Review by Frank Plowright
Horatius has John Stewart told he’s either going to save or destroy the universe, and then taken back in time to witness the first encounter between the Guardians of Oa and the New Gods. His is one of several stories continuing from the poor Invictus, which relaunched the Green Lantern brand.
Unfortunately, this is only mildly better. The stories of individual Green Lanterns continue, most minus their power rings, but the purpose of the major story arc is to bolster John Stewart. As the DC universe has become slightly more diverse, he’s been pushed as the primary Green Lantern in place of Hal Jordan, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It all depends on the circumstances, but the way he’s powered up here is all too arbitrary, and barely any thought is required to pick holes in why this is the moment and not any previous time in the past fifty years. Furthermore the plot is one of those perpetuated by an advisor unable to provide a straight answer to direct question.
Sojourner Mullein’s story is more interesting for being based around a mystery, and for her being the only actual Green Lantern with a power ring remaining, but that’s only temporary, and she’s eventually absorbed into the ongoing mulch.
The multiple artists listed don’t lead to an incoherent mess as each is allocated to detail what happens to a specific Green Lantern. Tom Raney is slightly better than last time on John Stewart’s cosmic experiences, and no-one can be faulted for not packing their pages with detail and people, but nothing here is going to start a bidding war for the original art either.
Geoffrey Thorne’s not a good storyteller. It may be all there in his head, but what’s on the page isn’t always clear, which is an unlikely comment to make about someone with considerable TV writing experience, but that’s how it is. Time and time again action builds to a world-threatening crescendo, which at least gives the artists the chance for some pin-up images, then it deflates only to build again into something very similar. At the end of the day the Green Lantern Corps are restored, which was always going to be the case, and John Stewart has been tinkered with to propel him back into a starring role.
If the story weren’t difficult enough to follow, for some reason the almost unconnected Green Lantern Annual from a completely different creative team is paginated in the middle. Ryan Kady supplies Jessica Cruz meeting Sinestro following the events of Invictus. It’s a decent enough interlude if overlooking an out of character Hal Jordan unwilling to listen, with some nice art from Sami Basri and Tom Derenick. Would that the remainder were this comprehensible.
