Another War Ends

With Green Lantern # 26 (and a ton of other comics) due out next week, I finally found the time last night to read last month's GL # 25, which featured the extra-length conclusion of The Sinestro Corps War.

Unlike Civil War and World War Hulk before it, this little gem had a pretty strong ending that didn't leave me wondering where it had all gone downhill. (And unlike Amazons Attack! and World War III, it was actually a good story, from start to finish.) By the time the finale rolled around, not only were the entirety of the Green Lantern and Sinestro Corps at war, but most of the DC super-teams (JLA, JSA, Titans, the Outsiders) had been drawn into it, as well. Happily, though, this didn't mean a massive inter-series crossover... it simply meant that Superman, Power Girl, Wonder Woman and the rest showed up here, as they would if the DC Earth were a real place, and under attack. That sort of thing is what allows me to really lose myself in a comic reading experience, as author Geoff Johns presented a tale that was internally consistent and logical, with no suspension of disbelief required, beyond the whole "people with superpowers" aspect, of course.

Because The Sinestro Corps War was done so well, I didn't feel any of the event fatigue that should've overwhelmed me considering all that's gone on at Marvel and DC over the past couple years. This one was done right, and apparently its growing popularity caught DC by surprise! Word of mouth got around, I guess, and people started picking up issues to see what all the excitement was about. If that deer-caught-in-the-headlights response isn't a good indication that current DC management doesn't have a clue about the difference between good comics and hyped-up crap, then I don't know what is. Probably the best clue that DC wasn't expecting such a response is the fact that none of the issues, as far as I know, featured variant covers! For my part, this storyline got me to sample the companion title, Green Lantern Corps, although ultimately I'm not sure that I liked it well enough to stick with it now that The War is over. But at least I gave it a try, which is the reaction that every crossover is going for, after all. With the other events recently, I've almost always resisted any urge to buy the parts of the crossover that show up in titles I wouldn't normally buy, partially on principle, and partially because history has shown that it's usually not worth the cost. Here I was happy to do that, because I wanted every single page of additional action that I could get my hands on!

Johns, within the pages of Green Lantern # 25, also added significantly to the Green Lantern mythos. He's introduced several new types of Corps, playing off of the emotional connections that we tend to feel toward various colours. So we learned that red, violet, blue, indigo and orange were added to the existing green and yellow schemes, providing almost endless fodder for future stories within the DC Universe... assuming Dan DiDio's editorial edicts don't kill off every new ring bearer before their yarns can even be told! That reinvigoration of a character's background and environment is seeming, more and more, to be one of Geoff Johns' strengths. He has a real knack for turning things on their head just a bit, and out of that providing fertile ground in what had looked for years like tapped-out land. Only Alan Moore does that better, as far as I'm concerned.

The artwork for this issue in particular is stunning, with series regular Ivan Reis holding his own while sharing the stage with Ethan Van Scriver, who started The War off in the one-shot special all of those months ago. This is the kind of comic that you have to read twice, because you simply can't take all of the visual details in on the first pass. Hopefully Reis and Van Scriver knew what they were signing up for in this case, since usually you only get called upon to draw this many characters in a team book, and often not even then! They each knocked the ball out of the park on practically every page, and I can't even begin to imagine how much less I would've enjoyed this had someone less talented been given the art chores. This is one gorgeous comic book, capping off an amazing multi-part arc.

If Countdown were even half as good as The Sinestro Corps War, I'd be enjoying it ten times more than I am!