Trial By Fire
By: Andrew Hines
The Rise of the Third Army marches on in issue 14 of Green Lantern, still written by Geoff Johns. Here we see a few interesting moments dealing with the team dynamic, Baz's preconceived notions of the Justice League (close to those of the other human Corps members) and his demeanor in general. In GL #0 and #13, we saw what Baz had gone through to get to this point and now we see what the Justice League will do to get Hal Jordan back and even a little of what they think of Gardner. You'll be surprised by this issue.
Geoff Johns has given me reason to like Baz. Like most readers being introduced to a new member of a team they've come to love, I was hesitant to say the least. The writing on this one, both in regard to Baz and the League and even the spots with the Guardians is pretty good. I thoroughly enjoyed it. He reacted pretty much the way any normal person would if they were thrown headfirst into a meeting with Superman, Batman and the rest. The jumps back and forth between that group and the Guardians made the book seem, for lack of a better word "complete." It really is a great intro to Baz as the newest GL of Earth.
I haven't always been the biggest fan of Doug Mahnke's pencils, but here I can finally say he did his job well. From start to finish, I think the illustrations are great. That's mostly because they're entirely consistent. The inking team (still have no clue why it's a team effort) of Christian Alamy, Mark Irwin, Keith Champagne and Tom Nguyen are good as well. Then there's the colors from Alex Sinclair and Tony Avina which are wonderful. All the little glowing parts are especially awesome and there's more than a few of those parts in a GL book. The page at right is probably the best rendered of Baz in the entire issue. The art in general is amazing here. The look of Wonder Woman on the cover could be better but then you've got images in the interior like the one at right. The "holy crap" look by itself is just priceless and leads me to believe that me may have just hit a deer (if you know what I mean).
Yeah, this is a great issue and I enjoyed it far more than I ever thought I would. It gets an "A" grade. Go out and buy this is you're a Green Lantern fan, or even for the anti-Guy Gardner jab.
