Green Lantern: Dark #1 Review

Horror isn’t a genre strictly confined to slashers and gore. It’s a genre where you can take a familiar idea like the Green Lantern and light a beacon of hope in a world of monsters. Green Lantern: Dark masterfully uses a few beloved elements of DC Comics to craft an entirely new Elseworld that captures the fear of desolation while fostering the flames of a brighter tomorrow by leaning into horror.

Green Lantern: Dark by Tate Brombal, Werther Dell’Edera, Giovanna Niro, and Tom Napolitano is the first breach back to DC’s Elseworlds imprint. Elseworld stories take DC Comics characters and reimagine them in any way the creative team can imagine. Green Lantern: Dark plunges the idea of the Green Lantern into a world devoured by darkness and the monsters that come with it. The heroes that once protected this Earth have fallen in defense of the world they held dear. Now, humanity seems to exist in small pockets and fight through the extended nights to survive against the horrors. But there is hope, a single Green Lantern, and the resilience to believe in her to be a beacon for a better tomorrow.

Green Lantern: Dark isn’t a story that relies on spandex to tell the story of a hero. This Green Lantern, Rina Mori, isn’t like any Lantern we have ever seen before. As far as the template for a hero goes, she leans closer to Spawn than she does Superman. Rina is what I would call a “horror hero” like Spawn, Swamp Thing, or any other hero that had the burden of power dropped upon them with the expectation they would do something with it. For most of the issue, Rina is shrouded in darkness one way or another through Dell’Edera and Niro’s art. Her Lantern’s light is the only reflection that gives the reader a glimpse into the self that lies beneath her cloak.

With most Green Lantern designs, there is a heavy reliance upon the Lantern symbol to be the glowing centerpiece of their costume. Rina does have a Lantern symbol on her chest but it isn’t something that draws your eyes in. Her costume is a very heavy black-and-green accented full-body suit, cape, and hood that almost begs you to look away from the logo on her chest. Even more prominent is the lack of a ring so that her power lantern is flying free of her entirely. She doesn’t want this power, she doesn’t want to be the Green Lantern. Her design and the choice to almost separate the power from herself entirely shows that, upon meeting her, there is a disconnect inside herself. Later in the issue, we see a moment of self-actualization where everything connects physically and thematically with Rina which makes this an absolute stand out for a new character and for the brilliance of her design by this creative team. Even with a lead as well-developed as Rina, that is only scratching the surface of what Green Lantern: Dark is offering.

Horror in the mainline DC Universe has never been effective for me in the way that it is in this issue. This issue presents a world familiar to the others we see in comics – but introduces it through its near desolation. The first few pages set the tone for a bleak story of a world without its protectors via the retelling of this tale by those who survived. Those heroes, who gave their lives in the hopes of saving the world, are remembered, but despite the best efforts of near-gods, the monsters still rose. Without the introduction of the Lantern, all hope may have been lost. It’s a valiant first few pages of world-building from Tate Brombal that makes this a must-read for any fans of horror.

Even with a good setting, horror always has something to say about the world at large, and Green Lantern: Dark is no different. A particular scene set up one of the major themes of the book early on with a character named Börik. He is speaking to the main young sibling characters and says “All I can see are a couple of scared kids who don’t deserve the world they’re getting.” This moment stands out because it makes me look up from the book at the world at large. There is a consistent stream of doom on every screen and source of news you look at. It has been that way my entire 32 years of life. The world is a scary place, especially for those who are just coming into what feels like the end of something.

But the machete of horror swings both ways because it is a genre that also explores the other side of fear, and hope. Without getting too far into spoilers, Lunette, one of the young siblings, is a character who believes that the Green Lantern is meant to be a lighthouse to harbor those who need it while being a warning to the monsters. It moves from a story about monsters and glowing green flames to a story about humanity’s resilience in even the bleakest of futures. The human spirit is indomitable and Lunette is the vessel of understanding this in the story so that the horrors don’t seem unconquerable.

With horror, you have monsters. Werther Dell’edera and Giovanna Niro should be given free rein over all of DC’s catalog of horror because the mastery they both show over design in this issue is unparalleled. Solomon Grundy is the major opposing force in this issue but with a redesign unlike anything seen before. There is a level of grotesque beauty in the art team’s design of Grundy and the zombie horde – with a luminescent pink and purple palette of color peeking through the rotting gray matter. Brombal strengthens this almost melancholy beauty with the horde blurting out the cries for their former loved ones or even outright begging for death. It is a remarkable approach for Grundy and a unique take on a monster that can often be overplayed in modern horror. This, matched with Niro’s stunning use of darkness in their coloring of the issue, leads to something dreadfully formidable in a saturated landscape of horror comics. There is nothing like this in the world of cape comics.

Green Lantern: Dark lights a new flame with the creation of a horror hero in the halls of Oa. Rina Mori stands out as something familiar but completely unique. The issue overall breaks the mold of what horror can be in a modern cape story with its brilliant design work, themes, and brilliant storytelling elements within the horror genre. Horror reminds you that through darkest days and blackest nights, evil cannot dominate humanity’s light.