Written by Grant Morrison
Illustrated by Liam Sharp
Published by DC Comics
“We don’t need superheroes right now, we need a supercop.”
So true.
This month’s story demonstrates just how outrageous and over the top the everyday life of a Green Lantern can be.
Imagine your entire planet has been hijacked by a horrific race of heartless capitalist mercenaries who victimize the population and devastate the environment just enough to soften them up for the salvation of a seemingly untouchable, nigh-omnipotent messianic savior, whose seductive, corrosive power to fulfill every fondest dream of his flock is matched only by a voracious appetite and scale of deception that will surely doom all the future generations of your home-world to utter oblivion.
Crazy, right?
Good thing we have Hal Jordan on the case, taking all the names and kicking all the alien scumbag tuchas.
Indeed, Grant Morrison’s depiction of Hal is a glorious demonstration of how one properly faces down a crisis of head-spinning scale and consequence, with no fear, a band of the toughest cops in the known universe, and a healthy dose of the sort of righteous conviction that comes from knowing that you stand on the side of what is right – no matter the consequences to your reputation or popularity for being the champion the world truly needs.
Well. Maybe.
Everything about this issue is a crisis of biblical proportion. Yet Hal cuts through all the terror and the crazy and the static of an ungrateful population with a clear-eyed view of what must be done.
If he’s guilty of anything, it’s perhaps of having a heart too-easily moved by the scale of the injustice and horror and betrayal perpetrated upon the people of Earth under his watch – and all the outrage a man of his temperament is prone to, in the face of that.
It all comes crashing to an ending, and a cliffhanger, that’s as worthy of the old outlandish spirit of a Green Lantern comic, as a boxing glove to the face of God.
An image that begs the question – what happens when Hal decides to take matters into his own hands? What happens when all that outrage sets him to the task of retribution… and convinces him that his will alone should be the whole of intergalactic law?
Good thing someone’s called Carol Ferris.
Next Issue: We probably won’t see Carol Ferris. Yet.
