Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

Green Lantern #52Green Lantern #52
DC Comics
Johns, Mahnke & Alamy

The penultimate chapter of the Blackest Night saga and the final chapter of this title's involvement in the event leaves a lot to be desired. Sure, there are a lot of cool pages and some fighting and some interesting ideas behind Ion, Parallax and the rest, but the components don't really tell any kind of story and don't really inch the Blackest Night arc forward at all. Worst case scenario was that this issue was just filler and the best case scenario was that this was fun to flip through as a good, nice looking romp. Neither case is particularly good when you are winding up the publisher's major storyline.

Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle ReviewsThe issue starts off good enough. Sinestro is the white lantern and he begins to reveal the information he's now privy to. Basically he walks through how Earth is the center of the universe and how the various color corps had their power sources born. All of this is told very entertainingly, even if it comes across as a little hokey that life began on Earth.

The issue moves along to follow the fight, both in Coast City on the ground, and above it, as Xanshi, the planet, moves in for the ultimate kill. This is also pretty good as it allows a large scale battle with some flashy artwork. Some of the individual elements are a little forced, like jamming more of the retcon of John Stewart as a marine into the issue, but for the most part this all good fun.

The issue spins its wheels in one major area: Sinestro. After his speech in the beginning, Sinestro is taken out of the action. This came as a surprise, which can be a good thing. However, it is apparent that he was only taken out for two reasons. One, the battle between Sinestro and Nekron is to occur in Blackest Night #8 and not in this issue. Secondly, the Sinestro character needs to be shown in a place where he appears weaker than Nekron initially, only to overcome the power of Nekron to help build up Sinestro's new found power.

This whole circular way of telling a story where the issue ends just as it had begun isn't a terrible way to tell a comic book story. However, when you are dealing with the ending of a big crossover, with one of the top writers in the business penning the issue, then this one falls way short of expectations.

Normally I would be prepared for the worst when I see a total of seven inkers and colorists. However, the issue is fairly smooth. I only found one part of the story where the coloring and inking looks vastly different than the rest of the comic book and that isn't bad. I'd take that kind of consistently good artwork from a massive team over a long-delayed comic book any day. This was a great artistic effort I felt.

The plus side of this issue is it has a lot of action and tells some interesting tidbits about Ion, etc. The downside of the issue is that it does nothing with Sinestro and makes the issue inessential for the overall story, which is kind of sad. Some will find this issue to be a lot of fun with all of the action, others will find it to be filler. This isn't a terrible comic book but it leaves much to be desired for me.

3 out of 5 Geek Goggles