Book of Doom: Green Lantern #35

Welcome to the second part of our two-part Book of Doom this week, focusing on arc-ending chapters (that also happen to be written by Geoff Johns). We took on Action Comics #870 yesterday, and today we look at Green Lantern #35.

Against my initial prejudice, this “Secret Origin” story got off to a good start back in March when it was clear that this wasn’t going to be just a repeat of Hal Jordan’s origin, but a post-Crisis revision with seeds for Blackest Night planted throughout. By Chapter 5, I was losing faith as the story just barely plodded along, but Chapter 6 got me back into it.

The finale opens with Hal Jordan meeting the Guardians for the first time. We get to see a glimpse of how Hal and Sinestro, for all their differences, are very much alike in their distrust of the Guardians’ unquestionable authority. Hal’s strategic, military mind caught on to the Guardians’ fear made tangible in their yellow fortresses. The scene’s added weight comes from what we already know — the underlying fear of the Guardians, the fall of Hal Jordan and the fall of Sinestro. It’s a treat to watch Sinestro act admirably, even getting in a few digs, when there is no secret about what he will eventually become.

After a few pages of establishing the stubborn power structure on Oa, Hal and Sinestro part ways (with a promise that Hal will come to Sinestro’s world) and Hal returns to Earth to try to clean up a little of the mess he’s made there. The subplots with Hal and his family and Hal and Carol have been some of my favorite parts of this story, often the only bright spots when this series got unbearably slow.

As with Action Comics, Johns seems to be going around and doing some preemptive maintenance on the cornerstone characters of the DCU, outlining some basics about what has changed post-Crisis. But as much as it was a Green Lantern origin story, this was clearly a launching point for the next phase of Green Lantern comics.

Johns did a great job of retelling Hal Jordan’s origin, leaving all of the important pieces intact, but just dropping in the little things here and there to place the underlying fear that has fueled the Guardians’ recent and future problems in a totally believable context. The beauty is that nothing fundamental at all has changed about Green Lantern’s origin, and if anything, things about it now make more sense.
That ability as a writer, to take existing continuity and build something new and great from it, is what I loved about Johns’ work with Infinite Crisis and his detail work on The Sinestro Corps War.

Doom DeLuise:
Doom DeLuise’s Capsule Review of Green Lantern #35: Piece of shit.

To sum up, here’s what happened: Hal Jordan and Sinestro argue with the Guardians.

That’s all.

I haven’t much cared for this story-arc, and, now that it’s over, I hope that Green Lantern gets to be fun again. I trust Geoff Johns as a writer, and I’m excited for Rage of the Red Lanterns and the stuff with the Black Lanterns, and when the eventual War of Light happens, I’m sure I’ll be mighty impressed by how much groundwork they’ve been laying (I already am), but, at this point, I don’t think retelling the origin story of Hal Jordan did much.

And you know what I’m really sick of? I’m really damn sick of watching scenes where the Green Lanterns have to argue with the Guardians. It’s to a point where I wish Superboy-Prime would come back and tear every last Guardian in half and be done with it. Those scenes are so friggin’ boring.

Fin Fang Doom
Well that was sort of anti-climatic.

Not a whole lot happened in the final chapter of the 7-part “Secret Origin” arc in Green Lantern. It was basically an entire issue of Hal questioning the Guardians motives and actions, and it’s certainly not the first time that’s happened. Well technically it is, but you know what I mean.

I guess that as a revamp of Hal Jordan’s origin, “Secret Origin” worked well. There’s a good chance this will go down as one of the definitive Green Lantern trades, alongside The Sinestro Corps War, Rebirth and the Fall of Hal Jordan. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work very well as a monthly serial.

Geoff Johns isn’t the kind of writer one would normally accuse of pacing a story too slowly, but Secret Origin just seemed to drag on. At first I thought that had to do with the shipping delays, but as it turns out, there weren’t any significant delays. The last issue shipped two weeks later than it should have, and over the course of seven months, two weeks is nothing.

Johns could have easily turned this story into a six-issue story, or even a five-parter. The sixth chapter, the Hal &Sinestro vs. Atrocitus fight, was the only issue that really had any punch to it. Everything else was just a re-telling of the origin with a few new insights thrown in, which could have easily been condensed. And while the inclusion of The Black Hand into Hal’s origin obviously has a purpose, I’m not sure why Hector Hammond’s origin was intertwined with Hal’s.

The ending to this issue did throw an interesting wrench into the works regarding the whole “Light War” scenario. I guess I figured it would be the good colors vs. the bad colors in a big fight, but things won’t be that simple anymore. The Red Lanterns now have a beef with the Yellows in addition to the Greens. And after this week’s Green Lantern Corps #29, the Purples have an issue with the Yellows as well. So if none of the “bad” colors are going to be getting along, will the “good” ones be at odds too?

As build up to the “Blackest Night” storyline, “Secret Origin” delivered in spades. Adding the different colors of the spectrum to Hal’s origin makes the Light War seem like something that’s been brewing since before Hal donned the green tights. But I don’t think it worked as well as a stand-alone story, and definitely not in monthly installments. I think I’ve actually been enjoying Green Lantern Corps on an issue-by-issue basis more over the last seven months.