Green Lantern: Rebirth
Review by Isaac Magaña
October 22, 2008
Writer:
Geoff Johns
Pencils: Ethan Van Sciver
Inkers: Prentis Rollins, Marlo Alquiza, Mick
Grae, & Ethan Van Sciver
Colors: Moose Baumann
Letters: Rob Leigh
Associate Editor: Stephen Wacker
Editor: Peter Tomasi
Publisher: DC Comics
Reprints:
Green Lantern: Rebirth, #1 - 5
I’ve always
wanted to be a reader of Green Lantern (GL), but
just could not find a good starting place. There
is a lot of GL lore built into the series, and
jumping onto the title with out any background
reading would probably make me miss some things,
get lost, and drop the book. After doing some
research I decided to pick a starting point to
jump into GL. I picked up Green Lantern:
Rebirth and I have to admit I was impressed.
The story
starts off with current GL Kyle Rayner saving an
alien race. This race is pretty old; old enough
to remember a creature called Parallax. Kyle
receives a warning: Parallax is coming. We then
see Hal Jordan, living as the Spectre, trying to
be a hero to make up for what he did in his past
as Parallax. We move on to Kyle crashing a ship
on to earth carrying the body of Hal Jordan,
with the same warning “Parallax is coming”. A
city that was decimated has started to rebuild
itself, starting with Hal Jordan’s old apartment
building. The other GL’s Guy and John are
incapacitated when Guy’s powers malfunction
causing a massive explosion. All signs point to
Hal going back to the old ways of Parallax, this
time with the power of the Spectre. This is only
the tip of the story, a lot is woven into the
plot and I don’t have the space to explain it
all.
Ethan Van
Sciver was perfect for this book. His pencils
displayed a lot of emotion when it came to the
characters. I especially enjoyed the parts of
the book where Hal is dueling internally with
all of his identities, GL, Specter, and
Parallax. Ethan was able to draw the forms in a
way that nothing was obscured or hard to make
out. The highlights are his single page splashes
and covers. Ethan gives the characters an
intense strength and his single pages really
highlight that. Moose Baumann was on colors and
kept things original. I was curious how many
times you could color something green and not
get bored. Baumann did it. He treated his
yellows just the same, a repeating color but
never boring.
I was not a
big GL historian so I expected to walk away from
this story with far too many questions to remain
engaged, but I didn’t. Geoff Johns was able to
deliver a great story where new readers weren’t
left behind. I followed along and the story
filled in gaps of history for me. There was only
one place were something didn’t make sense, it
was a subtle plot point but important enough to
be addressed twice and I still didn’t get it.
This story was able to make me care about the GL
and really see why people care so much about Hal
Jordan, why he’s special to other heroes, and
why he is special to so many fans. I’m going to
try and make my way to the current issues of GL.
If they're all as good as this book, you’ll be
looking at a new GL fan.
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