Comics! Green Lantern #5

Green Lantern #5

Writer: Geoff Johns
Pencils: Doug Mahnke
Inks: Mark Irwin, Keith Champagne, Christian Alamy & Tom Nguyen

The Comic
Remember. No Fear.

This is Sinestro taking charge, doing what he does best. You can imagine from this comic that when he was previously a Green Lantern he must have done a lot of good. I'm glad that this aspect of him is being explored. Sinestro is a far more entertaining character for this book than Hal Jordan ever was.

We start off with the "cliffhanger" from last issue quickly addressed. Sinestro then grabs his Lantern and they attack. Wait, what? Ok, I knew that the rings Sinestro gave people wouldn't hurt him, and I'm shocked that it got brought up. Then Sinestro's lantern floats to him and he retrieves it. If all he had to do was call out to his lantern, or whatever he did, and then it would free him from the prison he was in, doesn't that throw out all the build up of how he couldn't get out? Why didn't he do this from the beginning? Was it just to gain the trust of the people of Kurogar? In the end, he really didn't get their trust, so what was the point? Sigh.

So Sinestro gets into the Yellow Battery and zaps all the yellow energy back to it, causing the Yellow Lanterns to fall into a coma or something. Sinestro decides to bring the Yellow Lantern back with him to Oa, send Hal Jordan back to earth with the ring but not a lantern, and then we get a scene where Hal tells Carol that he really just wants her. So it looks like they are an item again. We then get a page where the Guardians decide that they will release the first lantern and the first lantern will lead a new army that will replace the Green Lanterns. It is similar to how Johns ended Aquaman #4 by giving a minor preview of things to come.

Knowing how Johns works, this arc is "over" since Sinestro decided to fully embrace the fact that he is a Green Lantern again and we are on to the next big development. There are enough threads there to keep the overall story going, but I just felt like I got cheated in this arc. Certain situations in this arc didn't make sense for the overall story (I'm looking at you, Prison Scene). The end of this arc didn't make sense. But, if you came to this book and it was the first issue you saw, well, it still wouldn't make much sense for certain scenes.

Bah. Johns knew how he wanted to end it, and he fell short here. This is the first issue I really didn't enjoy of the series from the writing side, so its no big issue right now. But if this is an indication about how future arcs will end, then why should I stick around for another story?

I am looking forward to not having Hal around. I hope it stays that way for more than the next story arc.

The Cover
The cover has the words "Two against a Thousand!" Not reflective of the story at all since Sinestro and Jordan had plenty of help. Now if the cover had all of those people from Korugar with rings charging at you on the cover with Jordan and Sinestro in front, that would have been a good cover. The cover did stick out for me from the racks due to the coloring, but otherwise it was a pretty generic cover: a posed shot that didn't actually happen in the issue.

Grades
Words: 6/10 - The overall story was fun, but the steps it took to get there didn't make sense.
Pictures: 8/10
Recommend: Only if you are really willing to suspend your disbelief and not try to logically put it together. Sorta like the Green Lantern movie.
Buy Next Issue: Everyone is allowed to stumble from the consistency from time to time, just get back up on your feet the next time through.

Previous Issues
Green Lantern #4
Three Issue Trial