I’ve had this image in my mind of writer Justin Jordan working in a studio somewhere writing scripts for Green Lantern: New Guardians with Star Trek reruns running in the background, gaining inspiration from Gene Roddenberry’s “morality play wrapped in science fiction” formula as he crafts the stories of Kyle Rayner and the Templar Guardians exploring the cosmos.  While Jordan isn’t aping classic Trek, for me it’s a perfect marriage given my history with both Green Lantern and Star Trek fandom, and the go together about as well as chocolate and peanut butter.

Issue 26 of Green Lantern: New Guardians wraps up the story of the perfect world of Exuras, made a paradise at the expense of all the other versions of Exuras in the multiverse thanks to some pseudo science which allows them to swap key moments in time.  If it sounds a little heady it is, and this issue is one that I found I had to read through a couple of times to follow what was going on as Jordan switches frenetically between Kyle and Carol’s struggles to contain the alternate version of Nias and his army and the Templar Guardians who try to diffuse the situation at its core.  The art team of Brad Walker and Geraldo Borges do an admirable job of keeping the action from becoming too disjointed and their wonderful page layout work make the issue very appealing to the eyes.

Jordan concludes the story in Trek fashion by having Kirk, um, Kyle tackle the morality of what Nias and his people have done, forcing them to not only give up their perfect timeline for the benefit of all their various incarnations, but to make amends as well.  The Templar Guardians step it up a little this issue, becoming less of the naive beings who were locked away for eons and more decisive and active as we might assume they would.  What Jordan does at the conclusion of the issue takes a darker turn as we realize that the Templar Guardians are more aware of things than we believed – and they not only know what lies on the other side of the Source Wall, but they know that what’s there is coming to pay a visit soon.  

What else lies beneath the surface of the story is the subtle nudge in the direction of the “Kyle/Carol” thing.  While we have yet to see if this relationship is anything more than platonic, Kyle laying down the law and threatening the Exurians if they don’t mend their fences has put him in a bit of a different light and Carol acts surprised at how he handled things and she’s left floating in space alone when he flies off in the final panels of the issue.  If there is indeed some ember of romance there, this is the moment when the girl realizes that the romanticized illusion of who she thought the guy is gets shattered and she begins to learn more about who he really is.  For Carol this has always been the hard part for her because she’s so used to getting her own way and where she fails in her relationships with men is what we all tend to have problems with – falling for the ideal and not the reality.  I hope that this is a lesson that she finally learns before the next time she and Hal cross paths.

Green Lantern: New Guardians #26 is a great example of how well the Green Lantern mythology plays with different genres whether it be traditional spandex clad superhero action or thought provoking science fiction.  Justin Jordan and Brad Walker continue to make this title a great read – four out of five lanterns.

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