This was pretty okay.

NEW GUARDIANS seems to be going for being a lightweight cosmic adventure, at least for now – and the diverse personalities of its cast may help. Kyle Rayner is a good centerpiece to this team because he’s very relatable: though he’s clearly been with the Green Lanterns for a little while now, he’s not incredibly experienced yet, and the strange situation he was left in at the end of the previous issue has him caught off-guard.

He clashes with some of the other Lanterns, and they clash with each other in some ways – as one might expect. Though none of them have really been featured yet, they clearly have their own personalities beyond simply the color of their rings. The team has yet to gel, but when it does, I could imagine this group having a good dynamic, in the right hands.

But things lack a bit of momentum in the second half of the issue. The book is asking me to care about a personal crisis that it seems to assume I know the implications of already, and maybe if I’d ever been a GL reader I would – but I’m not. The context is given quickly, without excessive exposition, so it’s not a matter of confusion or spending a lot of time reading a recap; it’s just that it feels like I’m supposed to realize the gravity of the situation at the climax of this issue, but I just don’t have the history with these characters.

But it’s colorful, it’s neat, it has potential. As someone who, for now, kind of likes the idea of the different Corps, and currently isn’t going in for any other space-oriented books in the DC lineup, I’ll stick with this one for now.