Green Lantern Vol. 4: Dark Days (The New 52)

I was one of the many sceptics regarding where the series would go to after Geoff Johns finished his epic run, but the story carved out in this book by Robert Vendetti and the excellent art from Billy Tan and Rags Morales wash away all fears.After the events of the Third Army and First Lantern, the Corps are without leadership so the Sentinel Guardians put Hal Jordan in charge of the entire Corps at one of their lowest points. Oa is in danger, recruit numbers are low and Hal struggles to balance his responsibilities as a leader as he tries to do everything himself.The future of the Green Lantern Corps begins to take shape and it's very promising.

Great graphic novell! the art are amazing! The colors fantastic! The history (created by the writers) is fabulous! For me the book is beter than the work made for geoff jonhs! Robert Venditti and Billy Tan are a great team! This team are one of most brilliant team who work with green lantern! I recomend!

Geoff Johns did such an amazing job on Green Lantern, that the next person to take over the emerald knight, would be under big pressure. And although the book starts slow, within a couple of issues the story really kick starts. I really enjoyed this book, rest assure Green Lantern fans, this book is; in great hands for the future.

As described in the advert.

loved it

With Geoff Johns leaving Green Lantern, Robert Venditti has some pretty big shoes to fill but his work on Valiant’s XO Manowar series has been spectacular so he seems more than capable to pull this off successfully. I was eager to find out if he’d worked his magic on Green Lantern - and unfortunately, no, he hasn’t.Hal Jordan is now head of the Green Lantern Corps and decides to set free the hundreds of Green Lantern rings he’s holding on to, garnering hundreds of new recruits from across the universe. Unfortunately most of them are inexperienced kids. Meanwhile Hal and Carol have a falling out and decide to take a break; Prixiam Nol-Anj escapes; and an ancient threat emerges to destroy all Lanterns, everywhere.First of all, the book starts with a completely arbitrary and stupid attack by the Orange Lantern Larfleeze as he tries to get some shiny stuff for himself like a cosmic magpie. Larfleeze has got to be the most one-dimensional character ever – he just wants stuff for the sake of it, constantly uttering his intentions as he goes! This dumb attack is just to “test out” the new GL members who don’t know how to use the rings – it’s just a shame that none of the characters are especially interesting or that scene might’ve been better.There’s some relationship stuff with Hal and Carol that was also duller than dull – I mean, if Carol doesn’t know by now that Hal’s an idiot, she’s as much to blame for her unhappiness as he is!Incredibly, the main story doesn’t get going until halfway through this 180 page book when a giant scientist from the universe that existed before ours appears. This guy is Relic, who has discovered that the light spectrum – the source of all power for all Lanterns – is like a reservoir and that the more the Lanterns use up that reservoir the more they are destroying the universe.This is actually a really interesting situation as Relic, though appearing as a bad guy, is actually a good guy – he’s trying to stop the universe from being destroyed. For some reason, Venditti’s turned the tables on the Lanterns and made them the bad guys! The more they use their rings, the more they destroy the universe. Whaaaat?!One of the biggest problems with DC, and particularly with the Green Lantern books, is the number of crossovers going on. It wreaks havoc on the collected editions that don’t include the crossover issues, like in this book, where you get massive jumps in story from one page to the next with no idea of what’s happening unless you’re also reading the other titles. For example – and this is a big SPOILER so stop reading now if you’re going to be a baby about that kinda thing – Oa blows up. The Green Lantern homeworld goes ka-BOOM! Also John Stewart dies!Oa blowing up is dealt with in a couple of pages which is really weak considering it’s a pretty damn big deal! And John Stewart’s “death” isn’t referenced at all. He’s there one page then later on somebody says John died! He doesn’t really of course but it’s bizarre to see him ok in one scene and then later on being told that he’s dead. It’s like, what? When? How?! Oh and Guy Gardner’s a Red Lantern and Kyle Rayner’s a White Lantern!?!If you’re just reading this book, stuff like that is jarring to see on the page because it comes out of nowhere. Those events are probably dealt with in more detail in other books like Green Lantern Corps and Red Lanterns (and who knows whatever other GL titles there are), but because this book just collects the Green Lantern comics, the holes in the story completely throws the reader for a loop.Dark Days is just a really weird and really boring Green Lantern story. Weird because how it manages to make all Lanterns everywhere baddies, and Hal Jordan one of the worst for wilfully taking part in the downfall of the universe (and he’s supposed to be the hero!!); and boring because mostly it’s made up of bland GL action we’ve seen a million times before, and even duller cops’n’robbers stuff like when Hal and co. chase after Nol-Anj in a ridiculous Western pastiche. I love Venditti’s XO Manowar comics but his Green Lantern series is really poor. Dark Days is one of the weakest GL books I’ve read in a while.

It would be fair to say that Green Lantern has had an amazing decade.Geoff Johns relaunched the book and revitalized interest in the book and the characters, he wrote epic tales such as “Rebirth”, “Sinestro Corps Wars”, “Blackest Night”, “War of the Green Lanterns”, so here we have his replacement and the team as a whole on their first GL book, and there are some teething problems.The first being that the characters themselves, seemed a little out of character, especially people like Carol Ferris, Hal Jordan and even more obscure members of the GL Corps.Another problem is the story and the way it is set out in this book, you get about 1/3 through and realise that events have taken a drastic turn and things have progressed a lot in just one chapter, and that is because (I’m assuming) that the rest of the story takes place in the other GL titles like New Guardians and Corps, this is a problem, there is a huge chunk of the story missing with little to no explanation as to why.Why DC didn’t release all volumes relating to this storyline all at once I’m not sure, a very strange move, because unless you have all of them, you won’t get the full story, quite bizarre.But the story itself as well, seems a little bland, SPOILER, Hal Jordan is now the leader of the GL Corps, why they chose to put the most reckless, spontaneous Lantern in charge I’m not sure, John Stewart would have made a much better leader, but I’m sure Hal will improve with time.Overall I think the story was bland, the art was very nice though, the characters were not written how they usually are and the book was jarring because of all the holes that I presume will be filled once you have read the other books.I have hope that the new creative team will improve, it’s unfair to judge with one book, so in the words of the Blue Lanterns, I’m sure all will be well?