Ever since Tomasi took over the title he has focused on telling more then one story in an issue. He’s been a master of doing two to three plots within an arc and it all blends together perfectly at the end. It’s happening here as well but it’s more of a challenge then usual. Now he has to write his own story with factoring ‘Blackest Night’ into his title. Last issue was a bit hectic for me and I think he was putting too much on the table last time. Is it the same case with this?

A little bit of yes but mostly Tomasi does a good job of pacing in here. He is going back and forth to many characters but it’s not as confusing as last time. Natu and Iolande is fighting in the infirmary, Garnder is still in a painful situation (that is a very painful looking injury), Arisa is fighting her family, and Kilowog (finally! where has he been lately?) meets with an old boss. Again it seems like too much going on in an issue but the pacing is much better here. He spends more time with the first two characters I mentioned then all six at once. There is some good writing in all of these black lanterns just emoitonally hurting all of their friends and family. In fact I think Tomasi is writing the black lanterns better then Johns is, only because the lanterns involved here are more personal to his own characters. Overall it was a well written issue but I still think Tomasi is putting too many characters in for his own good. But we’ll see how it all concludes later to judge.

Gleason has been a good at keeping a constant pace of quality pencils in every page. The aliens looks even more disturbing now that they’re undead lanterns. There’s also some great action involved with this; especially a moment where Natu is talking to Jade. However, and it pains me to see this, I think Gleason lost a little step with the characters again. Characters often look off model at certain points; not a big change but I am seeing slight changes that hurts the enjotment. Then you get to the final sequence with Kilowog and it looks so bad to me. Everything just looks so off model and I got confused on how Kilowog took advantage of his old drill instructor. Maybe it’s just that the fight is hectic that it looks weird, but to me I think he didn’t keep up the quality for the ending.

So while this is an improvement on the writing from last issue, it does feel like the art lost a step. Mind you this is still a good looking comic, it’s just that Gleason went a bit too off model for some character for me. It’s nice that Tomasi can still tell his own stories even with an event all over it. Maybe just that the executing isn’t as solid as it should be.