TRANS-SCRIBE: Green Lantern: War Journal #3

Tuesday, 28 November 2023

Green Lantern: War Journal #3 - Comic Review

It really feels like we're starting to get back to it being a great time to be a Lantern fan now, we've got three books coming out a month, and two of them have been absolutely superb and have been giving the spotlight to two often overlooked characters in the Green Lantern mythos.

In the last issue of Green Lantern: War Journal John and his mother, Shirley, came under attack whilst travelling back home from Metropolis on a train. Varron, the shitty Green Lantern who had come to Earth to start trouble with John, has been transformed into one of the Raidant Dead, a terrifying entity controlled by the Revenant Queen, an evil figure from another universe. Worse still, John has now also been infected.

With the infection travelling up his arm, Varron tells John that any use of his powers will just hasten his transformation into one of the monsters; and then proceeds to put Shirley in danger by trying to crash the train. With the choice of allowing his mother, and everyone else on the train, die or save them but damn himself, John is faced with an impossible choice. Luckily, help arrives in the form of Lantern Sherpherd, who followed the Revenant Queen into Earth-0.

Whilst Shepherd is able to save the train, and gets John and his mother to Steelworks to recover, things still don't look good for the characters. John is still infected, and every use of his powers makes his transformation go faster. And Shirley is in a coma, recovering from her injuries from the train attack. Lantern Shepherd explains the situation to John, with some help from the spirit of his universe's Kyle Rayner, who lives inside his ring, and convinces him to leave his mothers side to help stop the Revenant Queen, and her army of the dead.

This series is doing one of the things that I love most about Green Lantern, it's bringing in the amazing and the fantastical. Green Lanterns can fly around Earth helping with natural disasters, and fighting super villains, but for me the best time they're used is like this. We've got a monster from another universe who can create an army of the dead, and is out to destroy everything. It's bigger than costumes villains and petty crooks, it's stuff that could end the entire universe. And John Stewart is a perfect person to put into that situation.

John is going through a lot this issue, mainly due to having to leave his mother behind in order to try and save the day. There are a few pages in this issue where John says goodbye to his mother, where he's having to deal with the guilt of breaking his promise to her, of the worry that this might be the last time he gets to see her. It's an incredibly moving and beautifully written scene, and it's a stand out moment in an issue that has no moments that aren't brilliantly executed.

The fight on the train at the start of the issue is well choreographed, and Shepherd arriving on the scene is done in such a cool way. The visual of his giant bird constructs flying in and grabbing Varron whilst others pick up the train and take it so safety is visually stunning, and showcases the amazing art talent on the book from Montos, and Adriano Lucas.

It's also worth noting that whilst this isn't the first time that a Green Lantern book has done a story about an all powerful death entity creating an army of the dead and turning people into their puppets, it in no way feels like a rehash of Blackest Night. The Radiant Dead re visually and thematically very different, and the book has a horror vibe that feels distinct enough from that other story.

I like it when Green Lantern stories try to be bold and different, when they bring in big ideas and take huge swings, and this book is very much that. Whilst Green Lantern feels like it's playing it safe and giving readers stuff that we've seen before, this book is taking big leaps into new directions, and I'm loving it.