GREEN LANTERN #144

By: Tony Whitt
Date: Wednesday, November 21, 2001

Kyle Raynor has discovered the cause behind his increasing power and the reason why his ring hasn't needed recharging. It appears that when Hal Jordan reignited the sun, he left part of his Parallax power behind, and Kyle's been siphoning all that energy. The scary part is that the power is growing, and it wants Kyle to claim it. The even scarier part is that Nero senses it too...and he wants it just as badly.

This is the issue I've been waiting for ever since the OUR WORLDS AT WAR one-shot a few months back. The explanation for Kyle's increasing powers has been a long time coming, but the payoff has been worth it. As usual, Judd Winick writes a poetic, even terrifying, script, and it's only after you've finished reading the book that you realize nothing has actually happened at all. It's an issue devoted to exposition, but it's exposition that's so well-written that you won't recognize it as such.

I credit Eaglesham and Ramos' artwork as much as Winick's writing. There's something hugely frightening about watching Kyle standing on the sun while Jade tries her damndest to get close enough to communicate, and the artists handle these scenes with subtlety and grace. Nero's Lovecraftian power ring creations are equally frightening, eating up the page just as efficiently as you'd expect the creatures themselves would eat just about everything else. But even when nothing is happening, and Kyle is simply standing on the sun basking in his new power, there's a feeling that we're witnessing motion. I'm still not sure why Kyle sees himself as standing in a white nothingness with a pair of tighty-whities on, though. Surely when you're coming close to being all-powerful, you would opt to go in the buff? Could his BVDs be the last sign of his humanity? Could I be reading way too much into his underclothing? Oh, probably.


All underwear concerns aside, the most impressive thing about this title is its treatment of Kyle, Jade, John, even Alan Scott, as everyday people who just happen to be superheroes. I particularly love the interaction between Jade and Alanit's not at all surprising that Alan would want his daughter to date outside the superhero biz, and equally unsurprising that she's easily irritated by the very qualities that made him such a hero (as Green Lantern, mind you, not as Sentinel. Of all the post-CRISIS ideas, that name change has to rank up there as one of the worst). Now that Kyle has the same sort of power that drove Hal Jordan mad, though, it'll be interesting to see what Winick and company do with this title, and where that power will take him. Personally, I can't wait.

GREEN LANTERN

Grade: A-

Issue: No. 144

Author(s): Judd Winick, Dale Eaglesham, Rodney Ramos

Publisher: DC

Price: $2.25