Just Punching The Clock: Green Lantern #1 Review

And now for one last pre-comic store opening review of last Wednesday’s books…

For most of Green Lantern’s history, the character had a weakness against the color yellow. That, however, was before the DC New 52 reboot. Now it is a whole new world, and Green Lantern apparently has only one weakness: the fucking inker.

Doug Mahnke has been drawing Green Lantern in the main book since 2009; his art is proven on Green Lantern, and was a welcome point of continuity between the pre and post New 52 universes. But then they hired inker Christian Alamy, who is a perfectly competent inker provided you want each panel of the book to look like Steve Dillon was given a case of Jameson to draw green rings on the hands of every character in an old issue of Preacher.

I’m serious – just take a look at this:

TELL me that panel doesn’t look like Jesse Custer, Green Lantern of Sector 2814, trying to talk Tulip into a three way with a purple chick. I spent the book waiting for Green Lantern of Sector 1995, a’RsseF’acE to show up and vow: “Enf Bryphsht Deehhh, Enf Blechfsht Necht… Nuh ehphhl wuphl eshchepht muh sughhht…”

Long story short, DC editorial: you like Christian Alamy’s work? Pay him to ink Steve Dillon on something and he’ll be transparent and brilliant, the way an inker who isn’t Klaus Jansen should be. You put him on Green Lantern? You’re only distracting from what was a pretty decent opening chapter… provided what you want from your Green Lantern space opera comics are character-based allegories about your employment situation.

And make no mistake: this book is about your job. Geoff Johns opens the book with Sinestro being saddled with a Green Lantern ring he doesn’t want and being forced to go out and defend a sector for people he hates. That segues into Hal Jordan, who had his ring stripped from him during Flashpoint, sitting around unemployed, broke and mopey. It moves into Sinestro running into an old co-worker who bitches him out for accepting his promotion, then slides into Hal getting ready to accept a shit job just to get back on his feet, and ends with Sinestro tempting Hal with the promise of his old dream job back. To paraphrase Mr. Brown in Reservoir Dogs: the entire thing’s a metaphor for jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, dick, jobs.

If you like action in your comic books, Green Lantern #1 ain’t the book for you. In 20-something pages, the entirety of the action is Hal breaking a window, Sinestro strangling a guy (No fight, just a three-panel Luca Brasi job), and the Guardians apparently lobotomizing Ganthet with mind rays… although honestly, not knowing much about Oan biology, for all I know it was less a lobotomy and more hot, sweet, blue midget on blue midget action.

If all this sounds like the recipe for a dull and uninteresting comic book, you’d be right… except this is year four of The Great Recession. For myself, in the past year or so I’ve found myself both unemployed and desperate, AND stuck in a job I didn’t like just so I could keep my head above water. I’ve had former collegues be angry at me for leaving jobs and making their lives more difficult in my absence. So what both Hal and Sinestro are going through in this book speaks to me personally, and space action or not, that’s what you call an engaging story… and I’ll bet if you’ve been through anything similar since 2008 (And if I believe what I hear on the news, you HAVE), you’ll find the same.

So yeah, there’s not a lot of action here, and in a few years when we’re operating in 1.2 percent unemployment thanks to the Corporate Worker Ownership Bill that President Perry signs into law, we may look back and find this a boring, actionless book. But for now? I’ll give it a chance to ramp up the action because I’m into the characters. Check it out.

And DC: go ahead and leave Alamy on inks. After reading this book, I’d hate for the man to lose his job.