Absolute Green Lantern #1-2 - "The Black Hand"

[laughing_tree]

The big thing here is that nobody knows what the Green Lantern is. In the regular DC Universe, Green Lantern is like a known thing all over Earth. Everybody sees that symbol, they know, "Oh, it's one of those space cops with the rings." No space cops, no rings, no lanterns. What is the Green Lantern? It's an enormous object that has fallen on a town... -- Al Ewing

Comments

[thanekos]

" I'm a toy salesman. " - Hal Jordan, issue #1
" Like a [Darkstar]. " - Hal Jordan, issue #2
" ' Parallax ' is a fun word. " - Hal Jordan, issue #3?

[aperturedreams]

I mean...yeah...it's a twist on the same character. There are gonna be some familiar names and origins.

[super_fly]

"My favorite song? Total Eclipso The Heart."

[cainofdreaming]

Guy really got on Darkseid's nerves, didn't he?

[ixajaw]

Of all the Absolute books, which are supposed to be in a universe created by Darkseid, I think this one understood the assignment the most in the tone department. Very excited for the next one!

[kamino_neko]

I don't think I agree. (Except for looking forward to more...I'm very much enjoying the line as a whole.)

Tonally, Superman's strong dystopia and constant rug pulls out from under Kal much more closely hew to that idea, IMO.

By premise, Superman, Flash, and Wonder Woman all better hit the 'the universe is against our hero' idea for me. Making Abin Sur and Hal almost-villains is a nice bit of that, but I don't think it really hits the same. (Batman's about on par with his main-universe counterpart on that note.)

Martian Manhunter, while interesting (I enjoyed issue 2 better than issue 1), seems to fail to hit Darkseid's influence on both fronts. It honestly feels more like early Vertigo than the rest of the Absolute line.

So...personally, I'd put GL in third-tier on hitting the feeling of Darkseid's influence - Superman, then Flash, then Wonder Woman, Batman, and Green Lantern, and finally Martian Manhunter at the tail end.

[ixajaw]

Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. Aside from the Superman opening arc, none of them had the... hopeless? feel that I imagined when the whole Darkseid-influenced universe would have. Not that I wanted it to be all despair all the time, but I think the GL book sells the "fledgling heroes against the impossible" vibe I was waiting for.

The rest feel like existing superhero stories, y'know? Dire ones, but I could see all those arcs happening in the main books at some point. This one feels like the beginning of a post-apocalyptic story. Which suits the GL line, with its generally grander scale, but still makes it feel like this is a new universe with new rules. Still, that's not a knock against the other books so much as me being extra excited to see where this one in particular goes.

[kamino_neko]

It's honestly kind of fascinating how different our perspectives are on this. (Which I hasten to clarify is perfectly fine. I've been on the internet long enough to worry I'm coming across more combative than I intend.)

For me, this is second only to Batman in feeling similar to the main universe. Particularly grim, yes, but still... This is two fundamental forces of the universe embodied in human form facing off against each other. Pretty standard stuff for Green Lantern. (And I'm not expecting Hal to last out the first year of the book - Jo's likely going to have to put him down once she gets a handle on her powers. Because, again, particularly grim take.) And given that this is part of a universe, the scale of the destruction Hal's power can wreak is inherently bounded by the need not to derail the other 5 books. (... OK, editorial being committed to not derailing most of the books for one of them seems a bit naive, given...you know, almost every big crossover for the last 40 years...but I still don't think GL is going to be the one they do it for.)

Meanwhile a low-powered Superman is facing off against a worldwide corporation that has clearly suborned multiple national governments (including the US) and has its own private army which is apparently more technologically advanced than said governments'. It's basically a cyberpunk story without the cool tech. (Aside from what Kal and Lazarus Corp have.)

Wonder Woman is kind of similar to how I described GL, but Diana is, to my eye, more fundamentally backfooted, because her weakness is not her own lack of knowledge so much as her allied forces being hogtied.

Flash, unlike all the above, assuming it doesn't take a severe change of direction after the first arc, seems to be going less for 'one power vs another power' than it is 'Wally against his own power'.

Batman, again, feels more like a remix of the main universe version than it does an underdog version, so we both agree on that.

Now, the way I see it, none of them are 'hopeless', as that's a fundamental impossibility with the characters, even with the flash forward to Darkseid's Legion suggesting it's going to go his way in the long run. (I have a personal objection to the idea of an inevitable trajectory in any story, but that the current canon.) But Jo just feels like she has less of an uphill battle than Kal, Diana, or Wally, and not significantly more than Bruce. (I kind of hate leaving John and the Martian out of the discussion, because I do like the book, but...again, more Vertigo than Absolute.)

[super_fly]

Abin Sur got that "Final form of a Dragonball Z villain" going on there.