Green Lantern #49

Well, I hope that everyone had a lovely Christmas, or Chanukah or Kwaanza or whatever it is that you celebrate for the Winter Solstice. My son was telling me about Festivus, which sounds enchanting.

I'm still full of wassail, eggnog and turkey, not to mention copious amounts of fudge and cookies, and just about anything else that may still by lying around. But NOT too full to do a Green Lantern review!

This is the issue that takes a bit of a break by spotlighting John Stewart, who is on a reassembled Xanshi. In light (snicker) of what is happening throughout the Universe, this is probably not the best or safest place to be.

John finds a power battery that ends up belonging to...Driq? Who it turns out, is sort've half GL and half Black Lantern. But that's not all, all of Xanshi's people have come back as Black Lanterns, and they're pretty pissed.

Alas, the artwork is by Ed Benes instead of Doug Mahnke or Ivan Reis, and I really can't stand Benes, but at least there aren't a lot of ridiculous ass shots. I know, I know, in light of my blog title, I should be cheering for butt shots, but Benes only does female butt shots, and those don't really get me excited. Sorry guys. So the art is adequate.

John's continues his version of John as a former Marine, with some interesting flashbacks. I did rather like his description of John as being stoic, which may be less flashy, but comes as a bit of a relief after all the antics of his fellow Musketeers. SOMEONE has to be an adult once in a while, and it usually falls upon John Stewart to step up to the plate and be the mature one. He certainly figures out relatively easily that he's being manipulated into feeling emotion, and is able to counter it.

Katma Tui shows up, but is relativley mild in her taunting, compared to some of the stuff the other Black Lanterns have come up with. She doesn't even try to pull his heart out of his chest, possibly because John isn't giving her much to work with, he's consistanly portrayed as only showing Willpower, and therefore is only green. The Black Lanterns don't really like green much.

John finally beats feet out of there, only to discover that apparently Xanshi has the ability to move around, because it's awfully close to Earth. I thought that Mogo was the only planet that could do stuff like that, and he's over next to Oa. Incidentally, the sudden intrusion of an entire planet into Earth's orbit should be doing all KINDS of terrible things to our tides and gravity things.

Oh well.

This is quite a bit slower paced than the most recent Blackest Night offerings, but it IS nice to see John, who has been conspicuously absent for most of the series. Hopefully, he'll be around for the final showdown that seems to be a'brewing.

Meanwhile there is an additional tale at the end of the book, with Mera and the Atom, both of whom were hi-jacked by Jean Loring, and taken inside a Black Ring. They learn all sorts of interesting things about Nekron, while Jean presents the case as the lawyer that she used to be. Oh, and Deadman shows up which is going to be loads of fun.