I want to begin this by saying that I wanted to love Absolute Green Lantern #1. I love Al Ewing’s work at Marvel, and I thought Jahnoy Lindsay’s art was really good on Superboy: The Man of Tomorrow! So when they announced this book alongside the likes of Absolute Flash and Absolute Martian Manhunter, I was immediately moved. The initial preview pages they showed off at San Diego Comic Con last year looked awesome, and I couldn’t wait to actually sit down and read it.
And then I read it.
Not all of the Absolute Line has been an instant banger. Absolute Batman, Absolute Wonder Woman, and Absolute Martian Manhunter knocked it out of the park with their first issue, bringing in a unique visual style alongside a great hook that dug its heels in you, left you wanting more, and left you clawing for more. Absolute Flash is visually gorgeous, and while I dug the writing a lot, it left me in a ‘let them cook’ mindset, where I wanted to see where the story was going, but it was certainly interesting enough for me to want to keep reading it. Absolute Superman had the weakest opener (at the time) narratively, and visually it just had the same energy as mainline Superman, but that’s a book that slowly got better for me as I kept reading it.
Absolute Green Lantern falls in that Absolute Superman tier (at least for just the first issue, since that’s all I’ve read). The writing and art aren’t doing much for me. Conceptually, it’s interesting– I like the idea of Hal Jordan being the Black Hand (not to be confused with the secret Serbian society), while Jo gets to be the main Green Lantern. I like that a giant lantern just falls onto the town. All of that is interesting to me. But ultimately none of that is presented in a way that’s particularly gripping. I’m not given enough of a reason to care about these characters or these concepts to boot, which I expect a #1 of an alternate take to do. They’re different, sure, but this certainly isn’t enough to get me interested.
The art is emblematic of the same artistic problem I have with Absolute Superman – where it just looks too much like what I expect from the main line, it’s too ‘house style’, it’s too ‘safe’. But at least Absolute Superman’s art doesn’t look ‘incomplete’ in the way this does, for some reason. It’s weird, because Superboy: Man of Tomorrow was also drawn and coloured by Lindsay, but it looked more refined, more complete, while here it looks like it needs more time in the oven.
In conclusion: not much to say, really! I’ll see where it goes because I owe every book the first arc at least, but as it stands, it’s the weakest of the line (and furthermore, overall in the grand scheme of both Marvel and DC doing their alternate universe takes.)
One reply on “Absolute Green Lantern #1 Review”
I definitely sympathize with this review. I also wish the art was less safe, though upon reading the full issue I thought the messiness was charming rather than offputting (how I felt about the previews). And there were some pages I really dug like the collision or the reveals of the black hand and Abin Sur. Some of the mysteries it sets up are intriguing to me (what’s up with Jo? will we get a version of her that isn’t Jemisin’s annoying combination of radlib and American nationalist?). Right now it’s also in the “let em cook” zone for me.