Trapped, and hiding from the Cyborg Superman and Alpha Lanterns, Kyle, John and Soranik Natu try to convince Stel’s robotic people to side with them, and Kyle sends out a desperate call for help.   But who is he calling in?

Well, the cover kind’ve gives it away.  My only niggle with this issue really, that a lot of mystery is given to who Kyle’s signalled, when Hannu is right there on the cover.  Kind’ve like trying to hide who the bad guys are in “Planet of the Daleks”, its a bit redundant.

Anyway, nit-picking aside, this is another solid issue in the story, and felt like a step up from last month.  Its mainly focused on two aspects, John and co trying to rally the people to help defend their world and rescue Stel, but also on Cyborg Superman forcing Ganthet to attempt to restore the Alpha Lanterns to normal.

We learn that when the manacled figure took the manhunters, they also told Henshaw that Ganthet (specifically) had the ability to restore an Alpha Lantern, hence Henshaw deciding to convert himself.  There’s some nice continuity with Ganthet pointing out he’d left the GLC when the Alphas were created, so admits he has no idea how to restore them.

This does raise the interesting question of why, specifically, Ganthet can restore Alpha Lanterns.  Is this linked to his experience as a blue Lantern and opening himself up to emotions in a way the other Guardians haven’t (a fact brought up when Ganthet feels grief for the Alphas who die during his attempts to save them)?  Or is the mysterious figure just playing Cyborg Superman and setting Ganthet up as he/she has a grudge against him?

Resolving the story of the Alpha Lanterns has been one of the big draws of this arc for me, and so this issue gives us some tantalising glimpses into it.  While Ganthet is trying (and failing) to convert Alpha Lanterns back to normal, Boodikka locates Kyle, John and Natu’s hiding place with Stel’s people.   This confrontation quickly escalates as Hannu arrives, prepared to kill Boodikka as he sees what she’s become as a perversion of his old friend.  During the fight, he smashes her power battery, which seems to remove the Guardian and Cyborg Superman programming and allow her own personality to surface.

This was all pretty interesting.  We’ve known for a while that the Alpha Lantern’s original personalities were still present (from the two-part Boodikka story in GLC, but had been increasingly overridden by their programming.  This now offers up the possibility that Boodikka can be restored if they can find some way to stabilise  her physically (since damaging the power battery also means she’s dying).  But this was also a great little character scene, drawing on the fact the Lost Lanterns had been held prisoner by the Manhunters and Cyborg Superman for years (and there’s not much really between the Alpha Lanterns and the Manhunters).  Drawing on this as a reason for Hannu to attack Boodikka so brutally was a nice touch, and you really got the impression this was something that had been brewing with Hannu for a while.   Despite Hannu being largely unused throughout GL and GLC, this one short scene really helped underline his personality for his further appearances (Tony Bedard has said Hannu will be one of the mainstays of his run).  I’ll be very interested to see where these characters go next.

Next month is the conclusion to the storyline, but so far I’m finding this to be a great start to Tony Bedard’s run. Assuming Boodikka is somehow restored next issue, I’m going to be very intrigued to see how, and if Ganthet is involved, if it gives us a hint as to how he might be connected to the person that is collecting entities over in GL.