Green Lantern Corps #42

There has to be a turning point with this comic. More importantly, there has to be a turning point for this event. For the last four months we've seen nothing but superheroes being plagued by their loved ones and enemies who have died. Granted, Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi have done a great job just keeping it entertaining. But the story has barely moved forward......until now.

Let's get this out of the way first: This is the first comic with Blackest Night involved that shows exactly what the Black Lanterns are. They are nothing but pawns, empty shells of corpses that are only controlled by some omni-present being. I love this idea for one reason and one reason only. We can now get the idea of the Black Lanterns being good at making the heroes emo out of these issues. Now they are just mindless soldiers so now it'll be easier to read these books without seeing someone crying about fighting on who they love.

Anyways, with the issue at hand, it is very exciting like it's an action film. Whatever Nekron has planned for the Green Lanterns it involves on destroying the power battery. So this issue is basically all of the GL's trying to figure out how to stop this from happening. There is a great idea of how to stop the BL's for awhile, and the storyline of the Alpha Lanterns being dicks shows itself again. Serves the Alpha Lantern right for meddling in this war. By the end of the issue though, I would've cared a bit more if Tomasi didn't kill another major GL before this event. I mean it's sad to see this particular lantern go, but I just didn't have that much emotional impact for it happening. It certainly shows the dynamic of this series might change if nothing 'Dues Ex Machina' happens to finish this event.

I'm getting sick of Patrick Gleason, there I said it. I'm tired of his uneven pencils and character models. The first couple of pages were just hard to get through because of how ugly those characters look. Granted they are dead lanterns, but still I just couldn't believe how off model the other characters were. This beings with an 'exciting' splash panel, but it wasn't exciting I can tell you that. It was an odd splash panel too, I thought that a good two thirds of the pages were the lanterns fighting the BL's....but it was only one page. Then you keep going through the comic and it's just off model 99% of the way there. There are great, little moments in this comic. The splash page of the Black Lanterns attacking the power battery or the final image looked amazing. Why can't Gleason look this good for all twenty two pages? I just can't phantom why and it's ruining my enjoyment of this series.

So the story has advanced a bit, it's an exciting issue to read, and it promises big changes for this series. How on earth are the Corps are gonna get out of this is a big mystery to me. I'm sure Tomasi is going to keep making this a fun comic to read and also a good supplement to the event. It's just a shame that Gleason artwork has plagued this entire series.