Just an interesting little thing I noticed recently.

I decided to re-read the Alpha Lanterns arc (largely for Laira’s transformation into a Red Lantern, a great scene) and one thing I noticed was that when the Lost Lanterns track down Amon Sur, he’s just finished killing off Keehan’s family.

Flashforward to recent issues of GLC and we’ve now got a plot thread regarding Sinestro Corps members wiping out the families of GL Corps members. Is this a case of Geoff Johns hinting at a future plot thread, or did Peter Tomasi just get inspired by those events?

Or is it just a big coincidence?

Well, its been a good couple of weeks, with Green Lantern #28 last week, and Green Lantern Corps #22 this week.

As shown in the preview, we got our first Red Lanterns in GL. The Empire of Tears are setup as the Guardians for the Red Lanterns, and (unsurprisingly) Laira became the first recruit we’ve seen.

The interesting thing was Laira’s recruitment. In a similar way to the yellow rings, the red rings don’t give you a lot of choice in your recruitment (athough Batman was able to force off a yellow ring, using a combination of will-power, and previous exposure to a GL ring). However, the red rings are a lot more violent. It looked like it was virtually burning itself onto her finger, and then she started vomitting up the red energy. It was an incredibly powerful scene, and I’m really looking forward to seeing more about the red lanterns in the upcoming story arc.

And, of course, we also got a tidbit about the Orange Lanterns (it’ll be interesting to see if most of the Corps are identified by their colours - or if we’ll get more different names a la the Sinestro Corps). I’ll be interested to see what happens with them, and when we’ll start seeing hints about the Indigo Lanterns.

This week, we got the second part of the Boodikka Alpha Lantern story. I’ve basically covered my feelings about this arc in a previous post (in a nutshell, I’m not a huge fan of the character, but I think its good to spend a couple of issues focusing on other Lanterns, and its a good companion piece to the main Alpha Lantern storyline in GL), however I’ll also say again that I really enjoyed the writing and art in these issues.

I hope Sterling Gates gets another GL gig soon (maybe similarly, filling in on a 2-issue arc spotlighting a GL outside of Kyle and Guy), and I really liked Nelson’s artwork. More from this team please.

Comics Continuum have a preview for the new issue of GL up (strange not to see it onNewsarama). Looks good, and we now know how the Empire of Tears is going to fit into The Final Night.

Its great seeing Sinestro’s plan falling into place after The Sinestro Corps War. Hal’s reactions to the Alpha Lanterns are spot on. It’ll be nice to see if any of the other GLs catch onto how Sinstro’s played them.

Comics Continuum: DC Comics First Looks

This week’s Green Lantern Corps #21 takes us to one side from the main action in Green Lantern Corps. While the title is meant to be the “Guy and Kyle” book, this issue doesn’t actually feature either (although the clock is surely ticking down to Guy’s first run in with the Alphas). However, with the story tying in heavily to current events in Green Lantern, I didn’t actually miss them.

Not to mention, as the name of the book is “Green Lantern Corps”, I think it’d be remiss if it didn’t take time to highligh other members of the Corps. Perhaps this idea of side-stepping the usual cast to allow for a couple of fill-ins featuring other Corps members is something that could happen more often?

While I’ve been enjoying Peter Tomasi’s run so far (to the point that I picked up his first 2 issues of Nightwing the other week, both of which I really enjoyed), the fill in team of Sterling Gates and Nelson do a great job on the writing and art duties. Boodikka’s never been a character I’ve been that bothered about, but I enjoyed the focus on her as an Alpha Lantern, to give us more of a glimpse into their lives. I’m looking forward to part 2 of this.

However, while the Alpha Lanterns are big news, Booster Gold once again delivered the goods. While its maybe not DC’s highest profile book, its still consistently excellent, providing a great mix of laughs and superhero drama.

Fresh from rescuing Ted Koord from his untimely demise (something you just *know* is going to backfire) Booster and the Blue Beetles are travelling back through the time stream when they suddenly pass by Extant and Parallax, who are in the middle of Zero Hour. Its a great scene, with both parties just staring at each other, before Parallax and Extant snap out of it and go on the offensive. They end up back in Booster’s hometime of the 25th century, and Johns and Katz use this as a great time to have a look at what drives Booster as a character. His relationship with his father (key to the unvieling of Supernova’s identity) is further explored, and Booster’s guilt over his sister’s death is brought up. A really nice set of scenes, which worked really well, especially when you consider the comedy a few pages earlier of bumping into Parallax.

This week saw the release of Green Lantern #27 and the second part of the Alpha Lanterns trilogy.

So, now we finally see what the Alpha Lanterns are. Part Manhunter, part Green Lantern, they enforce the new rules being written into the book of Oa.

The surgery scene was really horrific. No doubt intentionally, I suspect we’re supposed to be seriously questioning the Guardians at this point. John was right to knock back the offer without more information, and with Boodikka’s story spilling into the next two issues of GLC, I suspect we’re going to see some of the real consequences to their decision to accept the position.

Its perfectly played out in the scene where Laira is asking Hal what he would’ve done as she’s being escorted to a Sciencell, and Hal looks up to see Sinestro smirking. There’s no doubt now that he won the Sinestro Corps war. Whereas a GL might still inspire people in the DCU, I have no doubt that an Alpha Lantern turning up is going to terrify people. The Guardians are playing right into Sinestro’s hands, inspiring fear in those around them.

The Blackest night is also touched on, with the scarred guardian getting Ash to hunt out the remains of the Anti-Monitor, and we see Black Hand’s symbol reflected in her eyes. Has she been infected by the Anti-Monitor?

The only real complaint I’ve got is with Raker. A fan favourite, previously introduced as a GL operating in secret on Apokolips, with his own power battery, so he was still in action after Parallax/Hal decimated the Corps. It was a cool story, and he became a fan-favourite, but this version of him is nothing like the version I remember from that story. Its a minor niggle, but it seems pointless to bring back the character only to change him so radically.

Moose Baumann’s posted the final version of an upcoming GL cover on his blog (I’ve lost the link sadly) which gives us our first proper look at the Alpha Lanterns.

That’s gotta hurt. With the embedded Power Batteries, are the Guardians trying to create (effectively) more Ions for the Corps?

Well, Newsarama have got the January solicits up and there’s some good looking titles that month.

In Green Lantern terms we’ve got our first (albeit hard to make out clearly) look at an Alpha Lantern from the arc in the main title. I must admit, I’m intrigued to see how this arc goes. I’m betting the Alpha Lanterns are some Ion-derivative, but given that Hal and John are against it, its a fair bet there’s something more sinister than the power-boost Kyle got. It looks like Boddika certainly is one of them. Will all the Lost Lanterns become Alpha Lanterns? I can’t see Arisia being involved (and she’s part of the GLC title anyway).

I’m unsure what to make of the GLC solicit to be honest. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’ll be a good story, and there’s only so much you can tell for a solicit, so there are a lot of assumptions involved. However, the image of Mongul with a Sinestro ring does automatically make me wonder how many GL foes are going to end up in the Sinestro Corps. I can’t help but think its possibly going to be too soon after the event to revisit it, and a couple of issues dealing with something else (or the fallout from the war in another way that doesn’t involve actually bumping into someone with a yellow ring) might’ve been an idea.

I suspect I’ll be eating those words come January though

Various other non-GL things catch my eye as well. I’ve enjoyed the first two issues of Countdown to Adventure a lot, so I’m looking forward to it. I notice that Adam Strange seems to be in his original outfit, as opposed to his Planet Heist makeover, so I presume he has to dig some of his old kit out of storage at somepoint. I hope he gets his Planet Heist look back at the end of the series though. A really good updating I thought.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the Black Adam mini wraps up and I’ve been enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. I’m hoping it gives us some indication of why Adam’s powers seem to be driving Mary evil, and I can’t help but think something happens to his powers during this series that leads him to give them to Mary as an act of revenge against Billy.

Booster Gold #6 should be a good issue as well. I like how they’re dealing with the issue of Ted in this first arc and getting it out of the way. I don’t think anyone’s actually been expecting him to save Ted though, so I suspect this issue will be a bit of a tearjerker.