Superstar writer Grant Morrison (BATMAN, ALL-STAR SUPERMAN) returns to DC alongside red-hot artist Liam Sharp (THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, WONDER WOMAN) with THE GREEN LANTERN, a modern sci-fi take on the adventures of Hal Jordan true to his roots, but unlike anything seen in comics before!
When Green Lantern Hal Jordan encounters an alien hiding in plain sight, it sets off a chain of events that rocks the Green Lantern Corps to its foundations. There's an intergalactic conspiracy afoot, and a traitor within the Corps might be pulling the strings...Then, the Earth itself has vanished and been put up for auction to a buyer whose claim may be impossible to break without Hal violating the Lanterns' most cherished rule!
With vivid new takes on the Controllers, the Darkstars, the Guardians of the Universe and many more Green Lantern enemies and allies drawn from decades of DC Comics, Morrison and Sharp spin an epic tale that ranges from Earth to the farthest reaches of space, starting in THE GREEN LANTERN: INTERGALACTIC LAWMAN, collecting issues #1-6 of the new hit series!
Grant Morrison has been working with DC Comics for twenty five years, after beginning their American comics career with acclaimed runs on ANIMAL MAN and DOOM PATROL. Since then they have written such best-selling series as JLA, BATMAN and New X-Men, as well as such creator-owned works as THE INVISIBLES, SEAGUY, THE FILTH, WE3 and JOE THE BARBARIAN. In addition to expanding the DC Universe through titles ranging from the Eisner Award-winning SEVEN SOLDIERS and ALL-STAR SUPERMAN to the reality-shattering epic of FINAL CRISIS, they have also reinvented the worlds of the Dark Knight Detective in BATMAN AND ROBIN and BATMAN, INCORPORATED and the Man of Steel in The New 52 ACTION COMICS.
In their secret identity, Morrison is a "counterculture" spokesperson, a musician, an award-winning playwright and a chaos magician. They are also the author of the New York Times bestseller Supergods, a groundbreaking psycho-historic mapping of the superhero as a cultural organism. They divide their time between their homes in Los Angeles and Scotland.
Grant Morrison writing Green Lantern is, on paper, a perfect match. His enormously inventive storytelling coupled with an unlimited array of alien characters and a protagonist with a magic ring that can do anything? It should be a home run. Except it’s not, unfortunately.
Green Lanterns are basically space cops and Morrison plumps for a cliched cop story for his opening arc: there’s a rat in the Corps and it’s up to Hal Jordan to find out who it is. All that means is he arrests some punkass aliens, does the good cop/bad cop interrogation thing, and gets accepted into a gang of criminals – none of which is interesting.
Hal fighting a giant hamster and spider, Earth being auctioned off by aliens and an Old Testament God-like evil alien are all surprisingly boring and irritatingly stupid. The story moves sluggishly thanks to a lot of overwriting and an unnecessarily complicated structure (an Anti-Matter Lantern?).
Morrison does include some amusingly wacky Lanterns like the Lantern with a constantly exploding volcano head and a cyclops with a forest for hair! I also liked the microscopic virus Lantern and the indescribable Lanterns who police the farthest reaches of the universe – there’s the imagination I expected Morrison to bring. The Adam Strange episode where Hal has to kill Adam to gain acceptance into the cosmic vampire gang was kinda fun though it plays out in a predictably cop-out way.
The only really great aspect of the book is Liam Sharp’s artwork. Oa looked amazing, as did the Church of Blood – really that whole vampire sequence was fantastic - and I loved the creative character designs for the ridonkulously varied cast.
It’s a shame that the book is such a bore to read, not least as it’s by such an experienced and talented writer as Grant Morrison. It’s pretty but I doubt that’ll sway many to check out The Green Lantern, Volume 1: Intergalactic Lawman – I wouldn’t.
Like most of Morrison's superhero work, this digs into DC's past. Most of the stranger Green Lanterns in the book have been around since the Bronze Age. Alan Moore first introduced the virus GL, Leezle Pon in the 80s and Medphyll (the broccoli head GL) was introduced in the 60s. Everything from the writing to the art feels very Bronze Age-ian in a Mystery in Space (DC's sci-fi horror title of the era) way. It's all very alien with a dark horror vibe. The thing has space vampires! But this is also a space cop procedural with Hal Jordan going undercover to infiltrate an offshoot of the Darkstars.
"What the hell? What IS this?" -- Hal Jordan, a.k.a. The Green Lantern, inadvertently providing my thoughts on this volume
I think the editorial staff were being forthright when they included a bold cover blurb announcing "splices together police procedural and prog rock." Well, the former is a durable genre while the latter has sort of niche appeal. But do they work well in tandem? Based on Vol. 1: Intergalactic Lawman - a title which sort of promises, but fails to deliver on, a fun Space Age western - I did not think so. While some of the dialogue (to wit: "You'll never catch us now, copper!", quips a felonious fleeing alien - in all seriousness - during the opening scene) was humorously reminiscent of those b&w Warner Brothers rat-a-tat-tat crime films of the 30's and 40's, the disjointed and just often incoherent plot featuring DC's long-running stalwart 'Emerald Knight' was a headache-inducing chore to read. Artist Sharp's trippy but consistent illustration style was one of the book's few bright spots, however.
This is lots of fun, and very different from a lot of the Green Lantern content from the past several years.
First of all, Morrison's run is very bronze age. He also uses a lot of bronze age corp members that haven't been around for a while, like Volk and Rot Lop Fan. We also get a lot of major Hal/Guardian butting of heads that was so common in the bronze age books.
Hal's power level also seems way boosted here. He was always really strong (he does, after all, wield the most powerful weapon in the universe), but here he pretty much crushes any adversary with no problem and even challenges gods. This version of Hal Jordan would probably give Marvel's Galactus a run for his money. I actually really liked this, because Morrison then has to find problems for Hal to solve that can't simply be punched.
The biggest change here, though, is the whole focus of the book. This is less a superhero comic and more of a "space police procedural". The corp are commonly referred to as police here and they spend a lot of time gathering clues, questioning suspects, going undercover, and performing arrests rather than just punching Sinestro into jelly.
Finally, Morrison introduces a new villain-a vampire-and the last issue or two really focuses on horror, which I thought was pretty cool.
Overall, a great start to the new GL run and I am really excited to see where it goes.
One of the wackiest, trippiest superhero books I've ever read, everything is just so alien, Morrison really makes you feel like you're out there in space, experiencing the vast unknown. Unfortunately, I think the plot suffers from it, it gets really convoluted, and the whole thing about Earth being abducted doesn't make much sense scientifically if you think about it, but hey, I thought Morrison did it for kicks and it was certainly fun to read, it had that whole Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy vibe to it.
So yeah, this is not your usual superhero book, and if that's not really your thing, there's always Liam Sharp, his art alone makes this book worthwhile, you know the art is good when you spend minutes staring at the pages the way I did.
For a Green Lantern book written by Grant Morrison, this was kind of... not good. I was insanely excited when the book was first announced, I loved the first issue to bits, but every other issue that came out after just got worse and worse. The plot is convoluted and not very interesting, Morrison's writing is unusually verbose (perhaps because they have to tap into a lot of boring DC cosmic mythology) and Hal Jordan is still and will forever be a dick. Liam Sharp's artwork is the only saving grace, his realisation of Morrison's cosmic weirdness is absolutely jaw-dropping. Still, the overall result is incredibly underwhelming, especially coming from Grant Morrison. The whole book just doesn't feel like they care about it very much.
Grant Morrison has written some great comics and he has written some horrid ones. Thankfully, this GLC story ranks among the former.
Hal Jordan is a Green Lantern. This volume really gets into the idea that these are GALACTIC lawmen. Far from being stuck on Earth, this is a story that is vast in scope. GM's version is set in very alien worlds. The phenomenal artwork highlights this alien atmosphere quite well. In fact, at the end of this volume, there is a very cool and very interesting part about the easter eggs hidden in the art and I loved it.
GM has drawn together all the various "continuities" of the GLC and this story reflects it. This Hal Jordan is a maverick lawman. A Dirrty Harry with a ring. Sounds strange but it does work. He is also quite an able detective and is very knowledgeable about various alien entities. That shows a cerebral side to Jordan that is often left out. But, the biggest takeaway, and the strong suit, is the bizarre alien encounters that Green Lanterns must deal with in order to survive.
I shall eagerly await Vol 2. Glad to see GM hitting a home run and great job selecting a gifted artist. A must have for any Green Lantern, especially Jordan, fan.
You can find my review on my blog by clicking here.
What would you do if your imagination was allowed to take over and write a story with nothing restricting you from exploring the darkest corners of the universe? Within the Green Lantern Corps, the heroes go up against all kinds of ill-intentioned beings but remain bound by rules that assure the safety of the galaxy and their own sanity. At the heart of it are Green Lanterns with various backgrounds and unique personalities who face countless dilemmas, often very complex and difficult to solve. After so many years, legendary writer Grant Morrison, with the help of artist Liam Sharp, explore the Green Lantern’s universe to present fans with an authentic new series that draws upon the character’s rich history while focusing on the Corps’ space investigative duties.
What is The Green Lantern: Intergalactic Lawman about? Collecting The Green Lantern #1-6, writer Grant Morrison revisits the Emerald Crusader’s lore by focusing on his role as a space cop within the DC universe. Upon learning the existence of a traitor within the Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern Hal Jordan channels his inner spy skills to identify the culprit and put an end to the evolving conspiracy before the Corps crumbles at its foundation. While his plate is full with a new villain afoot, parallel problems of epic scale surge into his sector, including the disappearance of Earth. It is only by breaking the law that the space cop can find a way to save the world from its demise and it is a decision that no Lantern has ever had to make before.
There’s nothing simple with writer Grant Morrison. His ideas are larger than life and often metaphysical in nature. He doesn’t content himself with anything that has already been done and always does his research before giving his heroes a new mission to take on. In this case, he looks back at the older Green Lantern stories to incorporate and rejuvenate the hero today. Where the story took a big hit is in its verbosity and the lack of cohesion between each sub-plot and each issue. While the artwork helps visualize the spectacular universe in which unfolds writer Grant Morrison’s story, it often feels like the reader is tossed in a melting pot and left to fight their way out of it on their own. The purpose of some of his ideas, while intriguing, are sometimes also dissolved in the grand scheme of things, making it seem like there was too much that wanted to be said in too little space.
To capture the insanity of Grant Morrison’s mind, artist Liam Sharp tailors an impressive and stunning visual style that couldn’t have been done better. His character designs also do justice to all the disturbing creatures in the galaxy, including some of the most original Green Lantern members that have rarely been seen before—including one who has a continuously erupting volcano as a head. There’s also a strange alien body design that is utilized for any humanoid that works wonderfully with the world in which the Green Lanterns patrol. The panel structure used throughout the story arc is also sporadic, extravagant and unique, allowing the story to take on the signature psychedelic tone that comes with projects with writer Grant Morrison.
The Green Lantern: Intergalactic Lawman is a hallucinogenic and intergalactic police procedural, slightly too convoluted to allow the plot to seduce the reader as much as the exquisite artwork does.
This was quite fun and I love the simplicity of the volume and it has Hal facing off against multiple threats and challenges like when he encounters some passaway villains and then Evil stars or The Shepherd who wants earth for himself or tries to take down Slave traders like Volgar Zo or even infiltrate the Blackstars and going head to head with the countess, running the gauntlet or fake-face off against Adam Strange. Its quite fun and weaves a big narrative around this new villain and his plans for universal domination and what not. The art is the main thing here and each page is a treasure for sure and well detailed and makes the reading experience even better. ____________________________________________________________________________
This book was really cool! It focuses on Hal Jordan who has been depowered and he is going though his life and then is called by the Guardians and then we have him being sent on different missions like facing off against The Shepherd whose like a monster who wants to devour earth or facing off against the slave traders like Volgar Zo or him taking care of random miscreants and the main thing to join Controller Mu and his blackstars and take them from Inside out and there he meets Countess Belzebeth and we have an interesting trial of him to become a Blackstar or facing off against Adam Strange and then his ultimate sacrifice to take down Mu! Its an epic volume with so many moving parts and new lore established and in the end a honorary sacrifice to save all reality and the art is even better! The colors compliment it well but overall I love how it flows so smoothly the writing and art and the new threat is awesome!
The art and the story both want to comprise all SF and fantasy from Flash Gordon through Wally Wood's Weird Science, Frazetta's Vampirella, down to Ethan Van Sciver and XO Manowar.
For example, here's a splash page which looks like it's from 1929:
As for the GM touch, who ELSE writes like this?
Ends on a cliffhanger, with Hal trapped inside his ring, with a leprechaun who may or may not be a fifth dimensional imp.. All right, let's face it, he totally is a fifth dimensional imp.
eta: I re-read this one more time before my Hoopla loan was up, and some of the obscure things from the first reading were clearer the second time.
While I have always enjoyed the Lantern books before this - they all had a similar vibe to them. This volume, written from one of the great, Grant Morrison, is a breath of fresh air. Strange, hallucinogenic, fresh air.
The thing about the GL's is, for a while there, it all became kind of - normal. Well, normal-ish. Everything kind of seemed familiar and just distant cousins of Earth. Which is all well and good, but we are dealing with beings who police the entire universe and who encounter every type of life form out there. What Morrison does, is lean heavily into that and really let his imagination run wild. Because this story, while its a police procedural and at the same time, a space romp, felt Alien. Which is perfectly appropriate and kind of obvious, but that detail got lost during the Johns years. Not saying anything bad about those years and what came after, I'm a big fan, but Morrison gives us that missing factor.
And part of that strange, alien vibe was due to the work of Liam Sharp. Man this guy let loose on this volume! He draws these incredible yet bizarre landscapes, cities, beings, ships, etc... the whole book has a bronze age style to it, and the art only reinforces that. At times, the book looks like an underground comic with its strange and beautiful art- and I mean that in the best possible way.
This was a great way to kick off a new direction for the title. I'm very much looking forward to where Morrison and Sharp take us from here.
Holy gosh, what a fucking good Green lantern comic. Such a left turn from everything Johns and co had been doing, but equally valid in its reverence for the silver age. Morrison writing aliens is an obvious fit, but he doesn't cop out with mere human analogues, oh no, dude's imagination is running at one hundred and Liam Sharp is every bit as hallucinogenic in his art work. The fact that this is still big big ol police procedural on top of the wildest DC alien shit yet, is just the icing on the cake. It's a wholly unique vision, and IMO everything fits together, working smoothly.
I am full of space-love and proud to be a Lantern fan again. I can only wonder what Morrison might do with the rest of the spectrum...
Nowadays, I read Grant Morrison's books because I have to, not because I want to. He does interesting things, dredging up old characters and invoking the off-kilter world-building of the Silver Age, hashing things around on the surface so it looks like he is doing something deep and different. But even with a swerve into police brutality for spice (umm . . . ), there's not much even Morrison can do to make Hal Jordan anything but the decades-long train-wreck of a character that he is.
Well, okay, the vampire planet sequence was close to cool, especially with its brief and tiny tribute to vampires of notoriety.
And I have the next volume on hand, so let's get on with our chores . . .
Definitely reminiscent of prog rock like the critic reviews say. Personally not the greatest for me because I'm off and on and Grant Morrison's writing. But there were some really good parts here that I might want to continue reading.
It's not a secret that Green Lantern is one of my favorite superheroes and when I see the opportunity to get an ARC of a GL graphic novel, I'm likely to put in a request. Based on this cover, however, I was really concerned as to how much I was going to like this book. Ah ha ... how quickly I forget not to judge a book by its cover. And yet, isn't cover art on a book intended to help sell a title? Seriously, look at this image of GL ... muscles on muscles on muscles. Is that what makes someone a superhero? Even in the graphic novels? There's just nothing about this figure that looks 'real' to me and that betrays a lot of what has always appealed to me about the character.
But enough about the cover.
One of the questions I've had regarding these superhero books is how can they manage to keep coming up with stories that will engage and excite when they've completed epic stories that deal with saving entire universes. But author Grant Morrison manages to do just this by bringing Hal Jordan/Green Lantern back to his roots. There's a conspiracy going on and it looks like there may be a traitor within the Green Lantern Corps.
Hal has to go to the rescue of planet Earth, which has gone missing and is found, up for auction. The buyer, who greatly resembles the Christian god as popularly imagined, may have an iron-clad contract on his purchase. Space cop Hal Jordan must get it all squared away in order to save humanity (again).
The story is pretty basically a detective story, which makes sense when you figure that the Green Lantern Corps are essentially a galactic police force. As a detective story with a superhero protagonist, this works just fine.
The art here really helps make this story interesting. Artist Liam Sharp works some magic with inventiveness and whimsy. Morrison writes in a number of unusual aliens and Sharp seems to have a field day with it.
I seriously thought that there were multiple artists at work on the series. Some of the art was quite 'simple' - with just a figure or two in the panel and a little bit of background to add depth. Other pages had panels packed with miscellany - scads of items all over the panel. I truly thought that this reflected the styles or different artists at work but as I paged back through to see who these artists were, I was surprised to find only Sharp's name.
There's nothing earth-shattering here (pun intended), but I enjoyed the read as a little diversion from some of the weightier books I've been reading lately.
Looking for a good book? Green Lantern, Vol. 1: Intergalactic Lawman is a decent addition to the Green Lantern series with some very nice artwork.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
Excelente primera mitad del reciente paso de Morrison por Green Lantern. Como ya es costumbre en su obra superheroica, el Mozz toma elementos y conceptos conocidos de los personajes con los que trabaja y les da una vuelta de tuerca para presentarlos de una manera revitalizada, moderna, pero que a su vez se siente clásica.
Morrison hace del tantas veces bastardeado Hal Jordan el policía espacial que todos queremos ver, combinando el sci-fi más delirante con el mejor policial setentoso.
En ese sentido, el arte de Liam Sharp es impecable. Gran narrativa, con una estética que remite a los genios británicos de la 2000AD y al trazo de Neal Adams.
Queda el tomo 2 con la recta final. Ya mismo voy hacia él.
Okay. I have to be honest I am not always fan of Grant Morrison's writing but he has written some of my favorite comic books of all time. These would include Absolute All-Star Superman, Batman Incorporated: The Deluxe Edition, New X-Men by Grant Morrison: Ultimate Collection, Book 1-New X-Men by Grant Morrison: Ultimate Collection, Book 3, Batman and Son and of course The Multiversity. Green Lantern in my opinion was still a great book under Robert Venditti. I was just surprised that Venditti is not on the book. Morrison does bring a breath of fresh air to the series. This volume of Morrison's run feels different from the type of storytelling Geoff Johns and Robert Venditti were doing with the mythos. In this volume Morrison is stripping away what we have come to know about Hal Jordan and his job as a intergalactic lawman. It feels like Grant is going to focus on the alien and weirdness of the cosmic DC universe. The artwork by Liam Sharp really lends itself to Grant's style of storytelling. There are some truly wild ideas going on in this book. Jordan is going undercover this time around to stop a threat that could doom the cosmos. This first volume was pretty good bot not quite as great as Geoff's take on the green lantern story. I am looking forward to reviewing the next volume.
Hey, so remember All Star Superman? This is sort of like that.
I have only recently come around to viewing All Star Superman in the same rapturous tones as many comics fans have since Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely began releasing its original solo issues in 2006. As a complete portrait, even as a singular, somewhat comically distorted one, it's as fine and definitive a statement on Superman has ever been achieved. This has always been harder to do with Superman than Batman, who hit similar notes twenty years earlier. Superman seems impossible to conceive, in a believable fashion, increasingly so in a modern world that has drifted away from simple hero worship. And if that's true of Superman, imagine how difficult for a space cop like Hal Jordan.
Hal's basic write-up was complete as of thirty years ago: a rogue Green Lantern with authority issues, schooled by a fruitful association with the most liberal superhero ever, Green Arrow. Over the years, notably under the penstroke of Geoff Johns, Hal's story has evolved to include a family life that caused such a fate to be predestined. But nothing has really helped, in the grand scheme of things, to distinguish him in the greater realm of superheroes. His 2011 movie debut bombed as incomprehensible to wide audiences, just as Marvel was beginning a sequence of films featuring a wide range of obscure characters who had never seriously approached breakout status as Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and the X-Men had so brilliantly achieved before them. And now we live in a world where all those obscure heroes have accomplished the highest box office success of any franchise or film in history.
So what has Hal been missing? Well, something like this. A lot of readers have been dismissing Morrison and Liam Sharp's take as generic British sci-fi comics disguised in DC garb, but I think they're mistaking the lettering (which does evoke those comics) for the storytelling. At its heart, The Green Lantern (as demonstrated in this opening volume) is telling a classic Hal Jordan tale, even as Johns later revised it, on an epic scale. Johns wrote a years-long epic that greatly expanded the mythos. But he never saw it quite like Morrison. Well, no one sees things quite like Morrison.
Morrison is the kind of writer who thinks basically every idea he has on the most massive, comprehensive scale imaginable. His Green Lantern Corps goes well, well beyond the typical, mostly humanoid conceptions seen in the majority of comics since Hal's debut at the start of the Silver Age. But that's mere window dressing. The greater story is, as is typical of these things, part of a Guardians plot they're reluctant to talk about. So things happen (roughly) and Hal finds himself drafted into a massive conspiracy to flush out the bad guys and end their nefarious plotting.
It's just the idea of a single story that gives us the whole picture that distinguishes Morrison's take from all others. When this is finished, you will be able to more clearly see how he has written the All Star Hal Jordan. You can already see it in Intergalactic Lawman. And yeah, it would make a heckuva movie.
Llevaba mucho sin leer algo de GL, principalmente porque toda la etapa Johns y sus minions no me terminaba de copar, así que esta era la excusa ideal.
Morrison se centra en la figura de Hal, dejando a los otros Lanterns como apoyo, por lo que en las historias podemos ver su trabajo estricto como policía espacial (incluido investigaciones e infiltraciones en el bando enemigo) combinado con algunos de los delirios típicos de Morrison (igual más contenido que otras veces).
El tomo tiene 6 revistas por lo que no se puede agregar mucho más, pero hasta ahora viene siendo una lectura adictiva. A destacar sin dudas el dibujo de Liam Sharp, quien se destaca no solo en el diseño de personajes sino en el armado de las viñetas y su distribución en la página, lo que genera un gran dinamismo y casa perfecto con lo que plantean las historias.
Having recently read Morrison’s first Batman book, I didn’t have much hope for his new Green Lantern run. And once I did crack open Green Lantern, I discovered that it’s also very odd. So odd, in fact, that I had to read through the full arc a few times just to make sense of it all. It’s not that the plot’s complex; it’s just very... odd.
Having read it now a few times, I have a much better handle on what it’s doing and how it’s doing it, and I think this book might be really good. Like, All-Star Superman good.
Green Lantern (2018) riffs on the verbal and visual style of “cosmic” ‘70s-era superhero comics, satirizing them and indulging in them at the same time. It’s campy, but it’s also surprisingly subtle. It’s gorgeous, but it’s also crude. It’s an exploitation comic, but it’s also unexpectedly profound. Only time will tell whether this run ends up being truly memorable or merely another of Morrison’s interesting oddities. Regardless of its ultimate lasting power, I’m digging it in the here and now.
The Green Lantern Vol.1: Intergalactic Lawman thrusts Hal Jordan back into the role he does best, playing space cop.On the new OA, the Guardians put Hal on the job of finding a traitor from a new prophecy. His investigations take him across the galaxy, saving planets and stopping villains.. Interesting and a little all over the place, the story takes the reader on a wild ride and still manages to keep your eyes riveted to the page. The art work takes a little old school flair and teams it up with some impressive color and drawings for a masterpiece for the eyes. This volume provides a gripping story line and some impressive art for an engrossing read. My voluntary, unbiased review is based upon a review copy from Netgalley.
Has its moments, but is kind of underwhelming overall. Can't quite pinpoint it, but I feel that it's just not flowing right. The art by Sharp is fantastic and his page layouts very impressive, almost like tableaus. Unfortunately the inventiveness and the skill leads to information overload and breaks any panel-to-panel narration. Morrison's scripts are something between very clever and very silly, his protagonist hasn't shown any depth, yet, there's nothing at its core, which keeps you wanting more. And still, it's Morrison, so it's still interesting enough and I don#t want to give it up, just yet. Let's see what the next volume brings.
I'd read enough Grant Morrison to be wary here, but I wasn't wary enough. Intergalactic Lawman is absolute incoherent garbage. Hal Jordan re-joins the Corps to defeat Blackstars who have a weapon. It's a bad weapon! There are also slavers and vampires.
The story is bad and dumb, but the art is even worse. Liam Sharp never graduated from the 90s school of shadows, muscles, and wrinkles. All the human-ish characters look malformed; all the alien characters look like acid trip dreams. I wanted to quit in the first issue - I really should have.
Not sure what to think about this. It's definitely a departure from other GL stories I've read. It contains a lot of Morrison's vivid imagination with creating new aliens and names. Jordan is also not in it all the time. Sharpe's artwork is also imaginative with detail, and at times dark with a lot of ink. Sometimes the storytelling could be a little better.
It's Morrison, so I know I'll have to read more before I can see the big picture. A trepidatious 2 stars.
I’ve been reading Johns Green Lantern run and took a quick break to read this fist volume of Morrison. While I’m enjoying both authors so far, they are very different: where Johns (so far that I’ve read) feels very earth centric, Morrison is decidedly cosmic. Everything in this volume feels alien, 70s sci-fi, psychedelic and foreign, where Johns feels more of a blockbuster.
Morrison also seems to force more of the cop procedural in this take, having interrogations, controversial “shootings,” going undercover, etc.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not weird either. Morrison also gives us space pirates, sun eaters, cosmic vampires, and a green lantern named Volk with a volcano for a head.
Overall I really enjoyed it, my main criticism just being that Morrison will jump plot points and it can be confusing at times filling in the gaps. A wellspring of ideas is a great problem to have for a comic book writer, but sometimes Morrison could let those ideas breath a little before jumping to the next.
Grant Morrison's storylines tend to create impressive artwork and intricate plotting. I was quite exciting to see him take the mantle of this Green Lantern series, and in some aspects he didn't disappoint. If you haven't read the authors work, I would suggest tackling Doom Patrol, The Invisibles & Animal Man. I have found that the core DC characters or Marvel characters don't tend to fit him as most would expect. I honestly think he is better suited to the little or unknown characters. The Green Lantern finally feels epic and with Morrison's style, it allows more subtext and subliminal style.
Why the 3.5?
Morrison attempts to breath life into the Green Lantern universe. I had expected a more complex plot, but who was I kidding. This feels like Morrison riding a push bike with someone on the back holding him back. I just didn't love it. I still liked it more than the rebirth Green Lanterns and the complexity he attempts is incredible to read. I just didn't enjoy the storyline and when it comes to these month to month issues, it's tough on the writers to meet deadlines. Understandably they are slightly ahead, but fatigue tends to set in, or unfocused storylines and arcs don't connect. I'm eager to continue with this series and I hope Morrison can push through this initial slump to create something worthy of the character.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley to read and review.
THE GREEN LANTERN, VOL. 1: INTERGALACTIC LAWMAN written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Liam Sharp is about Hal Jordan, and brings the former Green Lantern back into action facing several foes along the way.
Action is good for the most part, a few parts failed to keep my interest, while others were very good at doing so.
Illustrations were very good in my opinion, and I really liked the all green pages, very well done!
Rating this as a mixed bag of sorts, it ends up getting average marks.
Do you like strange stuff? Do you like psychedelic artwork? Want to see how "God" gets punched in the face with a Green Lantern construct?
Search no further, you have found your poison. I really like this take on the Green Lantern, some pages can be confusing but overal it's a great and sometimes funny read.
Grant Morrison are a perfect match for weird space-stuff and Sharp manages to create very fitting art.