About Heroes

It's Wednesday night, and that means I take over with a ton of reviews! On to Ion #11!

Writer: Ron Marz
Artists: Greg Tocchini & Fernando Pasarin

The second to last issue of this series, and I'm still not sure what the point of it was. I liked the middle of the series where we found out that Kyle is now the super-lantern of the GL Corps, but we haven't seen him used as such in this series. I enjoyed the issue where he visited Radu, an old character from Kyle's GL days in New York. Even the last issue with Captian Atom and the Tangent characters was good, but I'm not seeing the big picture. When I first read this series, I thought that we would see an over-arching story similar to Batman Hush, but what we got was an arc for the first six issues and smaller ones after that. I liked this issue because we get some Kyle and Donna moments, as well as the return of Grayven. Who? Grayven Darkseid's son who wants to kill his father and rule Apokalips. When Kyle was Green Lantern, Grayven was the first major villain that Kyle really faced on his own. This story can be found in the Trial by Fire trade, check it out as it's a great story. It appears that Grayven has been planning and plotting revenge, so he's the villain behind Nero impersonating Kyle and all the stuff that's happening with his Mom's health. The "why" is never given here, and with one issue left, it almost seems like we might not get a good reason. We see another appearance of the Moniters here, they are showing up here more than in Nightwing, or Supergirl, so my guess is that Kyle poses a bigger threat to their grand scheme. Obviously this has to tie into the next big DC event. This is a good issue, it's just that I can't justify why this series exists. It feels more like an ongoing than a 12-issue mini-series. I wish we had this as an ongoing rather than a Green Lantern Corps series, or even the Confidential books. Ron Marz is clearly having a good time with the charcter he shaped, so why not let him continue?

Greg Tocchini, is absent for the last half of this issue, where all the action is. That is a shame, as I think the fight between Grayven would have benefitted from Tocchini's art rather than Pasarin's. If Tocchini is the main artist on the book, let him do the fight scene! Pasarin's art isn't as bad as some other fill-ins we've had on this book, and at points it imitates Tocchini's style, but in the end it is not the frenzied pencils that Tocchini has. But hey, the book is coming out on time right? Oh all right, fine, I guess I can't have both. I'm looking forward to the next issue, the last issue, hoping that we might have some revelation and a hint at things to come for the DCU that will define this book's existence for me, other than to show off Kyle's new costume, we haven't seen him explore manu aspects of his new powers, but I guess that goes back to the simplistic, "I'm still a Green Lantern, but don't need a ring or power battery" explanation. C+