It has been a while since anyone has covered the Green Lanterns of Earth. It has nothing to do with the book’s quality, it just was lost under all of the events. Recently, Jessica and Simon have successfully stopped an insurrection on the distant planet of Ungara. Liseth Vok, one of Ungara’s greatest artists, tried to convince her world to force out any refugees and keep to their own planet. The Lanterns step in, defeating the villainess before she could do more harm to the people. Now the Lanterns go back to fighting something more frightening than evil alien extremists: DATING!
**Some Spoilers Below**
Story:
After helping out a town recover from a flood, the Green Lanterns are asked by another hero to find her lost friend. Simon accepts the case after revealing the missing person is a superhero he dated a while back from Caper. What’s Caper? It’s the newest dating app made exclusively for heroes, which piques Jessica’s interest. As she signs up for it, Simon goes to Cyborg to get a lead where the hero vanished. They soon realize that it’s more than just one hero missing as the list grows to dozens. While Cyborg can’t put the pieces together, the Green Lanterns find the connection: all of the missing heroes are on Caper. This leads to the Lanterns to track down the headquarters of the app as well as a surprise guest character.
This isn’t meant to be a deep, thought-provoking story, but the truth is it doesn’t have to be. You have a pair of fun characters confronting a present-day topic. There is great humor, cool action, and a plot you want to follow. Not because it’s trying to convey some deeper meaning, it’s just a fun set up for a possibly fun story. The last arc devolved from Lanterns performing epic feats to heavy-handed social commentary. There isn’t anything wrong with social commentary, but sometimes you just want a lighter or sillier story. This current story has the potential to turn into heavy commentary as well, but until then, just sit back and have fun.
There is one thing that does bother me about this issue though. The Caper app finds the user’s perfect match for them, and for Jessica, it’s Simon. For 40 issues, Simon and Jessica have grown to be an amazing team and great friends. Why now is this whole romantic angle coming in? In fact, why is there a romantic angle at all?
Art:
The art team does a fantastic job in this issue. Barnaby Bagenda does an extraordinary job designing the Lanterns and their powers. As I mentioned in the Secret History of Task Force X reviews, Bagenda does great work in a sci-fi environment, so having him work on a Lantern book promises imaginative designs. Add that with Ulises Arreola Palomera’s colorwork. Each character is able to pop off the page beautifully. Together, they create a wonderful book to look at.
Conclusion:
Overall, this is a fun issue. It has great humor and cool action from our leads. The art team goes above and beyond and really brings the issue together. If you need something to read this week, give this issue a shot.
