lantern Corps #18 centers on the much anticipated monster brawl between Superman-Prime and Ion. Of course, if DC knew how to properly pace things over on Countdown, maybe I would have been more excited about reading this issue. Let’s go ahead and hit this review for Green Lantern Corps #18.
Creative Team
Writer: Peter Tomasi
Pencils: Patrick Gleason & Jamal Igle
Inks: Prentis Rollins & Gerry Ordway
Art Rating: 5 Night Girls out of 10
Story Rating: 5 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 5 Night Girls out of 10
Synopsis: We begin with Superman-Prime and Ion brawling with each other. Sodam Yat thinks how he is right where he wants to be. That he was born for this. That nobody lives forever.
We cut back to Sodam as a little boy on Daxam. Sodam is fascinated by the other planets in the night sky. Sodam’s father, the typical xenophobic Daxamite, tells Sodam to stop gazing into the stars and to only concentrate on his world of Daxam.
We slide back to Superman-Prime impaling Ion with super heated lead bars. Ion battles through the pain and keeps fighting.
We cut back to Sodam as a boy finding a crashed spaceship on Daxam. Inside is an alien pilot. Sodam and the alien become close friends as Sodam nurses the pilot back to health.
We hop back to Superman-Prime and Ion still brawling away and destroying everything around them.
We hop back to the past where Sodam as a boy is witnessing his mother and father begin killed by the alien pilot that he helped rescue. We then see that it was all just a mind control experiment. We see Sodam’s parents with some scientists while Sodam is hooked into a virtual reality machine. The scientists claims that this should end Sodam’s adventurous days about alien life forms.
We jump back to the present where Ion and Superman-Prime and still battling away. Superman-Prime is unimpressed with Ion and calls him Superman-lite with a power ring.
We go back to the past and see Sodam secretly rebuilding the crashed spaceship that he had found. After several years, he finishes rebuilding a one man ship and is about to leave Daxam when a green power ring arrives to him and selects him to be a Green Lantern.
We shift back to the present. Superman-Prime pounds away on Ion. Sodam thinks how all he wants is another second, another hour, another day. That he can’t let Superman-Prime win. Not like this.
And with that Superman-Prime kills Ion. Superman-Prim then flies over to Johns Stewart and Guy Gardner while holding Ion’s limp and bloodied body. Superman-Prime smirks and asks “Who’s next?” End of issue.
Comments
The Good: Green Lantern Corps #18 was a solid read. Tomasi dishes out tons of action that will satisfy even readers with the most voracious appetite for brawling. If you dig titanic clashes of epic proportions then this issue is definitely for you. Ion and Superman-Prime are two monster powerhouses and it was fun watching these two forces collide in battle.
The flashback scenes were an effective way to give the reader more information about Sodam’s past. These flashback scenes help to explain why Sodam is who he is and why he so proudly and fiercely fights as a Green Lantern.
Tomasi does a nice job constructing Sodam Yat’s inner monologue that runs through this entire issue and acts as the backbone for the story. This was an effective way to give a reader a bit more insight into Sodam’s character and what makes him tick. The inner monologue also does a nice job showing that the heart of a true hero beats inside of Sodam’s chest.
Sodam comes across as a noble hero with the drive and desire to fight with every single ounce of energy that he can muster. There is no quit in Sodam. Sodam’s death at the end of this issue is an excellent example of a well done heroic death. This has to be just about one of the only deaths that has occurred in the DCU in the past couple of years that was actually well handled.
The Bad: Unfortunately, with no fault on Tomasi’s part, Green Lantern Corps #18 lacked any tension or excitement. That is all the fault of Dini over on Countdown and DC’s terrible handling of the plotting and pacing of Countdown’s story with regard to its impact on the other story arcs going on in the DCU. Since we have seen Superman-Prime stronger than ever and “blowing shit up” in the Multiverse, the reader already knew that Superman-Prime was going to beat Ion. We knew that no matter what happened in the Sinestro War story arc that Superman-Prime was going to emerge unscathed and stronger than ever.
DC’s terrible job coordinating Countdown’s story with respect to the other titles in the DCU simply robs Green Lantern Corps #18 of any of its impact. The reader just goes through the motions waiting for the inevitable victory or Superman-Prime.
I’m not a fan of art by committee, so it is no surprise that I wasn’t that impressed with the artwork in this issue. The art looked a bit rushed and sloppy.
Overall: Green Lantern Corps #18 was a solid issue that was really hampered by DC’s continued bungling of the events over on Countdown. And that is a real shame. This issue would have been such a more emotional read had the reader not already known the outcome of this battle. Having said that, this issue still treats the reader to one awesome battle between two powerhouse characters.
2 thoughts on “Green Lantern Corps #18 Review”
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It’s a decent fight, although we knew going in that Prime gets away somehow; the backstory given for Ion works quite well, too, the strongest parts of the issue.
I sort of felt the fight didn’t quite convey the full power of Ion, given that all Yat seems to do with it is punch Prime (Doomsday Fallacy again), rather than using any of its energy projection or spatial manipulation capabilities. Of course, he only just got the thing, and the Guardians didn’t tell him how to use it (or about his weakness to lead; or how his other Daxamite yellow sun powers work; a little help, guys?).
Artwise, I continue to find the handling of art on the GLC side of this crossover baffling; almost every issue has had more than one artist on it, climaxing in the free-for-all of last issue; given that this crossover has been in the works for a while, and it’s the title’s big chance to make a pitch for new readers (it’s gone from mid-30s to nearly 60,000 as of October), I’d have thought editorial would have managed things as to get a single consistent artist on it.
I don’t think Ion’s actually dead, as he’s on the cover of the “Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Ion” special. I’m not convinced DC is so cynical that they’d have him in there and then go “Oh, but he’s dead, l0lz” at the end. I’m pretty sure I saw him on the solicited cover of GLC #19 as well.
The art worked for me, and I think I liked this more than you, Countdown issues included (I’d have rated it about a 7 in art, 8-9 in story I think). I actually enjoyed Yat’s backstory more than the fight – I liked a hero that wasn’t emo or driven to being a hero by having his family killed, but rather someone who consciously chose *to be a hero*, who wanted to do good.
As for the fight itself, I think it was clear that Yat was far too inexperienced with his Daxamite powers, let alone the Ion powers. Would have helped if the Guardians had recognized this and sent some help, or if some of Earth’s heroes (who were all right there at the start) had done something to help him.