52 Pickup

I've had mixed feelings at best about every continuity-wide crossover event DC and Marvel have done for the past 25 years, which is to say pretty much all of them since the original Crisis on Infinite Earths. DC's parallel earths approach, with older and wiser versions for their World War Two heroes living on a separate Earth from their modern-day counterparts, never struck me as confusing so the need to streamline the continuity was lost on me. Still, the original Crisis was genuinely epic and often moving, especially the death of the Barry Allen version of the Flash, and unlike most of its successors stood up as a story in its own right. Since then, both DC and Marvel have done over a dozen large-scale crossovers with mostly diminishing returns.

In DC's case, the biggest of them have involved resetting their continuity to some degree and vary widely in both quality and impact. 1994's Zero Hour, which was sufficiently terrible to turn me off on Dan Jurgens as a comics writer for good, had a much bigger impact than 2006's Infinite Crisis which was fairly good, just a bit pointless. The latest "event" Flashpoint seems to have had the biggest impact on DC's characters and continuity since Crisis on Infinite Earths, maybe even bigger because the implication is that the whole history of the DC universe has been condensed into about five years of events.

It certainly had a big impact on DC's publishing which involved relaunching their entire line with 52 new #1 issues. Even so, not all issue 1s are created equal among "the new 52", as it's clear that some titles have been much less impacted by the reboot. As the first #1 issue of Action Comics is recounting the earliest days of Superman as if it's 1938 again, over in Green Lantern all indications are that things haven't changed much since the final issue of the previous volume.

I hadn't read Green Lantern for a while, having decided to take a pass on the latest multi-title storyline, but I always enjoy Geoff Johns' writing on DC's flagship characters so giving in to their #1 ploy didn't require any particular leaps of faith. Still, my faith was well rewarded as this issue really was a perfect point to get back on board. While there's a slight sense of having walked into a play at the start of the second act, it doesn't matter because Johns sets the scene quickly then makes it clear that whatever happened before this issue is just the springboard for new story-lines to come.

It's equally clear that Johns is using the relaunch as a chance to explore some different aspects of Hal Jordan's personality now that he's (at least temporarily) no longer part of the Green Lantern Corps. One of the underpinnings of Hal Jordan's character is that it's not the power ring that makes him a hero but rather the power ring chose him because he had the makings of a hero already. Johns hits that note nicely but also convincingly shows us how the same man whose will power can literally save the universe has trouble keeping a job and paying his bills. In the process, Johns manages the same trick he worked on last year's re-launch of The Flash, adding some dimension to a character who's often viewed as a bit bland without compromising their heroic core or more importantly their status as icons.

All of that would be beside the point, though, if it wasn't a good engaging story. Thankfully, that's rarely a problem with Geoff Johns, who introduces at least four key questions before the end of the issue, guaranteeing that I'll be picking up next month's issue to see what happens next. I don't know if DC's latest reboot is worth all the trouble, let alone whether any of the other comics among the "new 52" are up to the same level as Green Lantern, but it seems like it's bringing a lot of readers back to comics and getting existing readers to try new titles. Maybe I'll even give Dan Jurgens another chance and read his take on Justice League International.