Podcast of Oa Episode 22

In this episode of the Podcast of Oa hosts Bill Giancoli and Myron Rumsey discuss Red Lanterns #9 and how the events of this series might connect to the rest of the Green Lantern books.  “The Secret of the Indigo Tribe” was revealed in Green Lantern #9 which prompts our newest contest.  Post your own Green Lantern themed “Nok Nok” joke on our Facebook group before the end of May and you could win a digital copy of Green Lantern #9.

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Simone, Van Sciver on Green Lantern Graphic Novel

Gail Simone

In a new interview with Major Spoilers, DC Comics writer Gail Simone revealed some information about the top secret project that she and artist Ethan Van Sciver are working on - an original Green Lantern graphic novel.  While Gail doesn't give up much information about the new ninety page project she does indicate that the story will stand on its own, however it doesn't necessarilly mean that it's a part of the current continuity.  As Gail says, "this event could take place somewhere in time in the DCU". 

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Green Lantern News From C2E2

Ethan Van Sciver returns!

While there hasn't been a lot of Green Lantern news coming out of this weekend's C2E2 convention there have been a couple bits of news of note about the Green Lantern universe.  Among all the DC universe news is that when pressed for the Orange Lantern Oath Geoff Johns indicated that we'll be seeing much more from Larfleeze in the future.

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May 2012 Green Lantern Solicitations - Updated

The May 2012 solictations from DC Comics for the Green Lantern family of books has been released, revealing that the answers to some of the mysteries of the Indigo Tribe are going to be revealed, John Stewart gets himself into some hot water, and more.

This has been updated to include Blue Beetle #9 featuring a crossover with Green Lantern: New Guardians.

RED LANTERNS #9

Written by PETER MILLIGAN

Art by ED BENES and ROB HUNTER

Cover by MIGUEL SEPULVEDA

On sale MAY 2 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US RATED T+

No RED LANTERN is safe! ATROCITUS discovers a conspiracy behind the awakening of the terror that is ABYSMUS, which threatens to kill every member of his corps!

JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL #9

Written by DAN JURGENS

Art by AARON LOPRESTI and MATT RYAN

Cover by DAVID FINCH and RICHARD FRIEND

On sale MAY 2 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US RATED T

It’s the JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL against O.M.A.C in a fight to the finish! Special crossover with this month’s FIRESTORM #9!

GREEN LANTERN #9

Written by GEOFF JOHNS

Art by DOUG MAHNKE and CHRISTIAN ALAMY

Cover by DOUG MAHNKE

Variant cover by GARY FRANK

1:200 B&W Variant cover by DOUG MAHNKE

On sale MAY 9 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US RATED T

Combo pack edition: $3.99 US

This issue will ship with three covers.

“THE SECRET OF THE INDIGO TRIBE” part three! HAL JORDAN and SINESTRO learn the horrific truth behind the members of the Indigo Tribe and their connection to ABIN SUR Also, the GUARDIANS begin their plan to replace the Green Lantern Corps – at any cost!

This issue is also offered as a special combo pack edition with a redemption code for a digital download of this issue.

JUSTICE LEAGUE #9

Written by GEOFF JOHNS

Art and cover by JIM LEE and SCOTT WILLIAMS

Backup story art by GARY FRANK

1:25 Variant cover by CARLOS D’ANDA

1:200 B&W Variant cover by JIM LEE

On sale MAY 16 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US RATED T

Combo pack edition: $4.99 US

“THE VILLAIN’S JOURNEY” begins here! Part one of a story introducing an all-new major nemesis for the Justice League by GEOFF JOHNS and JIM LEE!

In part three of the SHAZAM! backup story, Billy Batson attempts to get used to his new life, new school and new family as Sivana unleashes an ancient evil imprisoned long ago.

This issue is also offered as a special combo pack edition with a redemption code for a digital download of this issue.

GREEN LANTERN CORPS #9

Written by PETER J. TOMASI

Art and cover by FERNANDO PASARIN and SCOTT HANNA

On sale MAY 16 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US RATED T

“ALPHA WAR” part one! JOHN STEWART is put on trial for the murder of a fellow GREEN LANTERN by the ALPHA LANTERNS!

BLUE BEETLE #9 
Written by TONY BEDARD
Art by MARCIO TAKARA
Cover by PAUL RENAUD
On sale MAY 16 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

BLUE BEETLE squares off against GREEN LANTERN KYLE RAYNER and THE NEW GUARDIANS!  If Beetle and the Lanterns don’t kill each other, the bounty hunter packing Oan technology will be happy to do it for them. Wait…OAN technology?! Continued this month in GREEN LANTERN: NEW GUARDIANS #9!


GREEN LANTERN ANIMATED #2
Written by ART BALTAZAR and FRANCO
Art and cover by DARIO BRIZUELA
On sale MAY 16 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED E

Hal Jordan and Kilowog patrol the limits of the galaxy in their “borrowed” Green Lantern ship! Has Hal learned the lessons Kilowog’s been teaching him? We’ll find out as they run into an old foe: the Invisible Destroyer!

THE FURY OF FIRESTORM: THE NUCLEAR MEN #9

Written by JOE HARRIS and ETHAN VAN SCIVER

Art by YILDIRAY CINAR and NORM RAPMUND

Cover by ETHAN VAN SCIVER

On sale MAY 23 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US RATED T

Don’t miss this crossover with JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL #9! RONNIE seeks information – but is the price he must pay too high?

GREEN LANTERN: NEW GUARDIANS #9

Written by TONY BEDARD

Art and cover by TYLER KIRKHAM and BATT

1:25 B&W Variant cover by TYLER KIRKHAM and BATT

On sale MAY 23 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US RATED T

This issue will ship with two covers. The variant cover will feature the standard edition cover in a wraparound format.

ODYM, homeworld of the BLUE LANTERNS, is under attack by the alien conquerors known as THE REACH! The combined power of the different Lantern Corps might not be enough to defeat The Reach! To make matters worse, they may have been betrayed by one of their own! Continued from BLUE BEETLE #9.

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DC Releases Solicitations for November Green Lantern Titles

DC has released the solicitations for several of their November 2011 releases including the Superman and Green Lantern families of books.  The full DC Comics solicitations will be made public at around 5 PM eastern standard time on August 15th.

Here are the descriptions and cover images for all four of the Green Lantern books.

Red Lanterns #3 - On sale November 2
Written by Peter Milligan, Art by Ed Benes and Rob Hunter Cover by Ed Benes
32 pg, RATED T+

This story spotlights the sexy and deadly Red Lantern called Bleez. Red Lantern leader Atrocitus needs a lieutenant and places his bet on this raging beauty...and this decision will have long-ranging ramifications that no one - especially Atrocitus - will expect.

Green Lantern #3 - On sale November 9
Written by Geoff Johns, Art by Doug Mahnke and Christian Alamy Cover by Doug Mahnke
1:25 Variant cover by Ethan Van Sciver 1:200 B&W Variant cover by Doug Mahnke
32 pg, RATED T
This issue will ship with three covers.
With the entire Sinestro Corps out to kill its founder, the renegade Green Lantern Sinestro finds himself in a position he's never been in before: on the run.


Green Lantern Corps #3 - On sale November 16
Written by Peter J. Tomasi, Art by Geraldo Borges and Scott Hanna Cover by Alex Garner
32 pg, RATED T

Things go from bad to worse as Guy Gardner and John Stewart's squad of Green Lanterns is vastly outnumbered by the Intruders, a force that knows how to neutralize any green ring's power. And these invaders have made it abundantly clear: this is personal.

Green Lantern: The New Guardians #3 - On sale November 23
Written by Tony Bedard, Art by Tyler Kirkham, Harvey Talibao and Batt Cover by Tyler Kirkham and Batt
32 pg, RATED T

Lanterns united! Green, yellow, red, blue - soldiers from every Lantern Corps stand shoulder-to-shoulder against an unthinkable enemy: the Guardians of Oa! It's the New Guardians vs. old in a battle that will forever change Kyle Rayner's standing in the Green Lantern Corps! Plus: If the lone Orange Lantern ring is with Kyle Rayner, then what happened to its owner, Larfleeze? Finally, the answer revealed!


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Untold Tales of Blackest Night 1 Review

It being October and what with Halloween on the immediate horizon it is a nice treat to revisit Blackest Night with a series of short tales and vignettes that fleshes out what was the hottest event in comics over the past year.  Untold Tales of Blackest Night #1 features stories by a number of great writers including Geoff Johns, Pete Tomasi, new DC exclusive J.T. Krul and Ethan Van Sciver, who proves his talent doesn't just come from his artist's pen.

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More Green Lantern News From New York

Late this afternoon Geoff Johns, Pete Tomasi, Tony Bedard and the whole Green Lantern franchise creative team held the New York Comic Con version of the "Emerald Empire" panel, where more tidbits and hints of what we can look forward to in the coming months were revealed.  New DC exclusive artist Tyler Kirkham was on the panel as the new artist for the Green Lantern Corps title, replacing Ardian Syaf, who of late hasn't had the quality that he had when his run began.  Kirkham is well known for his work at Top Cow and on Marvel's Ultimate Fantastic Four book.

In the Corps title we'll be seeing a lot more of the Weaponer of Qward, who initially thought he was doing something good in creating Sinestro's ring, with the results of arming Sinestro providing the Weaponer with a strong reason to seek revenge.  Bedard also said that Kyle Rayner and Sinestro will have a fight in an upcoming issue that takes place during a Halloween event in Greenwich Village.  Bedard also has some plans for John Stewart, commenting that the character has an untapped potential.

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Ethan Van Sciver Draws Reynolds as GL

Van Sciver's exclusive cover

Over on Facebook, artist supreme Ethan Van Sciver earlier this week said that he had drawn Reynolds as Green Lantern for a special variant comic cover that would be exclusive to Comic-con.   Van Sciver did say that he likes the movie costume.

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Absolute Green Lantern Rebirth Review

When the Absolute Green Lantern: Rebirth was announced months ago there was some trepidation that a book like this wasn't warranted since there weren't nearly as many pages of story to justify the Absolute treatment.  And some fans, perhaps rightly so, feel that enough time simply hasn't passed yet to determine if it stands the test of time and made it a story worthy an Absolute edition.

However, if you look at what Green Lantern: Rebirth has done for the entire Green Lantern mythos and the impact it has had on the greater DC Universe at large since it was printed in 2005, there's enough there to see why Rebirth got the Absolute treatment.  At a price tag lower than the other Absolute editions, is it worth picking up?

The Story

The slip-cased edition's back cover

I'm not going to recount the story for you in detail, but if you haven't read Green Lantern: Rebirth and are on this site then leave, go pick it up and read it because it truly is required reading for any self respecting fan at this stage of the game.  Ultra superfast version:  Hal comes back and the true nature of what happened during Emerald Twilight is revealed as a plot between Sinestro and Parallax, the entity of fear.  Oh, and Hal one punches Batman.

DC added the first issue of the new ongoing title to the Absolute edition as well as a Darwyn Cooke tale from the Secret Files that came out after Rebirth.  Also included are the preview story pages that appeared in Wizard Magazine.  So the added pages, plus the supplemental material, make the book a bit thicker than you'd initially expect it to be, hence the lower price tag.  The retail on this edition is $75, although you can certainly find it much cheaper at a number of online retailers.

The Presentation

The first thing I have to say is that the presentation is breathtaking.  The artwork on the slipcover, the dust jacket and the actual cover to the book are all unique - no duplication at all - and the colors just pop.  It appears that there's some silk screen or vinyl on the cover that further adds dimension to Ethan Van Sciver's art.  There's a sewn in green bookmark as well.

Green Lantern: Rebirth is perhaps the defining moment in Ethan Van Sciver's career, catapulting him the forefront of today's comic artists.  And, simply put, this Absolute edition is a showcase of Van Sciver's talent and the larger format really allows us to appreciate all the hard work that Ethan put into this miniseries.  

The Supplemental Material

The cover to Rebirth's third issue.

What makes the Absolute line stand out to me beyond just giving us a larger slip-cased edition are all the extras that supplement the actual story.  There's a lot of extra goodies to peruse once you finish reliving the resurrection of perhaps the greatest cosmic mythology in comics history.  

Right off the bat is the original proposal that Geoff Johns pitched to DC dated January 21st, 2004.  There's not much new to be learned from the proposal, but it's interesting to see how Geoff tackled any potential hesitation on DC's part by addressing a number of questions about the story and how things were going to work with his rationale for a number of the writing choices he made.

There's also a breakdown of all the issues as Geoff saw them at this point.  What's interesting here is to see some elements that were changed or removed all together as the story evolved.  Most intriguing to me was how Johns originally planned to have Parallax take over Batman and Hal overcoming a second attempt by the entity to possess him. The script for the first issue is included as well, showing us some of the direction that Johns was feeding Ethan Van Sciver and is a script for a flashback scene between Tomar-Re, Sinestro and Hal that was cut from the fifth issue.

Amongst the bonus artwork are some of the ads and promotional materials for Rebirth and prototype sketches from Van Sciver for a Hal Green Lantern action figure, complete with a 3D symbol logo that could be put in his chest.  Unfortunately for us it wasn't used in that first wave of Green Lantern DC Direct figures that came out shortly after the relaunch of the Green Lantern title since it's far superior to the one we did get.

I have, however, really disappointed in the lack of a cover gallery showing all the different covers used in Rebirth like we recently saw in the Blackest Night Directors' Cut.  There's also nothing in the way a retrospective from Geoff Johns about the evolution of the story and all that we've seen since 2005. 

The most glaring omission to me is the lack of a commentary or footnotes section like the wonderful included in the Absolute Edition of DC: The New Frontier.  I really felt that, especially with the recent conclusion of Blackest Night, a look at some of the symbolism and connective tissue that ties these two stories was certainly in order.

In the very least I expected to at least see the Wizard commentary included that talked about some really cool things like some of the symbolism that Van Sciver and Moose Baumann added.  For example, when we first see Carol Ferris in Rebirth she's wearing a scarf that Baumann colored yellow to symbolize that, at this point in the story, she's untouchable with yellow representing her separation from Hal.  The inclusion of that kind of information to me was absolutely essential to this volume to make it a "must have" - and even more so had it been updated to show some of the seeds that Geoff was planting for the future.  Fortunately for me I printed out those comments from Wizard's website for myself, but it's an incredible shame not to see them included.

What do I Think

The book looks gorgeous and Rebirth is one of those stories that will be shown to have left an indelible mark on the history of the Green Lantern characters.  If it weren't for the missing commentary and cover gallery the Absolute edition would be damn near perfect.  Even so, this book is the way to read Rebirth and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone, but shop around and get a good price for it.

Four out of five lanterns.

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