ANCIENT HISTORY #22: GREEN MAN!

A fairly by-the-books retelling that takes no chances, Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #1 is nothing extremely special besides the fact it’s written by James Owsley, later known as Christopher Priest. Priest/Owsley, of course having written the GL feature in Action Comics Weekly for a good portion of it’s tenure, only wrote the first issue of this miniseries with writing duties turned over to Keith Giffen and Gerard Jones in subsequent issues. This standard fare is in stark contrast to some huge changes to the Green Lantern mythos in Action Comics Weekly including the death of longtime GL Katma Tui.

But obviously I’m not reviewing Action Comics Weekly (Chris is on Infinite Earths beat me to it hahahaha) so back to the point, Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #1 is a decent retelling but doesn’t give me anything I’m too excited about in the story department sadly.

The art by MD Bright, Romeo Tanghai, Anthony Tollin and Albert Deguzman is decent with moments of excellence (the page of Martin Jordan’s plane crash is fantastic) and feels reminiscent of Gil Kane, one of the all time great GL artists. We don’t really see any constructs from Hal as he’s still learning but I do like the way the ring reacts to his will unconsciously and the visual representations of that are really well done especially the flying scenes. Speaking of flying, the opening for this book is so so good, I love the way the prose goes along with the visuals and the plane brings the dawn about. So cool. Tollin does a particularly good job on colors in exterior scenes setting the desert as a colorful and interesting place, which it often isn’t. Likewise the lettering by Deguzman isn’t weighed down in a dense sequence where Abin Sur explains things to Hal using the ring. Very good.

This miniseries is collected in multiple ways with the TPB being out of print but still easy enough to find for around $15.00. The single issues are readily available for $2.00 or less (I got my copy at a garage sale for 50 cents)