Green Lantern #35

Oh, SNAP! Geoff Johns, you've done it again! Well, I shouldn't say 'again,' as he's merely continuing to do it over and over again on the same title. But still. He's done it again. And by 'it,' I mean, tell a kickass story leaving me both satisfied and craving the next issue. At this point he could write a story about a killer robot driving instructor who goes back in time for some reason... and his best friend is a talking pie, and it would be gold.

I know this story arc is titled 'Secret Origin,' about Hal Jordan's first days as a Green Lantern, but I ultimately learned much, much more about Sinestro's and the Guardians' pasts than I learned about Hal's. Which is perfectly cool with me. I feel like I know Hal pretty well at this point, and it was nice to delve into these other characters' histories.

I'm still somewhat astounded at how 'good' Sinestro seems in all of this. Not only did Geoff Johns have the balls to make us root for his main character's archenemy, but he did AFTER he turned that same archenemy into one of the biggest badasses in the DCU. I mean, I wouldn't have been as surprised at how much I like Sinestro had Secret Origin hit the shelves before the Sinestro Corps War. But to turn the villain into a Hitler analogue and THEN make me like him and feel sorry for him and his past? That's impressive.

And the Guardians? Well, as I said in my review of the last issue, they're basically total dicks. I'm not a big fan of the arrogant midget collective with a Stalin/Jehovah complex. There's really not much else that can be said about them. They suck. Period.

Ivan Reis's art just keeps getting better, too. And it really is the little things. Small touches like Hal's and Atrocitus's pupils being their Lantern symbols go a long way to putting this book over the top.

And I really hope Hector Hammond has an important role in things to come (Orange Lantern maybe?) because I really don't care about the character at all right now, and I'm hoping Johns didn't just shoehorn him in so he could weave in one more element of the Silver Age GL stories.

The only thing that bugged me about this, was that in all of the Green Lantern histories, and all the Lanterns to go train on, live on, and visit Oa, Hal was the first one to notice that all the buildings were yellow? Nobody else would have brought that up at some point? Especially when those things were being built. I doubt the Guardians did it themselves, cause, you know, they're jerks. Somebody wouldn't have said, 'um, hey, guys? Could we maybe use some sort of building material where we can use our rings? Cause, you know, all this manual labor kind of blows...' And, now that I think about it, how does Tomar's ring even work? The dude's skin is yellow. That seems like it would cause problems with space travel and all kinds of other things down the line.

But, other than my small, uber-nerd complaint there, this was basically a perfect issue. If I remember correctly, the Black Lanterns should start showing up around issue 50. There's gonna be a lot of awesomeness happening in the next 15 issues, so if you're not reading this yet, you really need to be.