“I guess your name made the good list this year”

Green Lantern: The Lost Army #2 slowly unravels a little more of the mystery behind the disappearance of the Green Lantern Corps as John Stewart and company face off against a group of Fury Lightsmiths.  This continues to point towards the Corps being displaced in time more so than space as I speculated based on clues in the first issue, and with the understanding that we’ve gone backwards to the previous universe it was only a matter of time before we’d get an appearance by an all too familiar being from that previous universe.

With another flashback to John’s days as a marine to remind us of the desire to go home out of the way after the first two pages, Cullen Bunn pits Lanterns versus Lightsmiths as the central focus of the issue. The altercation is entertaining if uninspired with the notable exception of Guy Gardner again rising to the occasion to save the day with some fun ring slinging and witty dialogue.  We do see a little more of the effect shapeshifting has on Xrill-Vrek which leads to Guy amusingly seeing himself as others often do.

However when the Lanterns decide to charge their rings with the Fury Converter we see something completely new from what we’ve come to see from central power batteries.  With Guy and John charging their rings the converter changes color from red to green, leading to visions in my head that the Lightsmiths must have had some great “Capture the Flag” battles in their day.  The recharge actually supercharges the Lanterns which is much needed as they were all running low on power.  As the issue comes to a close we get dialog about the trustworthiness of Krona who really doesn’t know what his future holds for him.

Visually Jesus Saiz does a great job with the character work this issue but, like last issue, it’s his lack of detail when it comes to everything else which takes away from the overall visual experience.  The lack of background definition does force the eye to engage with the foreground, where the artwork excels, but I can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed by the the issue as a whole.  One thing which did strike me was that Relic, and those from his era, appear normal size here but as we saw in Relic’s backstory in Green Lantern #23.1 the Lightsmiths were the same height as Relic and he appeared to be many times larger than what we would consider normal.  Whether Relic’s size changed during the destruction on his universe and his many millennia cocooned in ours or not isn’t known at this point, but hopefully there’s something in the narrative down the road which explains the huge discrepancy.

Green Lantern: The Lost Army #2 entertains but with the main plot mired in the unknown the series appears as if it lacks a central focus beyond trying to get home.  The revelation that the Corps are displaced in time rather than space might come as a surprise to some, but for many readers it’s more of a confirmation of suspicions based on the clues dropped last month.  Six out of ten lanterns.