"One Guy's Opinion."

OK, we weren't really behind this week...but it's funnier this way.

After years of being a colossal jerk (at best) and doing some pretty questionable things Guy Gardner shouldn't be anyone's favorite Green Lantern. And yet...when he returned in Justice League and Crisis on Infinite Earths and was a braindead, right-wing, bully; Guy would loudly and often proclaim he was the greatest Green Lantern. Then Hal died, did the Spectre thing, came back; and now Geoff Johns loudly proclaims Hal's the greatest Green Lantern ever. Repeatedly.

While more GL strips here are inevitable, since I just bought seven and am looking for more; and I'm kind of excited for the movie (even if I'm more of a Thor fan...) I only read the Green Lantern comics occasionally. I just re-read part of the Sinestro War, which was kind of cool; and Green Lantern #55, a fairly recent issue with Lobo.

Pros: the art is pretty good, and so is the color, which has to be tough when every panel "looks like god puked up a rainbow," to paraphrase Lobo there. The Sinestro Corps? Still think that was a great idea, that I'm surprised it took so long to come around. The Red Lanterns aren't as novel, but seem like decent bad guys. I even like seeing Star Sapphire, since she was a pretty big villain when I was reading Green Lantern Corps.

Cons: I'd give you a Star Sapphire Corps, or whatever, but do they need rings and their own Lanterns and whatnot? Does everyone? The blue and indigo rings seem particularly useless to me, and while black and white rings were inevitable, I don't care. Larfleeze, the greedy Orange Lantern, seems mildly entertaining...but didn't he kill a bunch of people? Ditto Sinestro: under some directive from the mysterious White Lantern, Hal was working with Sin in #55, but I know Sinestro blew up Kilowog's homeworld and people back in Green Lantern Corps #218. (Maybe they got better: Kilowog was pretty dead for a while there too, and he's fine.) I don't care if the fate of the universe is on the line, I don't care if God, Ben Kenobi, and the ghost of Tom Landry told Hal to, I would not abide Sinestro roaming around free.

Of course, Sinestro's origin appears to have been altered a bit as well: previously, he had just been a power-mad maniac, and to some extent still is. But now he claims to still believe in the Guardians' dream of an intergalactic peacekeeping force; just a meaner, fear-mongering, lethal-force using, freedom-stomping one. I suspect this is Johns' doing; since he seems to add a tragic element to as many origins as he can: Larfleeze was seemingly a goofy, greedy grub; and he ended his Christmas special crying over his lost family. (Whom I'm guessing he killed.) Dex-starr, the Red Lantern hate cat, is given a tearjerker origin; I was kind of hoping he was just crazy mean.

Anyway, more rambling on this, the next Green Lantern strip...whenever that may be.