The Green Lantern: Season Two, Vol. 2: Ultrawar

The Green Lantern (Collected Editions)

by Grant Morrison, Liam Sharp

New York Times bestselling author Grant Morrison and world-renowned artist Liam Sharp are back at it with the next volume of The Green Lantern Season Two. The cliffhanger on The Green Lantern leads to this cataclysmic confrontation… war with the Anti-Matter World.

In the lethal aftermath of the war with the Anti-Matter Lanterns, Hal Jordan finds himself in a bizarre afterlife facing the judgment of the Young Guardians. Nothing will ever be the same again as the truth about the coming Ultrawar and the Cosmic Grail is finally revealed.

Only one anti-matter soldier could decimate a small army of Green Lanterns, so what will happen when a horde of them strike? What monstrous forces gather in the shadows? What mind-bending and heartrending secrets will surface from this backdrop of cosmic conspiracy and shady interstellar politics? And as the divisiveness spreads from world to world, can love prevail?

Hal must prepare himself to face both death and rebirth in hopes of saving the universe…one more time.

Collects The Green Lantern Season Two #7-12.

Genres: Comics, Dc Comics, Graphic Novels, Comic Book, Superheroes, Science Fiction, Fiction

168 pages, Hardcover

First published July 13, 2021

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 1 out of 5]

God, I just wanted this to end. I typically really enjoy Grant Morrison's writing. Morrison drones on and on with all kinds of science fiction gobbledygook without saying anything. It's Morison at his most Morrison. Combine that with Liam Sharp's static art and you have the world's most boring Green Lantern comic. Sharp tries to emulate Dave McKean or Simon Bisley in a lot of the pages, which is fine for covers but makes for a lack of motion and storytelling for interiors. This is the most boring comic I've read this year and if you follow me, you know that's out of a plethora of comics.

[Subham · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yeah this ends. Morrisons work is confusing and like had no good moments at all and this was a drag to read and I was grateful that it ended.

This is my attempt at summarizing what happened: Hal is dead and he is sort of teaching the new guardians something in corporeal form and also the trial of Hyperman and his weird weakness and whatever that was. Star Sapphir and Gls of different realities team up to fight a brain washed Zundernell and as Hal goes to Athmoora, he is attacked by Hector Hammond in a weird but poorly constructed fantasy tale which was excruciating to read and the art and colors were horrible there.

Ugh so happy it ended and hoping Morrison never touches the book. His writing is terrible maybe the ideas were good or in writing these final issues he didn't even care for anything lol. Regardless good moments for Carol and Hal, they are fated to be together in the end but can't because work commitments and it sets up future state nicely in some panels.

[Malum · Rating 2 out of 5]

A wordy, bloated, confusing end to Grant Morrison's not great GL run. I generally like Morrison, but I have to say good riddance on this one. It's like he drank too much of his own Kool-Aid and is more worried about telling a "Grant Morrison style" story than doing anything interesting or readable. Fantastic art, though.

Hopefully the Green Lantern runs will follow the "great, terrible, great, terrible" pattern they have been on for the last few decades and the next one will be awesome.

[Tony Laplume · Rating 5 out of 5]

The problem with being well-known but also being well-known for complex things in a medium where complexity is seldom attempted and even less appreciated is that, well, as often as not the results of your work will go, well, unappreciated. Such is Grant Morrison’s Green Lantern, which in this fourth collected volume comes to its brilliant, abstract, ambitious conclusion.

Morrison has as long a history of being a big name in comics as anyone ever has. He’s had his share of celebrated triumphs as well as reviled failures. And everyone still thinks they know exactly what they’re going to get when he tackles something new. The only thing that’s ever really for certain with a Grant Morrison project is the only certainty that the results will be interesting.

After he at last attained mainstream success with JLA, Morrison next took on New X-Men. Where JLA was all mythic grandeur, New X-Men was mutant squalor. His All Star Superman was a summation of a heroic career. His Batman was the ultimate death trap.

The Green Lantern has most accurately been compared to All Star Superman, although with a less iconic character he felt free to let loose completely. If he took up a “black casebook” in which “everything really has happened” with Batman, Morrison had toys to work with that even diehard Green Lantern fans would never have imagined in a million years would be relevant again. Hal Jordan, a guy few enough fans still consider to be Green Lantern, the ultimate rebel, the ultimate hero, in a landscape in which anything is possible.

So just imagine Morrison writing that. How could anyone think the results would be any different?

Morrison has long been fascinated with “the final war.” He took it on in his first masterpiece, Zenith, did his DC honors with >I, even All Star Superman was poised as the Man of Steel’s last battle. With unlimited toys, the scale as wide as possible, in Ultrawar he concludes his vision of what this looks like on a truly cosmic scale, the Guardians of the Universe against opponents capable of approaching that level.

And Hal is up to the job. In fact, despite himself, despite the cost; he revels in it. No other superhero can get away with that! No other writer dares write them like that! And yet this is exactly how the Green Lantern story has always been told. It’s just, with Grant Morrison writing it, it feels so much different. Incomprehensible.

Well, if you had a translation, it would look exactly like every other Hal Jordan story ever told. But only Morrison could make it feel like this. And that’s Grant Morrison in a nutshell, folks. Oh yeah, this is as good as he gets. And yet again he makes it feel relevant to the moment, in ways no one else can, either. It’s like a companion to his Wonder Woman: Earth One, only in reading so much more densely it can actually get away with being a clearer message, which is usually the opposite of what he accomplishes.

Go figure.

[Tom Ewing · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Earth-based Supercop who’s a sometimes reluctant part of a massive organisation that’s dedicated to protecting reality itself from grotesque and metaphysical cosmic threats - Morrison’s been here before, and their Green Lantern run could be described as “THE FILTH for normies”, except the normies largely hated it. But the vibe is not dissimilar - The Filth was where Morrison’s heavily ironised, hyper-compressed late writing style first really flowered, and ever since then they’ve taken great pleasure in writing comics where chunks of action and plot are simply skipped or gestured to.

At its best it’s a thrilling high-wire act, but it can also feel distanced and detached, and at worst it’s like you’re reading notes on a story - Morrison’s most obvious disciple here is Jonathan Hickman, but Hickman always reassures the readers that he takes it all as seriously as they do, a concession Morrison is unlikely to make.

Also, let’s face it, Hickman’s ideas are fresher. Morrison has been telling variations of the story here since at least JLA. Primordial weapons that turn everyone war-mad; vampiric cultures that drain ideas as much as resources; hyper-evolution where societies rise and fall in days; omniversal villains who degrade and discard stories themselves… nobody who’s read any of Morrison’s DC work will find much to surprise them here.

But despite all that The Green Lantern worked for me, because ultimately Grant Morrison isn’t the star here. “Morrison plays the hits for Liam Sharp to draw” is a fairer summary of what this series offers, and a lot of the stories (especially in ‘Season 2’) feel like excuses for Sharp to have fun with his style, layouts and visual imagination.

I think of Sharp as one of the post-Bisley wave of painter-artists with a yen for outrageous weapons, muscles, murky colours, etc. And a lot of these stories lean right into that - the sequences with the Weaponeers Of Qward are riots of buff bodies and heavy ordinance to bring a tear to any 90s eye. But there’s also excursions into silver age pastiche, Alex Ross esque hyper-realism, detailed gothic grimness and a bunch of other styles, with some marvellously imaginative full page layouts that feel closer to JH Williams III than anything I’d seen from Sharp before. Sharp isn’t a natural storyteller but his love of tableaus works well with Morrison’s clipped scripting - both work to infer stories as much as tell them, a style which certainly isn’t for everyone but which long time Morrison readers will find smooth sailing.

Ultimately as a Grant Morrison fan it’s hard not to feel The Green Lantern is yet more testimony to both Morrison’s disillusionment with DC and their own stagnation at the company. But Sharp saves the project. And just as a Green Lantern story, this gets bonus points for having sod all to do with the ‘emotional spectrum’: it’s green all the way, and all the better for it.

[Joshua]

Man I love Grant Morrison and I love Liam Sharp and I don’t know what’s going on here at all. Me and this did not click.

[Danielle · Rating 1 out of 5]

The nicest thing I can say for this series is that it's finally over - and that says a lot given that it only has four volumes with 24 issues total. Every prior plotline that was shoved together suddenly forms one big story, and it's just as messy as you would expect a convoluted saga like this to be. You can see by the average rating that I'm not alone in disliking this and if I wasn't such a completionist, that should have been enough of a warning to steer me away.

[Dan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is actually zero stars...I wish Goodreads would make that an working option.

When someone says something like "I have no idea what I just read.", or "I didn't understand one bit of what I just read.", I usually think of it as exaggeration. I mean, we are readers. We are intelligent people. How could you not understand anything about the book you just read? Maybe the author did a poor job of conveying his ideas, or something wasn't made crystal clear...I'm sure you understood SOMETHING.

I have no idea what I just read. I didn't understand one bit of it.

I think....no. I was just going to try to convey what I thought I had just read, but the attempt made my mind lock up.

This is garbage, written by an asshole who thinks he's a genius and has contempt for his audience...that's all I can think of when I contemplate what I have just consumed. Angry that he is still mainly confined to the ghetto of comic books, Grant Morrison cashed the big check and told us, over four volumes, that we will eat any old shit that he sees fit to dish out.

And he's right. I bought four volumes of this idiocy, and that's my bad. But now, I close the books, literally, on Grant Morrison. He wrote some comics that I have truly loved, some that seemed to make no sense but gelled wonderfully in the end, some that I just plain didn't like, but I don't need to pay to be given the middle finger. So fuck YOU, sir. I am done buying your books.

[Alex Sarll]

Morrison's DC swansong - and yes, I know, Superman And The Authority, but that's very much Henry VIII in this equation. The multiversal shenanigans, the games with sex and identity and especially the eponymous final war of all against all, from empires down to molecules, are familiar Morrison material, enlivened mainly by Liam Sharp's fabulous art, which can sometimes run through a dozen different styles in an issue and land every one. But it is interesting to see someone who's never been shy of nailing their colours to the mast now nearly as exasperated with the contortions of the left ("It takes more energy, it costs more to make things happen, in the reverso-verse. Retaliation could be seen as punching down.") as alternate universe edgelords and incels. By the end, the weariness with the state of mass culture in general and DC in particular is threatening to overwhelm what's supposed to be a triumphant finale, and it feels a lot harder than with earlier Morrison work to even half-believe that the art might operate as a spell to rescue us from our own analogous plight. Still, as with the first Guardians film, I'm always glad to see a cosmic force of order called Saal.

[Andreas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cannot praise Liam Sharp’s art enough. In a way I feel like it kinda carries the book, but at the same time it works so perfectly in tandem with this bizzare, at times out-of-body story, that you can’t have one without the other. The sudden changes in art-style that happens at times in these stories serve the story excellently, as it’s sometimes a deep, complex, omniversal scene, and other times a funny scene between a not-couple bickering.
The story can be a bit hard to follow at times, but it all hangs together across this story. You don’t get all the info told explicitly to you, but most of it’s there for the reader to figure out.
There’s some obvious commentary here on commercialism and how companies adapt to please the masses. This culminates in two characters getting transformed into some kinda extreme 90s comic design, with perhaps some inspiration from certain parts of the internet for the female character… She gets an awesome send-off, by the way.
Recommended! But not for all.

[David Codd · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sharp's art finally won me over, but the plot was a massive miss for me.

[Sonic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really amazing art in a nice psychedelic cosmic adventure.

[Bill Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amusing though disjointed. I finally read enough of these to appreciate the versatility and quality of Liam Sharp's artwork.

[Aidan]

This book is legendary for Grant sneaking in a character who’s name is just “Fuck” but since the character has an Irish accent it’s written as “Fekk”

[David Palazzolo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A satisfying end to Grant Morrison’s run. Smartly written and beautifully illustrated the ending resolves all major plot points without that cramped, shoehorned feeling many final issues have. This run ended too soon.

[ksiazkowy_pirat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Uwielbiam postać Zielonej Latarni i zwykle z ogromnym zainteresowaniem śledzę przygody międzygalaktycznych stróżów prawa. Czytałem już latarnie w różnych odsłonach, a sięgając po sezon drugi Zielonej Latarni liczyłem na nieco odświeżone podejście do klasycznych przygód galaktycznej policji, która musi mierzyć się z różnymi zagrożeniami. Niestety, mimo tego, że całość początkowo zapowiadała właśnie taką formę tej serii, każdy kolejny tom był moim zdaniem nieco bardziej odrealniony. Run Morrisona przedstawiający głównie postać Hala z każdym kolejnym tomem podobał mi się mniej, a po lekturze tego nawet nie jestem w stanie do końca opisać co tu się wydarzyło.

Hal Jordan umiera i otrzymuje tajemnicze zadanie od nowych Strażników. Jednocześnie jesteśmy świadkami galaktycznego procesu, który ma osądzić winę Hala w napaści na Hypermana. W jednej z historii pojawia się również spotkanie Hala z Carol – para nie potrafi się ze sobą porozumieć, a między oczywistego między nimi uczucia, standardowo decyduje się na wybór obowiązków zawodowych, a nie życia osobistego.

Ponownie ogromnym plusem jest warstwa graficzna całego komiksu, która w żadnej odsłonie z tej serii nie zawodzi. Mimo poplątanej fabuły, kadry są piękne i jedynie one pozwalają coś zrozumieć z tej historii.

Wciąż jednak, cały komiks (i w konsekwencji cała seria) pozostawił po sobie bardzo mieszane odczucia. Poziom abstrakcji tutaj zastosowany z pewnością znajdzie swoich zwolenników, jednak ja wciąż miałem wrażenie, że podczas lektury coś mi umyka i nie potrafię dojść do sedna danej historii, częściowo przez brak wiedzy o drugoplanowych bohaterach czy wspólnych przygodach do których się odwoływano. Nie jestem w stanie polecić tej serii, tym bardziej nie osobom, które nie znają tego superbohatera – jest wiele innych historii z latarniami, które są po prostu ciekawsze, ale ta nie jest jedną z nich. A szkoda.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Volum2: Ultrawar is the finale to Grant Morrison's The Green Lantern. After finding himself killed in battle, Hal Jordan travels through the afterlife learning about a greater war within the cosmos. In fact, this ultrawar, as the New Guardians inform him, will have him face off many old enemies. However, Jordan will be in for a challenge as the Ultrawar will take place in every universe and every place imaginable.

I'm guessing since the run of The Green Lantern is relatively short, Morrison decided to go out with a bang. Many old plot lines were brought back from the first season, but done slightly better here. Although I still didn't find the parallel universe thing to my liking much, but it is slightly more interesting here. The final chapter felt both dragging a bit & a little anticlimactic on the supposed Ultrawar threat. However, I kind of get the intention that not all victories come from violence. While most of the stories are distantly connected, there is some noticeable disconnect at times. Additionally, while there's only one illustrator, Liam Sharp, each page/panel is a different style. In my opinion it adds a nice variety to compliment the surrealness of the storyline. Season 2 is a major improvement over how the first few storyline were and at least there's a nice ending with some good closures to most of the events that occurred in the entire run. Overall, Morrison's run shows how Hal Jordan is probably the greatest of Green Lanterns, in how he defied against all odds that ever came to him in multiple ways.

[Cass Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know what happened but this clicked for me right before the end. I had a hard adjustment moving from pulp sci-fi cop, to metaphysical war of ideas but it sort of made sense in the end. I found the United Planets bit interesting. I think I really wanted this to be All-Star Green Lantern, but it instead it felt like Grant's weariness with the same old ideas that are core to their interpretation DC Universe. It feels like Grant playing themself off the boat by the end. As a result I don't think the series was extremely enjoyable overall though it certainly had its moments. I think Grant's done their work here and it really just excites me to see what else new writers can do in the Universe. Joshua Williamson promising to build on the Multiverse. Tom King writing character studies. And honestly I don't keep up with ongoings to continue. Grant, despite their wild and seemingless endless amount of ideas has said their piece. It's time for others to build on those ideas.

[Eric Burton · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Ultrawar ends Morrison's run on Green Lantern.
I applaud him for setting up story threads from the beginning, which culminated in this volume, though overall, I found it to be an underwhelming conclusion. The anti-matter lanterns were really lame to me and looked straight out of the 90s over-design era of comics.
I did enjoy elements throughout and thought the Golden aliens were interesting.
Liam Sharp's art is good, but I didn't love that his coloring really went full psychedelic in this volume, and it was also really dark and hard to see what was going on. His art in the first 2 and a half volumes was much better served with the more bright coloring and defined hard edges.

Usually, I love it when Morrison goes existential, but he kind of lost me in this one. Overall, I'd say his run is worth checking out for Green Lantern and Grant Morrison fans, but this final volume is easily the weakest.

[Jimmy Hanson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have read a lot of Green Lantern stories over the years, and GL has long been one of my favorite superhero comics for a long time, from the first Hal stories in Showcase, to some of the Kyle Rayner stories to the entire Geoff Johns run, to Venditti’s run and some more. This is without a doubt the worst Green Lantern story I’ve ever read. Not only that, this might be the single worst run in comics I’ve ever read. I have read Morrison before and have loved most of the runs. All-Star Superman is my favorite superhero comic of all time. Morrison’s Doom Patrol is my favorite Omnibus. Morrison’s The Green Lantern is just bad. Don’t read this if you’re new to comics. Don’t read this if you’re a comic veteran. There are many other stories you could read that are worth your time. There are so many other Grant Morrison stories that are worth your time. This isn’t one of them.

[Vincent · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wraps up Morrison's Green Lantern run, but not in any mind bending kind of way. The Ultrawar was also disappointing to me since it was so short, involved so few participants and was over very quickly.

Green Lantern has always been a very flexible concept, with a very wide range of powers, and that's even before getting into multiverses, time travel, mental landscapes, computer simulations and power ring-based worlds. It should be a playground well suited to Morrison's strengths, but outside of journeying into the ring itself, there wasn't much crazy or puzzling stuff in Morrison's run.

I wonder if Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps are too tied into mainstream DC continuity and whether that limited what Morrison could do.

[Artur Coelho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morrison encerra a sua temporada à frente de Green Lantern montando o palco para as temporadas seguintes - em que o titulo está focado nas aventuras de novos Lanternas Verdes, e Hal Jordan afasta-se. No final de Morrison, o universo está perante uma guerra estranha, onde os opostos se tentam aniquilar, e apenas a personalidade fragmentada de um herói sempre em conflito com os seus múltiplos papéis é capaz de compreender que uma guerra de opostos se combate com a percepção de que diferentes fragmentos unem-se num todo. Um toque de sabedoria hermética, a encerrar a temporada de Grant Morrison como argumentista de Green Lantern. Sempre execionalmente acompanhado pelo ilustrador Liam Sharp, que deu vida ao surrealismo puro do escritor.

[Adan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a pretty confusing and unsatisfying end to Morrison’s GL run. Instead of a large multiversal conflict (which I know Morrison has done many times before, but whatever; I like their multiversal conflicts), we instead get a fantasy encounter with an established villain we hadn’t even seen in the series before, and then some talking to end the so-called Ultrawar with a whimper. At least Liam Sharp’s art was still mostly good, except for the last two issue when it was quite difficult to parse.

Also, what was up with that out-of-nowhere relationship between Sinestro and Weaponeer 666?! Like, what even?

[Greg Callahan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't honestly know what I was thinking. I haven't been a Morrison fan in the past, after many attempts (including his GL run thus far, only finishing because I felt obligated, but I haven't enjoyed a single one of them yet). I recognize why people enjoy him, but for me the aspect of a Morrison tale I most appreciate is the artistry. Here, it's pretty much the same. If you like Morrison's writing, I guess it's possible to enjoy this tale. If you don't, the artwork from Liam Sharp is reminiscent of Dave McKean and therefore made me feel like my money wasn't wasted, at the very least.

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Public library copy.

I found this book difficult to get into and it took multiple sittings in order to finish it. Truthfully, this volume wasn't as good as the volume that came before. Art wise, it was great but there were many pages where the colors saturated the details Liam Sharp was known for. I normally love anything by Morrison but it just seemed like he was, in the end, ill suited for the title or lost interest in the language of comic books. Seemed like the prior volume came out so long ago too.

[Chris Thompson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wish I’d gone back and read my review of the previous book before downloading it on Hoopla. In my previous review I said I was done with this series, and this book proves why. It is a complete mess. Does Morrison even know what’s going on? On top of a story that makes no sense is some very unappealing art.

This time, I’m done.

[Xavi (NarraTea) · Rating 5 out of 5]

That was… a hell of a ride being honest. This run will be in my mind for quite some time. Still have a lot of doubts but researching about it makes it fun. Grant is definitely a GOD in the comic book writing world and Liam Sharp’s art is simple astounding. I might not have understood many things, but this was a hell of a trip and a amazing read

[Dennis Lynch · Rating 2 out of 5]

The chaos from the first collection continues. Perhaps the worst GL story ever, even worse than Darkest Night.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t care about this one by the time it ended. It always has such cool looking drawings but I didn’t care about the story.

[Christopher (Donut) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the art is way more round the bend than the story, but both are trippy, and not likely to please everyone.

Comics should NOT be as hard to read as James Joyce's Ulysses.