Written by Dan Jurgens
Illustrated by Marco Santucci
Published by DC Comics
Rebirth’s Green Lanterns comes to an end upcoming at issue #57. In this month’s issue, Green Lantern Simon Baz is separated from the other Lanterns and a Dan Jurgens classic Superman villain rears his shiny robot head!
Mike Perkins completes the package with his amazing Hitchcock Vertigo cover, drawing attention to a dwarfed Simon Baz who is declared “Guilty” by an ominous crooked hand construct.
Perhaps, someday this review will be enhanced by the cover process video that inspired picking up this book, but after a good thirty minutes of searching, no such luck.
The book’s interior art duties are rounded out by Marco Santucci and Hi-Fi.
Santucci draws a great space team book with the excitement of Starlin and is, quite frankly, delivering more space battle per page better than anything that the current Star Wars book is jamming down our gullet (we suspect to make a tasty pâté someday).
Interestingly enough, the main team is taking on a blue-skinned race called The Ravagers (not to be confused with Marvel’s sometime blue-skinned Ravagers) who are determined to take over the water world of Penelo. Hal and Jessica take the lead on this fight. In orbit around the planet, my favorite Lantern Guy Gardner faces off against Adam Warlock level villain Eon. Wait, what universe am I even in? I thought I was in a Sector!
Kyle and Kilowog also do some neat tricks to get The Ravagers to damage their own ships. Yup, this book even has space dog fights better than that Skywalker book.
Meanwhile, Simon is flying back to Earth and listening to the advice of his ring. He’s lead by Superman’s distress signal directly to the Fortress of Solitude. Once there, he’s fooled by a Superman doppelgänger to have Simon help him break in and let this Big Bad out!
Who’s the bad guy on the last page? That will be a surprise but he’s shiny and has done some damage to Coast City in the past.
In all this is an enjoyable, fun, well-paced issue, one expects nothing less from Dan Jurgens! As this series wraps up after the big issue #50 murder mystery and before the Grant Morrison & Liam Sharp Green Lantern reboot, these will be a great end to the epic story being told. I find it hard to believe that Blackest Night was nearly 10 years ago but I like that the Geoff Johns rethinking of the Lantern universe has stuck around and with interesting new Lanterns.
Yup, its even nice to see Kyle once in a while.
Good book, great art and cool space stuff are found in this ish, but if you want to buy this book because of the Perkins cover, we promise we won’t point a finger at you and call you “Guilty” with shame. You know what you did!
