Green Lantern Corps #46 Review

Blackest Night is drawing to a close with only three issues left to wrap up the loose ends and resolve as many of the plot threads as Geoff Johns is planning to.  The end begins with this week's Green Lantern Corps #46 with Peter Tomasi and Pat Gleason wrapping up their involvement with the event and their run heading towards the sunset.

The battle above earth continues between the members of the various corps struggling to contain the threat of the Black Lanterns while the New Guardians confront Nekron in Coast City.   All the members we've come to know so well over the past months get some face time as Guy Gardner tries to establish a leadership role amongst his throng of uneasy allies.  I like Tomasi's writing of Guy and I'm glad that Guy will follow Tomasi to the new Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors title.  Guy still walks that fine line between cool and annoying but Tomasi has turned Gardner into the Bruce Willis of the DC Universe and that's a good thing.

 Guy's plan, if he can get everyone to work with him, is pretty creative and as a Star Trek fan I chuckled at the reference to the "Tholian Web" episode.  I have to shout out the coloring work here by Randy Mayor and Gabe Eltreb who did a great job with making the web look amazing.  The color work throughout this event has had to be a challenge to make the various corps energy look powerful while being able to balance it out.

Guy's creative solution to being severely outnumbered.

Guess Who?!

The web holds for a few minutes but the giant construct gives way to the enormous stress of trying to literally contain and destroy tens of thousands of Black Lanterns.  Once again things begin to get bleaker for our protagonists just as Guy and Kyle are visited by the ghosts of their pasts, with Black Lantern Ice appearing to try to claim Guy and a mysterious refrigerator containing a Black Lantern version of Alex DeWitt pulls a surprised Kyle Rayner into its depths.

As we've seen throughout Blackest Night, one of Geoff Johns' goals for this event was to move our characters forward, to have characters acknowledge and accept events and decisions that have shaped them from their past while moving forward past them to set the stage for the future.  John Stewart had this moment in Green Lantern #49 and now both Guy and Kyle get their moments as they both conquer their demons and refuse to be bound by mistakes and guilt from their past.

Hell hath no fury like an Anti-Monitor scorned.

Which is great because just after they do the Anti-Monitor, trapped in the Black Lantern central power battery since the end of the Sinestro Corp War, burst for from the giant battery and he's not happy about where he's been for the past few years.

Everyone piles on the Anti-Monitor but he is barely affected by their combined efforts because he hasn't fully been converted into a Black Lantern.  The high toll of being a Green Lantern is paid by Vath, who literally sacrifices life and limb to protect Iolande from the eye blasts of the Anti-Monitor.  Vath refuses to simply accept his fate and keeps pushing forward with his own assault despite the critical damage he's been dealt, showing us the grim determination it takes to be a defender of the universe.

Bedovian wins a very large Kewpie doll.

A new scheme is hatched to use Dove as a means of bringing the Anti-Monitor down and Kyle envelopes here in a very large bullet construct.  While the Red Lanterns puke rage on the him to keep him distracted, Bedovian, the Sinestro Corp sniper, takes aim in a very cool visual by Pat Gleason.  The Dove-bullet hits home, striking the Anti-Monitor squarely between the eyes.  

The slumped over form of the behemoth lay stuck between our world and his giant power battery prison.    The combined lanterns struggle to pull the Anti-Monitor free so that Nekron can no longer continue to siphon energy from him.  However they are unsuccessful and the Anti-Monitor is sucked back into the battery to continue to fuel Nekron's plans.  The issue closes with the corps launching themselves headlong towards Nekron and the upcoming final issue of Blackest Night.

I was perhaps a little critical of Pat Gleason's artwork in the beginning, but he's really won me over with his work in the past several issues.  It's unfortunate that he's not continuing with this title when Tomasi leaves, nor is he joining the writer in the new book.  I think he's done a really great job and it'll be a little sad to see him go. 

While there were some cool moments in this issue, I have to say that I felt like this issue didn't seem very important in the grand scheme of the story of Blackest Night, so I'm a little disappointed.  Granted that disappointment only comes from the fact that this is the last issue of the GLC book as a part of the event and it didn't really seem to do much other than offer a few neat moments while keeping the corps at arm's length from the main story.  Had this been two issues ago I'm sure I'd feel differently, but the lack of any real progression to the story really left me feeling like this was just a placeholder issue that's why this issue only gets 3 out of 5 lanterns.

Posted in: Arisia, Blackest Night, Comics Reviews, Green Lantern Corps, Isamot Kol, Kyle Rayner, Peter Tomasi