Christmas and the holiday season is a very traditional time of year when we remember times past and family spread far and wide.
With this in mind I was struck by the appropriateness of the cover for Green Lantern #18 (vol. 1), 1945. You couldn't be any more traditional in the Green Lantern universe than Alan Scott and Doiby Dickens, the original Golden-Age GL and his trusty cab driving sidekick. And while they may not be from Oa, these two are definitely part of the wider Green Lantern family and the inspiration for some of the finest superhero comics ever written.
So from myself and all our contributors here at Flodo's Page, have a Merry Christmas, a wonderful holiday and may 2015 bring the Brightest Day to you, your family and all of your loved ones.
Thursday, 25 December 2014
Friday, 19 December 2014
Inebriated Ramblings From Sector 875 (Unedited)
First up, don’t give intoxicating liquids to a gaseous life
form… it screws our pharmacology right up!
So here it is. News
flash. While your world continues to
turn, any Green Lantern obsessive will tell you the biggest change in comics
since DC’s Flashpoint has just occurred.
March 2015 solicitations are out.
I don’t normally read the solicits but Twitter hooked me up and this is
one that I couldn’t ignore….
I buy most of my books in digital these days but print still
holds a special, respectful place in my life.
Amongst the few titles that I still collect from my LCS are of course
the Lantern books. The GLU. Of which there are currently 5.
But come March Green
Lantern Corps, Red Lanterns and Green
Lantern: New Guardians are all being hailed as final issues. Gutted to say the least!
I love Green Lantern
and Sinestro. Robert Venditti and Cullen Bunn are both
veritable geniuses. But I ain’t about to
enjoy my favourite comic book franchise being compressed by 60%.
In the last year Justin Jordan and Charles Soule have both been
legends on GL:NG and RLs.
9 issues out of 10 they have taken the outer extremities of the Lantern
universe to new heights and uncharted territories. Told stories that have never been told before
without spitting on the mythos that spawned them.
But for me the biggest loss is Green Lantern Corps. Van
Jensen has been irrepressible on this book.
He is obviously very close to Venditti, the writer on the main Green
Lantern title, and the books tie in heavily together and are best read as a
cohesive unit. But they are not the same
book. Van Jensen has done his
research. He knows his main character,
John Stewart. He knows his own created
characters, the new Green Lantern recruits.
And he knows the history of the GLC and pulls out character after
character that we haven’t seen or heard of in a very long time. He writes action, politic, romance and intrigue with equal clarity.
At the heart of his writing, whether consciously or not, he
swears Corps up and down.
In short folks, DC Comics are going to have to think of
something very clever to do to replace this book. I will not accept that this is just going to
be a gap in my life.
'Convergence' is coming.
Another apocalyptical event from publishers that will “change comics forever”. And I am not being cynical when add the inverted
commas because, to be fair, it might. I just
bemoan a little because I hate my favourite books being cancelled.
I have been touting on the interwebs that they might replace
the book with something from the past, like an original Golden-Age Alan Scott
book. They might also bring out the long anticipated anthology book that deals
with stories from all of the coloured Corps in the style of the much loved
Green Lantern Corps Quarterly. In my
heart of hearts I think it is all a publicity stunt and at the very least Green Lantern Corps will return in some
form or other.
The GL franchise was never going to sustain 5 books forever. And I get that. But it would be a travesty if we had to view
everything through the eyes of the main players, Hal and Sinestro, from now on
at the expense of the rich story-telling that can be derived from the rest of
the expansive Lantern universe.
So cheers to the writers and artists who may (or may not) be leaving our GL family before long. You will be missed and remembered. Cheers to all the Fanterns because we know we care. And I am going to go out on a limb and say cheers to DC Comics too, because I'm superbly confident they are not going to sell us short when it comes to Green Lantern (hint, hint...)
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