THIS WEEK: The Green Lantern Corps comes under attack from the Sorrow Lantern, and saddles up for a new mission, in Green Lantern: Fractured Spectrum #1. Also, we survey this week’s extensive, interconnected slate of All In titles.
Note: The review below may contain spoilers.
Green Lantern: Fractured Spectrum #1
Writer: Jeremy Adams
Artist: V Ken Marion
Colorist: Romulo Fajardo Jr.
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
Cover Artist: Fernando Blanco
Green Lantern: Fractured Spectrum #1 promises to kick off “the next Green Lantern epic,” and it does a decent enough job of that. As a reader who is familiar with Green Lantern but hasn’t read much of the most recent series, I was able to pop into this one-shot and get up to speed fairly seamlessly. The Corps is re-establishing itself on Oa, the Guardians are back in an advisory capacity, and Carol Ferris’s ex-fiancee, Nathan Broome, is pissed at Carol, Hal, and the Green Lantern Corps. Because Nathan’s tapped into the Sorrow portion of the Emotional Spectrum, he’s in a position to act on his anger (and, y’know, sorrow).
Writer Jeremy Adams, artist V Ken Marion, colorist Romulo Fajardo Jr., and letterer Dave Sharpe do a good job laying these beats out for readers who are picking up this one-shot as a jumping-on point. And they also do a good job pushing forward from this status quo, into what seems like it will be an action-packed, compelling story. By the end of this issue, the Green Lanterns have a clear mission, the stakes of their success or failure have been established, and at least one intriguing side plot is in play.
If, like me, you’re able to mostly pick up what Adams, Marion, and co. are laying down here, I think you’ll end your Fractured Spectrum #1 read feeling excited about what’s coming up for the Green Lantern Corps. However, I think this one-shot could have been even more successful if it included more pages, giving the creative team more leeway to take things slower and spend more time with the many, many characters included here.
This may be an unfair comparison, but when I think of a one-shot kicking off “the next Green Lantern epic,” I think of the Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special, which launched The Sinestro Corps War. That one-shot was more than double-sized, which not only made it feel important, but gave the issue’s creative team time to spend several pages with individual characters, re-introduce the series’s base concept, and ramp things up from there.
In comparison, Fractured Spectrum #1 moves at a breakneck pace – while attempting to juggle just as many plot points and more Lanterns of interest. Given the constraints (re: page limit) within which the creative team was working, the fact that several “main” Lanterns appear for only one to four panels makes sense. As does the fact that no one takes the time to explain what the heck a Green Lantern Corps or Emotional Spectrum even is. With only 22 pages available, and a lot of ground to cover, Adams and co. likely had a tough time fitting in everything they were able to include here.
The result is a one-shot that reads, mostly, as though it were just the next issue of Green Lantern. If Fractured Spectrum #1 was just supposed to be that, it would be a pretty dang good issue. But when compared to something like the Sinestro Corps Special, as a jumping-on point for new readers and a starting point for an epic story to come, Fractured Spectrum #1 falls a bit short.
That said, if you are a current or lapsed Green Lantern reader, Fractured Spectrum #1 will likely get you hyped for the Corps’ next intergalactic adventure. The story’s premise is solid, its antagonist is interesting, and the Green Lantern Corps itself remains as cool as ever. New readers, however, should note that – despite the #1 on the cover – this might not be the best issue to jump in with. (If you are one of those new readers, consider starting with Adams’s Green Lantern #1 instead.)
The Round-Up
This week was packed with great DC releases, such that I can’t come close to covering them all here. But what stood out about this week’s books was their interconnectedness. When reading, say, Challengers of the Unknown #2 and The Question: All Along the Watchtower #3 back-to-back, you can tell the current crew of DC writers are working together to create a cohesive line and a story that will (hopefully) be larger than the sum of its parts. The New Gods #2, Titans #19, and Black Lightning #3 also use the JLU-era setup and setting to their advantage this week, making DC’s line feel about as tight as it did during the Infinite Crisis era and the start of DC: Rebirth. (Let’s just hope this era’s payoff lands closer to Infinite Crisis’s than Rebirth’s.)
- Meanwhile, several other mainline DC series are content playing in their own space, and they’re doing fine at that. For example, Catwoman #72, from writer Torunn Grønbekk, artist Marianna Ignazzi, colorist Patricio Delpeche, and letterer Steve Wands, continues the tense crime thriller that’s been running through that title, while Wonder Woman #17, from writer Tom King, artist Daniel Sampere, colorist Tomeu Morey, and letterer Clayton Cowles, sees the Wonder Girls lay a smackdown on Diana’s rogue’s gallery. Neither book references the All In status quo at all, proving there’s still space for creators to tell great stories that don’t tie into whatever’s going on with Darkseid.
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