Green Lantern: Rebirth brought back Hal Jordan as a Green Lantern and reintroduced the Green Lantern Corps (an intergalactic police force), representing something of a return to the status quo of a very unstable series. He’d previously managed the revival of The Flash, and had proven his geek credentials (he even worked with Richard Donner on the original Superman film, back in the day). It’s hard to look at that history and get the impression that anybody knew what they wanted to do with him. When this didn’t go well (whoda thunk?), he was revived as the modern-age Spectre (a fairly obscure character, to be honest) and roamed the world looking for vengeance as a member of the undead. After wandering around aimless for a while, an editorial policy in the 1990s decided to spark things up by turning him into a genocidal supervillian who murdered his friends and colleagues. In the 1970s he travelled the world as the voice of ‘the man’ to Green Arrow’s ‘the liberal’ in a series of social commentaries that weren’t the most subtle or nuanced (it was like a left-/right-wing buddy movie), but made a few serious points. In fairness to the character of Hal Jordan – who has held the Green Lantern title on and off since 1960 – he has never seemed to have found a niche. Johns gives the series a focus and a goal to aim at and – in doing so – manages to give it momentum and direction as well. The Green Lantern has a very jumbled publication history and has always lacked a lot of focus and clarity. And I’m not just talking about Hal Jordan. Still, this collection actually makes a better “jumping on” point.Īnyway, so we’re here following John’s carefully paced revival of a fallen superhero. I just wish I’d held off on buying the Sinestro Corps War books – they’ll likely get the Absolute treatment too. So I’ll get that in 2010 and review it then. Note: As Green Lantern: Rebirth is receiving an Absolute Edition next year, I held off on buying the trade. Yeah, exposition tends to really kill those big moments, doesn't it?
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