About Heroes

Writer: Geoff Johns
Pencils: Mike McKone

This issue of Green Lantern marks the end of the Sinestro Corps War Epilogue and the three-part Alpha Lanterns story, but really it is the first stepping-stone to the War of Light, which will bring on the Blackest Night. In this issue we get a ton of small events that move the overall scope of the next two years worth of events forward.

I say first stepping-stone but it could be argued that the first stepping-stone was part 11 of the Sinestro Corp War. But in this issue we get the second new law and it pretty much paves the way for the war grants so much more freedom to the GLs. We also get the upbringing of two more emotions: Rage and Greed (Red and Orange). Though it seems there was no problem creating the rage rings and power battery, greed is going to take some extra time to develop for reasons that haven’t been addressed yet.

Laira has her trial, which is extremely short and though it probably wouldn’t have been the most interesting piece to read about, I would have preferred a much longer court battle. The issue was not nearly as black and white as the arguing sides made it out to be. There was a lot of gray area within the crime itself, and if it was all going to be swept under the rug and ignored than they should have written the crime in a much more obvious direction. Basically what I would have liked was a greater argument on if Laira was justified in killing Amon Sir because he still had on his ring and the law made it clear that though the initial war was over the fight against the Sinestro Corp threat was still going on. I didn’t agree with how the Guardians and the Alpha Lanterns ruled, but I think that was on purpose, we—the readers—are supposed to find holes in the Guardian’s arguments. I wanted more opposition to the Guardians and the AL than just Hal and Laira. I feel like the trial and the AL themselves were pushed aside to further the other sentient emotions coming into existence. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing how those other spectrums come to life but I wanted the story to be about what it was supposed to be about. The side note should have been the spectrums, when instead I think the trial was the side note. I mean we already have a new color lantern at the end of this story, I thought the rise of the Light War was going to be much slower. And I was excited about that. I wouldn’t mind each color getting its own story line; they all seem interesting and important.

The amount of foreshadowing in this book is truly overwhelming. I didn’t know foreshadowing could really be so overwhelming to be perfectly honest. It seems like without a doubt the Guardians are going to become evil or at the very least corrupt and in some way side with Sinestro, hell I see Sinestro taking over the GL Corps in some twisted way for a short period of time. I don’t know what that means for the Sinestro Corps, I guess they just become the Yellow Lantern Corps then. Though this issue was awesome for the fan boy inside of me, I wanted more from it, and the more I think about it the less I liked it, B-.