As Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis continues to flesh out the link between Hal's past and his upcoming future, Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason manage to give us the doings of now, focusing on the aftermath of the end of the Sinestro Corps War.  Starring, my favorite Earthling Corpsman Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner, and a slew of other less known yet still interesting members of the Honor Guard, we inch closer and closer to a confrontation between them as the new scourge of the Sinestro Corps, Mongul.  While Johns is working towards a good ol' fashioned Silver Age superhero romp with the main book, Tomasi employs the kind of story style Alan Moore did during his days on Tales of the Green Lantern Corps to show "the greatest Green Lantern of all time" isn't the only one worth reading.  For a supposedly "b-list" book, this is really really good.

We open up as we left off, with the group fighting for their lives against "Mother Mercy" who is what she sounds like.  Instinctively attacking the Guard in defense of her children, Mother Mercy shows for the first time not only the Black Mercies are fully conscious but actually nice, too!  After Stel pulls a fastball special with Sodam, the Black Mercy cries, well, mercy and relates the story of how it once eased a dying man's suffering and decided that was its purpose to the universe before the planet was found and manipulated by Mongul as a weapon of the mind.  It's an interesting twist on the tale of the Black Mercy (whose name actually makes sense now) and is handled pretty deftly by Tomasi.  The rain of dead in the battle was brutal though.  That was just, as they say, f--ked up.

The characterizations of the Guard here are distinct and well-played without being forced. Vath is the consummate pragmatic soldier, ready to shoot first and ask questions later at the drop of a hat.  Soranik is the doctor, full of empathy and mercy.  Sodam is starting to drop that "Guy as Superman" swagger and focus on being more a man who embraces the strange cooly and sensibly.  Guy still has that cantankerous and scratchy mood but manages to not overdo it like he did in his formative years unconscious on Batman's floor.  Kyle is really shaping up as a capable common sense leader knowing how to fight and when not to fight.  This team is a well populated and wonderfully written team for the book and I hope Tomasi and Gleason stays on for a long time.

If there's one gripe I have with this book, it's how long it's taking for a battle between Mongul and the Honor Guard to kick off.  Granted, this book is pretty much paced the same as every other 6-issues-for-the-trade series of today, but I've felt like with every cliffhanger that a fight with Mongul was just around the corner only to get something else.  I suppose this is just my misconception at play but I've been anticipating that fight for three months.  Now, this issue seems to necessitate a fight next month, and it really has nothing to do with the book itself, so I guess that gripe is negligible at best.  Still, a Mongul I desire and a Mongul I demand come next month.

I should also point out Gleason's art this issue which is very good and really shined forth this issue.  His style of pace and direction fits the kind of space opera tone of the book and manages to remind me of the kind of stuff you'd see in Moore's stuff in the Green Lantern mythos with  Dave Gibbons and Kevin O'Neill where everything just looked weird and random and could only exist in the outskirts of space.  On top of that, Gleason's use of scale (like the raining dead shot), uses of good facial ques (like with Kyle and especially Mongul and Arisia), and his use of major background detail (like... everywhere) are a visual treat to behold.  Combing with Tomasi's crisp characterization and unique plotting, this book is a really fun read.