Green Lantern #44 continues the story of Blackest Night, following on from J’onn’s appearance in that title.
As seen in the preview, the action picks up with Hal and Barry investigating Bruce’s grave. Geoff Johns again takes the opportunity to build on the Hal and Barry friendship, this time playing on the fact that they’re both at heart cops.
Hal’s quick off the mark to take a shot at J’onn while Barry is more thrown by J’onn’s appearance and wondering what’s going on. Again, its a nice touch by Johns, playing their personalities off of one another with Barry being more cerebral whereas Hal is very much a man of action. This triggers the Black Lantern Martian Manhunter to attack them in earnest.
If anything, this issue actually works really well as a showcase for J’onn. Ok, so he’s an emotion-eating zombie in it, but Geoff Johns does a great job of showing off just how powerful and diverse J’onn’s powers are as he gives Hal and Barry a real run for their money through a combination of his intangibility, shape-shifting and raw power. There’s also a great fake out where we see Barry attacking and pummelling J’onn, only for it to be revealed that its actually Hal he’s attacking, having fallen victim to J’onn’s mental powers.
Then we get the real shock moment of the issue with John once again visiting the remains of Xanshi, only to find the area flooded by black rings saying “Xanshi RISE”. The visual of the entire area of space flooded by the rings flying about was superbly rendered by Doug Mahnke and the idea that its on necessarily the population of Xanshi but the planet itself is very exciting. The idea of a Black Lantern equivalent to Mogo could be fun indeed. And even if it is just the population, John suddenly finding himself swarmed by Black Lanterns with no backup should be fun. We know from the solicits that upcoming issues will feature John heavily (I’m assuming Hal will be more focused on the Blackest Night mini itself) so I’m really looking forward to him getting some much deserved focus.
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