Green Lantern #41

The debate can go back and forth whether or not Geoff Johns is doing a phenomenal job on Green Lantern; that he’s telling an epic, space soap opera filled, with the entire raw, emotional spectrum we can handle or that this particular storyline is just the stuffing before getting to the turkey that is Blackest Night. I love the Green Lantern book, but there’s this enormous story looming in the background and I think I’m getting anxious.  I think too anxious to care about Larfleeze/Agent Orange any longer.     

Agent Orange has been hinted at for months and then finally we’ve gotten to see him, but it’s been a sluggish show and tell. The overall tone and storyline has been intriguing, but this is issue was lackluster. We’ve been in this holding pattern with the story progression. Giving us an origin story at this point slowed down the pace of this issue a lot. This could’ve been a set of backup stories, instead of the Animal Man preview DC keeps running throughout their books.  

We’ve been teased with the orange power of avarice for awhile now and it’s slowly paying off. As villains go, I have not felt Agent Orange has shown any real sense of dread or ruthlessness until this issue. Juxtapose to the threat of the yet unseen Black Lanterns seemingly more dour, Larfleeze seems inconsequential at this point. His connection to the Guardians in this issue made my jaw drop, but thinking back, it has been the only draw dropping moment since Laira was killed by Sinestro four issues back.  

Then there’s Hal Jordan. His lack of personality lately is staggering. My fear is that once Blackest Night starts how central Hal will be to that plot when you can already see that it’ll involve a great majority of the DCU? Will we care about Hal when this all starts?  The Green/Blue ring subplot has been a slight annoyance only because he’s been almost every color now. Green, yellow, green again, then red, then blue and now he’s this aquamarine color. Is there any true power in that blue ring? Why did Ash’s search for the remains of the Anti-Monitor abruptly stop? What is Fatality’s purpose now? There's just several subplots going on with no clear destination on where they're going. This begs the question, what’s the story reward after all of this is through? I guess we’ll see soon enough.