GREEN LANTERN #147

By: Tony Whitt
Date: Thursday, February 28, 2002

John Stewart's career as a Green Lantern ended with the death of Oa, but his career as a hero ended when Grayven crushed his spine. Now that Kyle Raynor has the almost godlike power of Ion, however, such an injury is a minor thing to fix?and yet John still can't walk. With the help of hypnotic regression, John delves into his past to determine the cause of his inability to walk, and there he uncovers a horrible secret.

It's an old saying, but it holds true here: don't judge a book by its cover. Any reader who sees John Stewart trapped in a wheelchair of green energy beneath the words "Prisoner of the Lantern!" will be expecting a much different book than what unfolds. Instead, this issue of GREEN LANTERN is a prime example of what appears to be an interesting trend emerging in modern superhero comics. Character development used to be relegated to the background of any given title, while action remained the predominant element that drove most plotlines. Recently, several big-time books have gone in the opposite direction, tying the plot directly to character development and relegating action to second tier.

Judd Winick has operated this way all along?despite the climactic battle between Kyle Raynor and Nero a few issues back, Kyle's metamorphosis into Ion has been far more of a shift in character than a shift in action?or rather, it had better be, since it's likely that no one could stand up to Kyle now. Winick does the same thing here for John Stewart, by exploring what it means to be that Green Lantern, the one who's not Hal Jordan or Guy Gardner, the one who's always been considered second-string?or to be more blunt, the one who's black. Winick does his usual expert job at sensitively handling a potentially explosive issue, thereby making John into a true hero in his own right rather than a mere benefactor of "tokenism," as the character seems to have become in the new JLA animated series. The secret revealed here also explains a great deal of John's characteristic anger and self-loathing in a way that goes beyond racial dogma and takes on a universal quality. No reader, no matter how little of a John Stewart fan they may be, can come away from this issue unaffected. Kudos also to Eaglesham and Ramos, who handle John's hypnotically-induced flashbacks with equal sensitivity and grace. This issue begs to be filmed, and Eaglesham and Ramos' art provides the perfect storyboards.

I have to wonder if we're seeing the future of superhero comics here. Series such as Marvel's ALIAS and issues such as the most recent AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, in which character development has become far more important than any other concern, are becoming the norm rather than the exception, and DC's titles are slowly following suit. Some may fear that this shift may produce less interesting comics, but if they're all as good as GREEN LANTERN #147, I think we can welcome the shift with open arms. Work like this may finally and completely validate a genre still thought of in many quarters as "kids' stuff."

GREEN LANTERN

Grade: A

Issue: No. 147

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

Publisher: DC

Price: $2.25