neilrcoulter 's review for:

Green Lantern: Rebirth by Geoff Johns

2.0

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My initial contact with Green Lantern was through the 2011 Cartoon Network animated series. Our family loved that series and we were very sad when it was canceled after just one season. But it left us with a love of the Green Lantern characters, and wanting to know more about the comics. Some searching online brought me to Geoff Johns, whose run at the helm of the comic seems to be regarded as a high point in the series' history. So we first read through the Secret Origin story, and I liked that one quite a lot. After that, it was time to move back to the beginning of the Johns era: Rebirth.

I'd assumed that as a kind of restart to the series, and since I had some background in the characters, I would be able to jump in here as a starting point and be drawn in. I was wrong. For most of this story, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Many pages of dialogue went something like this:

Zatanna: Hal Jordan's soul has been grafted on to one of the most powerful mystical forces in existence.

[me: Huh?]

Zatanna: . . . Even the Blue Devil could find him right now.

[me: Huh?]

By the end of the book, I had a general understanding of what had happened just prior to this story. But it was tough going to figure things out.

Additionally, I didn't enjoy the characters in this story. The Green Lanterns were sort of nondescript, with Kyle Raynor especially giving a lot of clunky expositional dialogue. The Justice League (about whom I know very little) features prominently throughout the story, with one of the most annoying versions of Batman I've yet seen. It's not a very inspiring bunch.

And finally, I wasn't very interested in the artwork. I had a hard time telling the difference between Hal and Kyle, and I felt that there was a general sameness to the artwork throughout. There are some fantastic battle scenes and flashbacks, but they didn't stand out to me as I was reading. The illustrations just weren't my style.

I'll probably look at the next Johns volume in the series, but I'm less enthusiastic about it now than I was before reading Rebirth.