Green Lantern Corps #11: Too Many Cooks

Hampton continues to do a good job in Green Lantern Corps #11 of reinforcing that just because all of the lantern corps are based on Oa now, they aren’t suddenly one big happy family. So far the principal conflicts are between the more aggressive lanterns. Green Lanterns now have to police their own planet from internal problems. This is on display here as Kilowag breaks up a fight between a Yellow and Red Lantern. Drama is an outgrowth of conflict, and Hampton has established a situation where conflict is guaranteed.

The ongoing training storyline provides a nice lighter component. Much like the conflict provides opportunities for drama, the training story thread provides opportunity to organically develop new characters both for immediate use and to be put on the shelf for future use. Aya, who played an important part in The Starbreaker Supremacy, continues to be front and center in this story thread. Green Lantern Corps #11 adds some surprising character development for her, and for a character who has already played a key part in the series, continued attention on her is welcome.

These two threads in Green Lantern Corps #11 continue to show how successful Hampton is at balancing multiple character oriented storylines. The story  beats are relatively minor compared to the issue’s major events, but they don’t feel out of place.

There’s a nice commentary on the arrogance of the Green Lantern Corps built into one of Green Lantern Corps #11’s major storyline. The strange water creature first seen in the previous issue is from a water world, Enquar, filled with a sentient collective being. Not bothering to do their due diligence, the Corps relocated a species that had already destroyed their own world to this water planet only for them to destroy it too, killing almost the entire water lifeform collective.

Green Lantern Corps #11’s visuals work as well as they can for a book with three artists and four colorists. The art teams are divided into three sections based on the issue’s three main storylines. The Enquar bookends are the brightest. Lines are thicker in closeups, but generally characters’ and objects’ borders are colors pushed up against each other. Lines are thin to the point of vanishing with crisp colors providing necessary contrast. There are panels where this does not work effectively. But largely it’s a successful choice.

The Effigy storyline is weaker compared to the Enquar and Oa sections. With the exception of closeups, faces are generally unexpressive. Indeed, in some cases, the faces themselves are practically blank. The coloring is lighter by comparison. It’s effective but seems counterintuitive given the focus on fire, and especially since the use of fire is Effigy’s power.

Oa’s sequence is not quite as crisp as Enquar’s, but the visuals are also heavily based on color contrasts. There are several panels with wider looks that feature several characters. Unlike the panels that feature greater distance from characters in the Effigy sequence, there is still reasonable facial detail–enough to impart some emotion.

Sharpe makes a nice choice with Effigy’s dialogue bubbles. The character’s powers are flame based, and Sharpe gives the top of them a flaming look. In a section with less expressive art, this adds personality.