As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/

Green Lantern: DCnU-style

1262729313240

Posts

  • RansRans Registered User regular
    He kinda looks like Graf Toren, but it's not him. Redshirt deaths don't bug me. GLs should die, it's a pretty dangerous occupation they have.

    Tomasi has a habit of overwriting scenes that he usually manages to keep in check. In this new volume of GLC he has failed to keep in check with every issue. It's bad dialogue.

  • HadjiQuestHadjiQuest Registered User regular
    Rans wrote:
    He kinda looks like Graf Toren, but it's not him. Redshirt deaths don't bug me. GLs should die, it's a pretty dangerous occupation they have.

    Tomasi has a habit of overwriting scenes that he usually manages to keep in check. In this new volume of GLC he has failed to keep in check with every issue. It's bad dialogue.

    It's just that it's been happening so much that it's totally lost impact and instead it just makes the human GLs and Kilowog seem totally and obviously invincible. Beyond that, there's so much gore that it's getting a little overplayed and dull. And these villains are just the shallowest so far, to the point where it's getting to be too late in the game to salvage them with an interesting backstory.

  • RansRans Registered User regular
    Green Lantern Corps #4 was an improvement over the other issues. It's still not as good as Tomasi's golden days on the previous volume, but if you can get over the initial murder that starts the book, the rest of the story is not too bad and even good in some places.
    Tomasi grapples with a bit of funny DCnU continuity in this issue. He brings the Martian Manhunter in to read the mind of the captured Keeper, but strangely Guy has never met J'onn and doesn't know who he is. This is questionable since in Stormwatch J'onn said he had worked with the Justice League at some point, but okay. Maybe J'onn erased his time with the Justice League from everyone's minds. It seems like because of this weird shift, Tomasi goes out of his way to assure GL-readers that GL continuity is okay and still in tact, by mentioning Saarek, the battle with Quintet, and his death on Ryut. It's a weird bit of continuity minutia that I can appreciate, but maybe I'm the only one. It felt like Tomasi was trying to counterpoint the weird J'onn interaction with "but it's okay, guys!!! this over here still exists!"

    We also begin to see the Keepers back story ever so slightly and not much info is revealed beyond what we've already heard in interviews (they used to keep the batteries, now no longer), but it's now a bit interesting. Also, I feel like we saw glimmers of the Tomasi of old in Isamot Kol and Sherrif Mardin's character building scene. (Where Vath Sarn is alluded to but not mentioned by name. My guess is we never see him again because they wanted to eliminate any characters that looked like humans but weren't.)

  • TexiKenTexiKen Dammit! That fish really got me!Registered User regular
    Hmmm, that seems odd.
    The Jonn part, that is. As though DC are going out of the way to say the heroes haven't really worked together on stuff even since the JL forming 5 years ago. It wouldn't be hard for even new readers to realize this hero has met another hero at some point in this undisclosed 5 year gap when metas started appearing. Especially when Guy and John are publicly known for being GL's.

  • TexiKenTexiKen Dammit! That fish really got me!Registered User regular
    Read GLC #4, and while I like the new plot point we get at the end
    the Jonn stuff did feel weird, especially the way Jonn is much more angrier and dismissive of the GLC in general and even doing a mindwipe of Guy after interrogating the Keeper. It's as though everyone got bombarded with jerk rays after Flashpoint, except for Guy and Wonder Woman.

    But like I said the point about the lanterns just appearing out of nowhere but actually from somewhere is a new story idea worth exploring, as that always felt a bit like cheating, if you could run down the ring but just pull a lantern out of nowhere and you're back to 100%. Due diligence on the Corpsmen's part for recharging every morning before going on patrol.

  • BlankZoeBlankZoe Registered User regular
    Sinestro to remain co-star of Green Lantern for at least the next two years

    Fantastic. I haven't been liking GL this much since SCW.

    CYpGAPn.png
  • UltimateInfernoUltimateInferno Registered User regular
    Well, finally going to drop New Guardians. I just do not like the way Bedard is writing the characters one bit (his Lafreeze seems really off).

    "Ride or Die?" asked Goku

    "Ride or Die" confirmed Dominic Toretto, as they took off to find the Dragon Balls in hopes of reviving their friend Sonic
  • HadjiQuestHadjiQuest Registered User regular
    A lot of Bedard's characters have been really, really far off the mark since he joined onto the GL books.

    I'm interested by the plot here, but I'm also afraid it's not going to add anything into the overall mythology/story (which is kind of how I felt about the Weaponer arc, which seemed interesting and gamechanging at first, and then stretched out too long before it came to an abrupt non-ending).

    I like these books a lot more when they're either expanding heavily on the same stories, a-la Tomasi's corps run, or when they're trying to blaze new paths and establish some lasting character developments and background, which Red Lanterns seems to be trying really hard for.

    But GLC is in this weird, non-committal middle ground, and New Guardians looks like it's setting up something important but will probably turn out to be really stand-alone and disappointing in the end.

  • TexiKenTexiKen Dammit! That fish really got me!Registered User regular
    GLC#5 is a bipolar book. The general idea is good, Guy is still Guy, Warriors is still around, I like the Mean Machine, and the villain's origin and motivation is solid. The art is good as well.

    But there is that sense that the whole thing boils down to the Guardians being jerks. Again. Not less than two years after Blackest Night. At some point just let the villains get revenge on the Guardians, they deserve it. If you've read the Corps series since 2006, it feels like we've seen this before. There was also a mistake by Tomasi that wasn't picked up by the editor, where
    we're told, and shown, that J'onn is going to erase everyone's minds about him being there to interrogate the Keeper. Yet Guy tells Salaak to read the report he did with J'onnz. But guys, we just saw it ten pages earlier where J'onn mindwiped everyone and ran away like a puny green martian

    5 issues in, it feels like this book we got came at the detriment of Emerald Warriors and the old GLC book. It's just weird having GLC actually feel like the #2 GL book at the moment, when it was the real GL book for so long.

  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    TexiKen wrote:
    GLC#5 is a bipolar book. The general idea is good, Guy is still Guy, Warriors is still around, I like the Mean Machine, and the villain's origin and motivation is solid. The art is good as well.

    But there is that sense that the whole thing boils down to the Guardians being jerks. Again. Not less than two years after Blackest Night. At some point just let the villains get revenge on the Guardians, they deserve it. If you've read the Corps series since 2006, it feels like we've seen this before. There was also a mistake by Tomasi that wasn't picked up by the editor, where
    we're told, and shown, that J'onn is going to erase everyone's minds about him being there to interrogate the Keeper. Yet Guy tells Salaak to read the report he did with J'onnz. But guys, we just saw it ten pages earlier where J'onn mindwiped everyone and ran away like a puny green martian

    5 issues in, it feels like this book we got came at the detriment of Emerald Warriors and the old GLC book. It's just weird having GLC actually feel like the #2 GL book at the moment, when it was the real GL book for so long.

    Why is J'onn
    mindwiping people after interrogating Keepers?

    I'm surprised the Guardians haven't been replaced yet with a new council. It's been building for several years yet nothing seems to have materialized. Is it a dropped plot?

    Harry Dresden on
  • TexiKenTexiKen Dammit! That fish really got me!Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    J'onn's kind of a jerk in the DCnU, from the limited stuff I've seen of him. He shows up all arrogant and angry last issue, and then calls the GLC members arrogant.

    As far as the Guardians, it felt like something might have changed had we not had the reboot, but because of the reboot and possibly the movie we now have to have a year or so of more "Guardians are jerks" stories just so those possibly brand new readers know what's up.

    TexiKen on
  • UltimateInfernoUltimateInferno Registered User regular
    I assume the Guardians will get what theirs after the whole 3rd army bizness.

    "Ride or Die?" asked Goku

    "Ride or Die" confirmed Dominic Toretto, as they took off to find the Dragon Balls in hopes of reviving their friend Sonic
  • HadjiQuestHadjiQuest Registered User regular
    The solicits make me think the 3rd army will be the next crossover between all the titles.

    GLC 7 and 8 involve John finding out some secret about the new army, and then running from the Alpha Lanterns that are sent to make sure he doesn't reveal anything.

  • RansRans Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    This issue made me finally decide that I don't like Pasarin's art. I don't think he has much design sense or much of an imagination. Unless it was at Tomasi's direction, Pasarin designed the members of the Mean Machine to basically look exactly the same except with different clothes and palate swaps. They are all human looking with no alien variation to speak of. I'm thinking back to the fillin that Batista did in Emerald Warriors that had a similar premise - Guy assembles a team of GL bad asses for a suicide mission - and they all looked wildly different and the story was better for it.

    I've had problems with Pasarin in the past but, and this is assuming he did the designs for the Mean Machine group, now I hope he moves on to another book and does it soon.

    Rans on
  • RansRans Registered User regular
    Also, we've been assuming that every "next GL story" will end with the Guardians being defeated/replaced since Sinestro Corps War. We gotta be right at some point.

  • TairuTairu Registered User regular
    Man, fuck the guardians. Seriously. WHY DO THE LANTERNS LET THEM CONTINUE TO EXIST?

  • HadjiQuestHadjiQuest Registered User regular
    I'm still not digging this arc, but I won't complain too much.

    I just want to point out something that I thought was hilariously ridiculous. And it kind of adds to what Rans is saying.
    The space pirates, the weapons the Lanterns grab from them. They're all normal earth ballistic weapons. Every single one of them.

    This issue really felt like the book was trying super hard to be the expendables. And the plot is still moving slower than a snail's pace.

  • RansRans Registered User regular
    Yeah I was hoping Tomasi would say that the space pirates stole the weapons from Earth for some weird reason, any reason. Otherwise, Pasarin is even worse than I thought possible.

  • HadjiQuestHadjiQuest Registered User regular
    I really enjoyed new guardians today.

    Invictus was actually a pretty cool thing, instead of being just a bunch of cliches and coincidences all rolled together. I take back the not nice stuff I said about him.

  • Golden YakGolden Yak Burnished Bovine The sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered User regular
    I was expecting to not get New Guardians today. I was not gripped by the first couple of issues, and I was planning to drop it. But #5 actually did turn out to be pretty interesting. I wanna see how this shakes itself out.

    H9f4bVe.png
  • HadjiQuestHadjiQuest Registered User regular
    And I forgot to mention this earlier, but the stuff with
    Tamaran, and Okaara is kind of crazy. I wonder if it will gel with what Lobdell is doing with Starfire. Also, I'm just plum confused by the whole Okaara thing. Weren't we just there recently? Isn't that where Larfleeze is stationed? Bah, whatevs.

  • Golden YakGolden Yak Burnished Bovine The sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered User regular
    HadjiQuest wrote:
    And I forgot to mention this earlier, but the stuff with
    Tamaran, and Okaara is kind of crazy. I wonder if it will gel with what Lobdell is doing with Starfire. Also, I'm just plum confused by the whole Okaara thing. Weren't we just there recently? Isn't that where Larfleeze is stationed? Bah, whatevs.

    GL books seem to be largely ignoring the new 52 stuff (yay), so it's a safe bet that you're meant to regard this Orrery storyline regards these worlds as the same places they were depicted as before the reboot.

    Regarding the weirdness
    I think the Orrery worlds are fakes/duplicates of the real worlds, with the populace having been abducted in the past without their knowledge. As if someone's created a giant terrarium for a selection of the universe's races. This may be the source of their fear of Larfleeze - if Okaara was targeted however long ago, they probably came into contact with him, and it went badly. He's over a billion years old and extremely powerful, after all.

    Time will tell. But like my earlier post says - interesting stuff. Looking forwards to more (finally! Yay New Guardians!)

    H9f4bVe.png
  • RansRans Registered User regular
    i was happy to see Green Lantern New Guardians continue its steady improvement. I liked #5 quite a bit.
    I was concerned at the Bleez / Atrocitus scene to see that the books were already miscommunicating with each other. I thought for sure Bleez's entry to the blood ocean was covered in Red Lanterns, but it turned out the editor's note of "this precedes Red Lanterns #3" was exactly right. #2 ends with Atrocitus articulating his plan and #3 begins with Bleez already in the blood ocean. So GLNG #1-5 slot in between RL #2 and #3, for anyone else as concerned with reading order as me.

    Re: the planets. We actually had a scene on the "real" Okaara in #5 as well as seeing the presumably "fake" Okaara in the Orrery. The scene with Larfleeze and Sayd seems to have been specifically written to show us that something is up with these planets.

  • TexiKenTexiKen Dammit! That fish really got me!Registered User regular
    edited February 2012
    I think this will be it for me and GLC #6, as the arc concludes in a way that I would usually like, but there's so many other elements to how it got there that I just didn't care for.
    John snapping Kirrt's neck to stop him from giving the codes felt more out of place than killing Mogo and rather contrived. If he had the power to get out like we see a page later, why not do the exact same thing, only take the lantern with him like he did Vandor.

    I think Hadji made this point last issue, if they needed earth weapons, why didn't they just go there to get more, and in a much less ridiculous fashion? Pick up some tanks to really stop the Keepers from acting like Chinese soldiers?

    The fear bomb worked, I liked that, but the ending, it just seemed off. Having the Keepers really be just a few people like the Guardians, and the rest of the race be slaves to power a machine, lessens the impact of showing just how big of a jerk the Guardians are in screwing over a planet. And digging graves for all your victims would work if the number wasn't so laughably huge, on top of those manatee people probably being all decaying and rotten. If Tomasi was going for a scene similar to that in Band of Brothers, he did it wrong.

    I haven't been this disappointed with Tomasi since issue 4 of The Mighty.

    TexiKen on
  • HadjiQuestHadjiQuest Registered User regular
    edited February 2012
    Yep, it was pretty bad.

    It's the only one of my books I've read so far this week, but I just had to see how that awful storyline wrapped up.

    Yeah, the
    Fear Bomb and the actual origin of the Keepers
    were the only interesting ideas, and they could've been wound into a really strong, tight 3-4 issue arc instead of a loose and crappy 6 issues full of contrivances and filler and poorly realized plot points for future story arcs.

    The GL writers say we're headed into another crossover between all the books at some point, probably with the Third Army story that will likely end up being the first year two GL story. I'll keep reading these books until then just out of loyalty, but I have really not been impressed by any of the sister titles enough to stay on for the long term, although New Guardians has been getting stronger each issue and Red Lanterns has occasional flashes of brilliance and madness.

    HadjiQuest on
  • RansRans Registered User regular
    Yeah GLC #6 was a poor end to a bad arc. What happened, Tomasi?

    However, I would encourage everyone to stick with New Guardians. It has had consistent improvement with every issue and has actual interesting mysteries and storylines. Wash the bad taste of GLC #6 out of your mouth with this preview of New Guardians #6: http://io9.com/green-lantern/

  • AutomaticzenAutomaticzen Registered User regular
    New Guardians has been getting consistently better, and I'm glad, because I love me some Kyle.

    http://www.usgamer.net/
    http://www.gamesindustry.biz/
    I write about video games and stuff. It is fun. Sometimes.
  • HadjiQuestHadjiQuest Registered User regular
    I'm running low on sleep these last few weeks, and it is definitely clouding my overall judgement on things, but New Guardians seemed pretty good this week.

    I really, really like Kirkham's art and Batt's inks, and this is the best it has been since the Weaponer stuff. The difference is that the Weaponer arc had a pretty weak resolution and felt like an incomplete story that made no lasting changes. This book actually has some forward momentum, and I think Kyle is the only one of the actual GL's that Bedard ever got the voice of.

    Beyond that, this is really four color cosmic fun. I'm starting to have a ball; Invictus is kind of a 90s archetype still, but I'm hoping his backstory will have even the littlest amount of surprise or depth.

    It will be interesting to see what the GL books all do in the second half of the year. I've liked Red Lanterns as it's shown Attrocitus deal with other planets and other stories of rage, including the flashback origins of some of the Reds. All of that stuff brought me back to the 80s Tales of the Corps stuff; the planets and alien designs were all really far out there and varied and interesting. But I'm afraid that it will shift focus and move on to different things, and we'll lose that exploration and variety.

    My least favorite thing about Johns's run is that the entire universe and all the world building has been really homogeneous: nearly everyone is a bipedal humanoid, his ring mythology obviously needs a level of symmetry to work, and many of the worlds that have been shown in GL and GLC are very primitive and fantasy oriented rather than being crazy Sci-Fi, high-tech places. New Guardians, Red Lanterns, and even the most recent issue of GL with Starstorm have finally been stepping up the high-concept cosmic stuff, and I dig it.

  • ArrynArryn Ask not the Innkeeper For destiny is thy name!Registered User regular
    They seemed to hint at a deeper ring mythology in New Guardians. Invictus mentions having seen something like the rings X amount of a really-long-time years ago. Maybe we'll get something good out of that.

  • Golden YakGolden Yak Burnished Bovine The sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered User regular
    edited February 2012
    Given how much he and his followers have been screaming about orange lanterns being 'the Beast', I imagine we'll find out that Invictus crossed paths with Larfleeze at some point. The guy's been kicking around for over a billion years, so he's probably made some enemies besides the Guardians, and Invictus probably thinks the other power rings are based off the orange ring Larfleeze wears.

    If Invictus did make a copy of Okaara, Larfleeze probably got angry about having his planet devalued and they got into a big brawl.

    Golden Yak on
    H9f4bVe.png
  • RansRans Registered User regular
    I agree that New Guardians has a pretty clear and interesting direction. We're just starting to see hints of where Bedard wants to go with this issue when Kyle is able to force his ring to interact with the other rings and allow communication between them. I think we'll continue to see Kyle unravel the connections between the rings and I just hope that Johns lets all of this mean something or if he'll just override it with something in his own book. I think we'll see how well NG and GL are going to play together when the Indigo Tribe arc starts in GL.

  • ArrynArryn Ask not the Innkeeper For destiny is thy name!Registered User regular
    Red Lanterns #7 was a better effort this month. I've liked this arc overall, though there've really been some weak spots. The subplot on Earth, for example just really hasn't hooked me yet. And again, the weakest parts this month, imo, were the ones on Earth. Maybe I'll be more interested in it now that Jack Moore has arrived on Ysmault.

    Which was another good point. Nowhere this month did they call him by the awful Rankorr name, just "Red Lantern" and he referred to himself as "Jack Moore". Which makes sense with how the Green Lanterns refer to themselves. Abysilmus or whatever it was says to me that Milligan's strength is not in coming up with new noms de guerre.

    The scenes with the rest of the Red Corps were all pretty good.

  • UltimateInfernoUltimateInferno Registered User regular
    Man, in some ways the month Mahnke took off seems worth it. He killed it on Gl #7

    "Ride or Die?" asked Goku

    "Ride or Die" confirmed Dominic Toretto, as they took off to find the Dragon Balls in hopes of reviving their friend Sonic
  • HadjiQuestHadjiQuest Registered User regular
    This is the thread where we help eachother get over how bad GLC7 was.

  • Golden YakGolden Yak Burnished Bovine The sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered User regular
    Looking forwards to GL#8 - finally get the story behind the Indigo Tribe (hopefully, I hope the whole thing isn't going to be a fight scene with the revelations coming in #9).

    H9f4bVe.png
  • RansRans Registered User regular
    I don't know if I would agree with you on GLC7, Hadji. It certainly wasn't good, but I wouldn't describe it as grimdark or awful. Maybe hamfisted, as Tomasi makes us try to feel conflicted about Stewart's situation and the addition of a mentally challenged brother to the dead GL.

    Stewart covering up the death of the GL isn't about trying to cover up his own guilt, as I read it. He's trying to protect the dead GL's honor. The GL died because he was about to betray the Corps and for whatever reason Stewart feels like he needs to prevent anyone from finding out and in order to do that he has to lie about how the GL died, lest everyone will know he was a coward and a traitor. Tomasi doesn't let us know WHY Stewart feels the need to protect this random GL so much, so the story falls kind of flat.

    It's not well written, but it's certainly not as offensive as you seem to think it is.

  • RansRans Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Basically, Tomasi has to get his shit together because GLC has flatlined into mediocrity.

    Edit: and, like last month, I'll add: wash the taste of GLC 7 out of your mouth with a preview of GL:NG 7: http://www.newsarama.com/php/multimedia/album.php?gid=4141

    Rans on
  • Golden YakGolden Yak Burnished Bovine The sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered User regular
    Aww, goddamit! That preview ended at the worst time. Yeah, New Guardians has turned out to be pretty great too.

    Never realized there were so many worlds in the Vega system. Crowded place.
    And we are reminded just how old, powerful, and dangerous Larfleeze is...

    H9f4bVe.png
  • Golden YakGolden Yak Burnished Bovine The sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered User regular
    New Guardians was indeed good. Some nice backstory on Invinctus - he's a great character so far, with a cool design as well. I noticed that when he's talking his skin is bright, and when he's fighting with the Guardians his skin grows dark, like dark rock covering molten lava. A really neat effect - I want to see him in the tv series now, just to see that animated.

    H9f4bVe.png
  • RansRans Registered User regular
    Red Lanterns #8 was another meaty comic like last week's GLNG #7. Lots of text and story. I feel like Red Lanterns is also on an upswing in quality and whoever said that Milligan plays a long game with slow burning plots was exactly right. I think we're starting to see some pay off.

    Also, the next Green Lantern event has been sort of announced in response to the March sales figures. It will center around the Third Army and the next Green Lantern story arc after Secrets of the Indigo Tribe is The Revenge of Black Hand starting in #11. The Third Army event is supposed to be a "Night of the Owls" style event. Newsarama interview with Johns can be found here: http://www.newsarama.com/comics/geoff-johns-green-lantern-third-army.html

Sign In or Register to comment.