Green Lantern Corps #6: Steadier Storyteling

Sinestro and Jessica Cruz are the twin focus in Green Lantern Corps #6, another issue with two track storytelling. Unlike the last two issues, there is no connective tissue between the two stories, be it location, ancillary characters, or themes. The disconnected A/B story structure here works much better than the loosely connected stories in the previous two issues.

Jessica’s story in Green Lantern Corps #6, a confrontation with Mogo, is not without its share of bumps. Mogo centric stories always suffer from the fact that Mogo is a character, but not one that the reader can easily engage with. Other characters have to interpret for the reader which makes everything about Mogo come second hand. Hampton and Adams do try to make Mogo’s rehabilitation about Jessica, connecting its difficulties in putting itself back together with her history of anxiety. But it doesn’t quite ring true, feeling almost perfunctory because Jessica is the focus of the action.

Narratively speaking, Green Lantern Corps #6’s real strength is in Sinestro’s story. Rather than get to Sinestro’s emotional arc via another character, Hampton and Adams examine him head on. They come at Sinestro from two directions, both of them related to his willingness to destroy his own planet. A fair question to ask after Sinestro’s reintroduction as a Green Lantern was whether and how much he might have changed. Hampton and Adams don’t answer that question explicitly but they do invite the reader to reconsider the character and perhaps shed some distrust of him–at least as much as it’s ever possible to stop distrusting Sinestro’s motives.

Including the Sinister Sons in Green Lantern Corps #6 works surprisingly well. Hampton and Adams don’t simply use the characters as guest stars that have no real purpose other than to make an appearance. They perform a vital function in Sinestro’s arc.

Nahuelpan’s art is rich and detailed. In Sinistro’s story this manifests particularly in facial features and expressions. Sinistro receives the highest level of detail. As the oldest character to appear in his storyline in Green Lantern Corps #6, it makes sense that Nahuelpan’s linework is more liberal, delineating cheekbones, jawline, forehead worry lines, and so forth. Light shading, the result of groups of tiny lines as opposed to solid dark fields, adds even further emphasis to every expression Sinestro makes in closeup. Nahuelpan is more conservative with female characters and the Sinister Sons, imparting a softer overall appearance to them and implying youth relative to Sinestro.

The same level of detail in art manifests in Jessica’s story in a far less subtle way. Nahuelpan creates constructs with depth, not just on an individual level but in large groups. The same shading techniques that, on a smaller scale, create subtle variation in characters’ facial expressions give the constructs and Mogo a sense of scale and power.

Coloring pushes that sense of scale even further. Just as Nahuelpan’s art uses subtlety in line and shading to achieve scale and depth, Prianto is very skilled at gently transitioning color tones in response to position relative to both implied light sources and shadows. This is best seen in Jessica’s storyline during the construct heavy fight sequences. Though Jessica’s story isn’t the deepest from a narrative sense, it is by far the more bombastic and spectacular.

Sharpe’s work is equally impressive regardless of which story might be more of a spectacle, though. He does everything big here and uses a selection of several different colors and fonts depending on what is making the sound in question. Bird-like dinosaur constructs’ cry is made in a light green, scratchy font. An explosion on Mogo’s surface is transparent, allowing Prianto’s coloring to remain the focus. The WHAM that accompanies Sinestro taking a massive punch is a dark yellow and steals the focus for most of the page as a blurry Sinestro sails beneath it. These are just a few examples of how Sharpe makes every impact and use of power in Green Lantern Corps #6 bigger and more sensational.