The Green Lantern No. 6 review: Adam Strange v. Hal Jordan

Hal Jordan has arrived on Rann only to be put into a position that no Green Lantern wants to be put in, being forced to kill a friend. Minor spoilers for The Green Lantern no. 6 follow.

The Green Lantern has generally been a very strong series from the beginning and took a very different turn as compared to the various Green Lantern books of the past decade or so. It remained to be seen where this book was heading exactly because at several points, the actual overarching story felt very scatterbrained. With this issue, though, the first arc of the story is wrapped and actually makes sense of most of the scatterbrained tendencies of the previous five issues. However, much of the impact that previous issues had isn’t felt in this issue, making it feel a bit lackluster.

The most frustrating thing about this issue is the fact that so much is being put into this issue, and everything feels rushed because the story jumps around so much. There is really no character development happening in this issue, and the big twist that happened last issue is pretty much moot in this issue. Nothing really feels like it’s given its proper due here, and as such, the issue suffers a lot for it.

It really feels that the entire Adam Strange vs. Hal Jordan portion of this issue could’ve been given its own entire issue. The entire interaction and subsequent fight feel incredibly rushed, and if someone is reading this and doesn’t know who Adam Strange is, they won’t really care that Hal fought him. The only real explanation as to who Adam Strange is to Hal is that he’s a “colleague.” That’s it. The impact of the duel simply isn’t there, even though it tries to be thanks to the art.

Image by DC Comics/Art by Liam Sharp

This isn’t the only thing that’s rushed, either. Pretty much the entire third act and denouement of the issue just, happens, and makes you question everything. Not question everything in a ponderous, philosophical way, but in an almost incoherent “What just happened?” kind of way. It’s frustrating because this arc was leading up to what seemed to be a great face-off, and then it just ends. It leads into an interesting development, but it’s still very frustrating.

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The art in this issue is easily the best part of it, and even that is uncharacteristically weak at points. The opening couple of pages start off kind of muddy and not as clean as so much of Liam Sharp’s other work is, and even much of the rest of the issue is. For the most part, though, Sharp’s figure work and storytelling are as good as ever, it’s just too bad that Rann feels a bit out of his element. Sharp’s style is based around fantasy and an almost bio-organic feel to everything, so by having this issue set on Rann, a lot of that amazing style is almost forcibly cut out at times, which is sad.

5.75/10 

The Green Lantern ends its first arc at the lowest point of the series so far, but there’s a lot of potential given where the issue ends.