They just don’t do superhero covers quite like that today… (art by Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson, (c) DC Comics)

Actually it’s a top week for some cracking new graphic novel releases, including the gorgeous looking slipcased Parker the Martini Edition, Bocquet and Barthelemey’s The Adventures Of Herge,

And it’s a pretty diverse mix of new titles this week too, including one I have been really looking forward to – it is big and it is clever. Okay, it is big and it is rude, maybe… It’s a big-ass hardback of Evan Dorkin’s bonkers but brilliant Milk & Cheese. I love it, this is how some of us (sick, twisted puppies that we are) entertained ourselves in the days before Jamie Smart’s Corporate Skull…

And as if this isn’t enough there’s this extremely tasty hardback collection of the brilliant Lynda Barry just in the door from D&Q, volume one of Everything:

All this plus a slew of new releases from Marvel and DC too (including the fifth Preacher hardback collection, which has one of my favourite chapters, where Jesse lives his cowboy dream as a small town sherrif). It’s a damned fine week for comics reading, peeps, there’s more just come in the door than we’ve got time to read!

Back again for the final comic of DC’s New 52 – week 2. I hadn’t planned on running this review alone. But it surprised me so much I though it deserved more of the spotlight….

Right, sleep and then straight back into work on DC: The New 52 – week 3 – coming very soon!

In the meantime…. my great big Green Lantern surprise awaits….

Green Lantern #1

By Geoff Johns, Doug Manhke, Christian Alamy

The biggie of the week really, the movie just wrapped up, DC seem to believe it was a huge success. I haven’t seen it. One day I’ll catch it on dvd, just for curiosity’s sake I suppose. It starts with that striking cover, and page 1 keeps the intensity going… burning eyes reciting the Green Lantern oath…. a great, great start…..

Pan back on page 2 to a pink green lantern chained up surrounded by little blue men in robes. The pink man is Sinestro, and he doesn’t want to be here.

But for some reason we’ll maybe find out soon, he’s been chosen as Green Lantern once more. And whether he likes it or not, the blue Guardians get him with the reason they expect him to be a Lantern again – to protect his sector.

There’s a lot of backstory merely hinted at, and since I haven’t read a Green Lantern comic in years I’m maybe a good case study for a new reader. And damn, this is confusing. Sinestro is a bad guy. He formed his own Sinestro Corps, who are currently going against his orders and enslaving his home planet. So what is he planning? What are the Guardians playing at, giving a being they describe as “the most dangerous man in the universe” even more power? The good guys and the bad guys aren’t easy to pick out here.

Until we return to earth, and Hal Jordan appears. He’s definitely a good guy, square of chin and down on his luck. Again we very quickly get some idea of what’s gone on, with an exposition laden couple of scenes where he and Carol Ferris fill us in on stuff…. he’s not Green Lantern any more after he was discharged from the Corps, she’s not using the Star Sapphire ring, he’s perplexed as to why the hell the Guardians let Sinestro get a ring again.

I just didn’t know about this one. It’s a fast paced affair, yet little happens. The artwork has something of the Steve Dillon about it, but in parts it felt just that little too lifeless. And the action was okay but nothing special.

However, Geoff Johns manages something I never thought he’d do; in switching the status quo, playing around with the ideas of good guys and bad guys, he actually made me interested in whatever he has planned. Frankly I was more than a little surprised.

And then he lands the last page on me, and in one statement I realise it’s a good start to the series. I hope, I really hope that we’ll be seeing more of Sinestro as Green Lantern for many issues to come. But the fact that Hal Jordan is around so much in issue 1 leads me to believe it wont be long before the ring changes hands. That may be a mistake. We shall see.

Any confusion I had here was overwhelmed by a desire to see where it’s going next. Surprised? I was amazed when I realised I will be reading Green Lantern #2.

By Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke and Christian Alamy

Kicking off the Green Lantern corner of the rebooted DC Universe (aside from the appearance in Justice League mentioned last week) comes this issue and really, who else would DC have for writing this than Geoff Johns, a man as synonymous with Green Lantern as Chris Claremont is with the X-Men. We begin with the solemn ceremony of a Green Lantern being sworn into the Corps, reciting that oath of office we all know so well:

“In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight
Let those who worship evil’s might,
Beware my power… Green Lantern’s light!”

Except this is no fresh recruit, neither is it our old and much loved GL Hal Jordan being seen in reboot mode taking his original pledge – it is in fact Sinestro, and boy is he steamed at being made to rejoin…

Okay, perhaps it isn’t such a huge surprise – after all Sinestro and his 30s matinee idol trim moustache are right there on the cover in GL uniform. But my initial thoughts that this being a relaunch this was ‘good’ Sinestro before he went rogue was wrong – even in this fresh continuity he’s a bad ‘un, he still has a history of deciding to do things his way, going off and creating his own Lanterns. Yet here are the Guardians making him rejoin the Green Lanterns – why? Because the ring chose him, we are told. If it did so then there is a reason and they go along with that. Sinestro aches to reject them and the ring, but one Guardian notes Sinestro is not entirely evil, he is simply determined to do anything to protect his home world. I won’t dance to your orders, he tells them – we don’t expect you to, they reply, we expect you to do what all other Lanterns do and protect your sector, knowing that however much he resents them, he will still do what he can to protect his world… But after Sinestro departs Ganthet protests that the Guardians were not in unanimous agreement over this, as they told Sinestro – he disagrees. In a disturbing scene which you just know will have ramifications further down the line (Johns laying long-term groundwork already!) the other Guardians turn on Ganthet and telepathically force him to adhere to their viewpoint.

Meanwhile back on Earth we see Hal Jordan, still pretty much the definitive GL for many of us, trying to come to terms with going back to civvy street, no longer a Lantern – and demob isn’t going well for him. Like a lot of people who have done something extraordinary he’s finding going back to ordinary life to be very difficult. Because he was AWOL (actually off planet saving the universe) the Air Force has cashiered him, he can’t get insurance to fly for a private firm either (even his girlfriend’s firm), so he is grounded and out of a job, broke, behind on his rent. And then out of his window as his landlord asks him for overdue rent money he sees a woman in the flat opposite being terrorised by a man and instantly, power ring or not, he is still the hero, leaping across the gap and through the window (there’s a lot of crashing heroically through windows in the New 52!) to save her from… Oh, dear, to save her from an actor when he realises they are filming a movie scene…

You can stop being a superhero when they take away your powers, but that doesn’t stop you trying to be heroic… Meanwhile off in space Sinestro closes in on his home world, only to find when he performs a recce from orbit that his own Sinestro Corps, who he created and charged with protecting his world, have, in his absence, enslaved and oppressed his people. He is furious and when discovered by one of his own Sinestro Corps Lanterns he reacts pretty much as you’d expect Sinestro to, violently. As one former Lantern is forced back into his role against his will another is forced out and seeing his civilian and personal life go from bad to worse as the issue proceeds. You know their paths are going to cross soon enough…

It’s a fairly slow paced affair here with only a couple of action scenes to spice things up. Actually slow paced is unfair – more like slow burn, as Johns gives us an impression of moving pieces into place and, as I noted with the early scene with the Guardians, clearly setting up for events much further down the line, which does what I imagine he intended it to do and get the reader hooked enough to want to see what else will unfold not only in the next issue but much further into the series.

The Shell Show: The Punisher from The Shell Show on Vimeo.

The Shell Show: Thor from The Shell Show on Vimeo.

The Shell Show: Green Lantern from The Shell Show on Vimeo.

And whilst on the subject of Glee… surely there’s a comic adaptation in there somewhere?

Huge series, large cast of characters, multiple storylines, a teen soap opera? Perfect real mainstream appeal.

And yet, as far as I know, no intention to bring out any Glee comics. The comic adaptation wouldn’t really be for all of us, but dammit, my daughter and a load of her friends would be buying it…. and if we’re truly looking to broaden the audience for comics, that 12-16 year old girl market has an extraordinary amount of buying power (just ask my wallet).

In fact, do it right, and I daresay it would do a lot more for comics as an industry than any number of Green Lantern movies in terms of getting new readers into comics.

E-Asylum.TV Green Lantern Cast Talk Comic Books and Superheroes from ruben rodriguez on Vimeo.

What do you reckon?

“It looks like a really bad video game version of Sinestro. All it looks like is someone at DC has played around with the Hue/Brightness/Colour/Saturation settings on their TV while looking at a picture of Mark Strong.”

“A teaser poster that features one of the main characters of the story who looks like a pink turd. Maybe they should have stuck with one of their original ideas of having it as a comedy starring Jack Black? I’d probably be more optimistic.”

The thing is – Mike’s a fan and he’s really hoping for a good movie. But it’s looking very much like DC are really going to lose out to Marvel this year in the superhero film stakes. Although not so secretly the comic movies I’m really looking forward to this year are Scott Pilgrim and Tamara Drewe. But hey, that’s just me. And Green Lantern may turn out to be wonderful……

For some reason (maybe simply the pretty colours exciting my inner child) I really like the cover for Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps, which is hitting shelves today. Nice, simple, colourful, effective. And it makes me want to wear my power ring.  (cover art by Dave Gibbons and Rudolfo Migliari, (c) DC Comics)

(Nat Portman being delectable)

In other superhero movie news it was announced over the weekend that Ryan Reynolds, currently in cinemas with the Sandra Bullock comedy The Proposal, has been chosen to play the Green Lantern in the big screen outing for the emerald-clad hero. As the BBC article points out this means that Reynolds will have played two major comics characters from the two biggest publishers, GL for DC and his recent take on the Deadpool in X-Men Origins, which, as we blogged recently, is generating its own spin-off flick featuring the Merc With a Mouth.

(Ryan ‘Mr Scarlett Johansson’ Reynolds also being delectable but dangerous as Deadpool)