Green Lantern Corps #27

One-sentence summary: I had my doubts about this book post-Sinestro Corps, seeing as how dominatingly brilliant that was, but Tomasi delivers a good superhero cop book.

I really like what they've done with Green Lantern Corps. There's a lot of pitfalls in a book like this (to name a few: letting it become a series of one-shots about side characters from Green Lantern, letting it become all about a major side character, like Guy Gardner or someone, or, most obvious of all, letting it play second-fiddle to the main Green Lantern book). I think it's a credit to every writer who has been on it that these haven't happened. Instead, what we have is a comic that presents a chance to tell some unique stories.

At its heart (at least right now), Green Lantern Corps is a cop book. Sure, they have superpowers, but so do most the people we see them chasing, which evens things up. Yes, there are great sci-fi elements in the stories (expressed in the art wonderfully), and the villains tend to be on the super-villain side of things, but I defend that it's still a cop book, with all the worries of the characters being like those in most crime drama.

This latest story goes with endangerment of families, which could be interesting. It also spent some time with old and new subplots, one of which provided some necessary light-heartedness. All in all, I'm excited about the issues to come, but this issue was more of a nice segue between two arcs, which isn't bad in it of itself, but...it's tough to have strong feelings about a hallway. That being said, the art was great as usual. Just keep an eye out for later issues of this arc. It's probably safe to assume it will be good. That's just a great thing to be able to say.

Green Lantern Corps #26

One-sentence summary: The Mongul storyline concludes in an amazing explosion in this excellent title.

Man, when did every space title become awesome? On the Marvel side, all of Annihilation has just been incredible, and for the last 2 1/2 years Green Lantern has just again and again been one of the best titles in the DCU.

That continues this week. Both GL titles are taking a bit of a time-out from the mega-arcs they've been on, but while GL has been doing the origin story, GLC has been following Mongul and the Black Mercies. This issue concludes it in a thrilling fashion, giving us plenty of good fight panels, as well as an amazing finale to it. The conclusion is interesting, too, and goes to illustrate a bit about the green and yellow rings which, while obvious, was neat nevertheless.

So, yes, Green Lantern Corps maintains the record of space titles being awesome.

Black Adam: The Dark Age #3 (of 8)

One-sentence summary: Black Adam's series detailing his quest for his power and for Isis' resurrection continues here with a battle with Hawkman and a gathering of power against Adam.

I was pretty excited for the Black Adam mini-series, and while it hasn't quite lived up to my expectations, it certainly hasn't been too bad. This issue delivered with a mild amount of story, but mostly served to set up for what I imagine will be the rest of the series. We see the first open confrontation between Black Adam and another metahuman, thus revealing his return to the metahuman community, as well as his attempted use of the Lazarus Pit last issue not going unnoticed.

What I like about this story is that Black Adam is really being considered a major-level threat by many sides -- it really will end up being him against the world. It's an ambitious set-up for a mini-series, but I have faith that it can be lead to a good conclusion.

The art for this series is always just fine. I'm never blown away by it, but it does a better than average job of detailing the characters in a realistic fashion.

Overall, this was a pretty good issue, definitely leading me to look forward to the future issues of this series.