By Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, Rebecca Buchman, Christian Alamy, Prentis Rollins & Tom Nguyen (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2529-2
The Green Lantern Corps has protected the cosmos from evil and disaster for uncounted millennia, policing vast numbers of sentient beings under the severe but benevolent auspices of immortal super-beings who dubbed themselves Guardians of the Universe.
These undying patrons of Order were one of the first races to evolve and dwelt in sublime, emotionless security and tranquillity on the world of Oa at the very centre of creation.
Green Lanterns are chosen for their capacity to overcome fear and are equipped and armed with a ring that creates constructs out of emerald light. This miracle weapon is fuelled by the strength of their willpower, making it one of the mightiest tools in the universe.
For millennia, a single individual from each of the 3600 sectors of known space was selected to patrol his, her or its own beat, but in recent years the Guardians have frequently changed their own rules and laws. Now two GLs are assigned to work in each stellar division.
The Guardians’ motives have also increasingly come into question by many of their once-devoted operatives and peacekeepers, who have frequently seen the formerly infallible little blue gods exposed as venal, ruthless, doctrinaire and even capricious…
In the aftermath of the Sinestro Corps War, the universe was in turmoil at the revelation that Green was not the only colour and that an entire emotional spectrum of puissant energies underpinned and operated upon reality – and could thus be appropriated and exploited.
Soon each colour was being wielded by a power faction such as Atrocitus‘ anger-charged Red Lanterns, Zamaron‘s love-manipulating Violet-powered Star Sapphires or the enigmatic Agent Orange. The Guardians themselves were clearly off-balance, constantly changing the adamantine Laws in their precious Book of Oa and obviously terrified that some ancient prophecy was coming to fruition despite all their coldly calculated efforts…
This volume (collecting Green Lantern Corps #33-39 from 2009) is billed as a “Prelude to Blackest Night†and if you’re particularly wedded to strict running order and overarching continuity there are other books you should read such as the aforementioned Sinestro War volumes (all three of them), Rage of the Red Lanterns, Green Lantern: Secret Origin and Green Lantern: Agent Orange at the very least. Heck, read them all – if you’ve come this far you’re clearly already intrigued by the sheer immensity and scope of it all…
The space opera/cop procedural opens here as two of the wearily battered but triumphant interstellar peacekeepers enjoy some downtime by painting a mural in their still-not-open “cop-bar†on Oa.
“Honor Guard†Earth Lanterns Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner are debating the Guardian’s latest emotion-crunching edict banning relationships between serving officers and how many of their fellows it will affect. Soon their paint party is augmented by dozens of others officers keen to contribute and chat; all blithely unaware that one of their venerated masters has been suborned to The Black and actively works to destroy them and all they cherish…
Meanwhile, on the violently xenophobic planet Daxam, the remnants of Sinestro’s Corps, now led by the sadistic superman Mongul II, is committing genocide for entertainment as the despot consolidates his leadership and plans to take his growing army of yellow fear-worshippers on a new crusade of terror and destruction.
On Oa resignations are up as many veterans choose love over duty and quit the Corps. Rayner has a personal stake in the new Law too: enjoying a clandestine – and now forbidden – relationship with fellow lantern Soranik Natu of Korugar. Even as the lovers discuss their insurmountable problem, in the distant depths of space GL Saarek meets a passion-powered Star Sapphire as he uses his unique ability on a fragment of the carcass of the once terrible multiversal menace The Anti-Monitor…
The dead speak to Saarek and his conversation with the Zamaron Miri is painful and portentous for both of them and the entire cosmos…
On Daxam the wanton bloodshed is temporarily halted when the monstrous Arkillo challenges Mongul for leadership of the Yellow Lanterns. This distraction allows a desperate survivor to flee offworld and alert the Sector’s GL team: Arisia of Graxos IV and self-exiled Daxamite Sodam Yat.
The fugitive is his own mother, but Yat is fiercely disinclined to help. As a star-gazing youth he yearned to visit other worlds but his family, like all Daxamites, brutally discouraged his dreams. When the boy actually encountered a shipwrecked alien his parents had the poor creature stuffed and mounted as a warning…
Once Yat finally escaped his fundamentalist, bigoted, supremacist world he swore never to return. It takes all Arisia’s efforts to convince him otherwise.
As Natu leaves Oa for Korugar, deep in the Guardians’ Citadel, the hundreds of horrors isolated in impenetrable Sciencells become agitated when Gardner, Salaak and Kilowog try to slam the door on newest inmate Vice.
The raging Red Lantern is barely locked in when Warden GL Voz is attacked. Deep in the bowels of Oa, the renegade Black Guardian had deactivated the Sciencells and soon a complete riot ensues, exacerbated when the captured yellow rings of Sinestro’s adherents are reactivated and returned to the rampaging prisoners…
With carnage erupting and deaths mounting, all GLs on Oa are dispatched to the penitentiary, whilst on Daxam Yat and Arisia have linked up with a band of surviving Daxamites and begun training them to fight back against the blood-crazed invaders.
A darker confrontation occurs on Korugar as Natu is ambushed by escaped megalomaniac Sinestro who reveals a shattering secret about her comfortable happy childhood…
The riot on Oa finally subsides – after spectacular damage and catastrophic losses – with the Greens victorious even as, on Daxam, Yat loses a ferocious battle against Mongul but ultimately wins the war by making the most impossible of sacrifices…
And on Oa the once unshakable Guardians irretrievably shatter their already tarnished reputations by ordering the elite Alpha-Lanterns to summarily and secretly execute all the recaptured prisoners, prompting even their most devoted servants to lose hope and faith…
Now The Blackest Night begins and the universe itself will pay for the Guardians’ arrogance and duplicity……
Also featuring a beautiful and stirring gallery of covers and variants from Gleason, Buchman, Rodolfo Migliari and Glenn Fabry, this spectacular collection of plot threads and opening gambits combines all the spectacle, cosmic derring-do, tense suspense and blazing action fans adore, but even this “jumping on†epic is not really a beginning and far, far from a neat and tidy end.
Although this bombastic yarn is highly continuity-dependent, determined newcomers should still be able to extract a vast amount of histrionic enjoyment out of the explosive, compulsive, compelling, pell-mell onslaught of action… and you could always find those other volumes and get fully in the picture…
© 2009 DC Comics. All rights reserved.