Hal Jordan ventures into Purgatory in The Green Lantern No. 7

After the detonation of a U-Bomb, Hal Jordan ventures to where no Green Lantern has seemingly returned from, purgatory. Spoilers for The Green Lantern no. 7 follow.

With a very similar style to Alan Moore’s run on Saga of the Swamp Thing, most similar to the story “Blue Heaven,” the entirety of this issue takes place almost like a fairy tale. There’s a lot more prose in this issue than most other comics would have in an entire arc possibly and that’s all thanks to the new character introduced here, Pengowirr. Most of the story takes place from her perspective, which creates this storytelling device that feels different than almost every other comic on the stands.

Image by DC Comics/Art by Liam Sharp

The bulk of the conflict of this issue though surrounds Pengowirr’s survival attempts against these Lovecraftian style horrors that look like a mix between sharks, humans, and ghouls. Once she finds Hal Jordan, who somehow survived the U-bomb explosion, her path gets much more difficult simply because of who Hal Jordan is.

It turns out though, once Hal and Pengowirr are nearing her sanctuary, that Hal notices a diagram that causes him to realize that he’s actually in his ring, and Pengowirr is his ring’s A.I. Soon enough though, the ring begins to die from the exertion that another mind present within the ring, Myrwhydden, is using the rest of the ring’s power to keep the aforementioned Lovecraftian horror’s alive. Hal convinces him to draw the constructs back into himself, which sends the ring, with the little power it has left to Oa. The Corps is able to save Hal whom, in turn, saves his ring.

Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp crafted a masterpiece of an issue with this most recent issue of The Green Lantern. By combining this classic storytelling technique, along with pushing the character and story into unknown, and kind of weird territory, it made the story and situation all the more interesting and better.

9.8/10 

The Green Lantern no. 7 is the highlight and crowning jewel of the series so far with one of the best Green Lantern stories told.