Tony Black reviews Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #3…
“Sinestro’s Law” part three! Pushed to his limits, Hal Jordan must fight his way through a squad of Sinestro Corps members—but he risks losing himself to the power he now wields as his battle with Sinestro nears.
The great battle against the imperious forces of the Sinestro Corps continue in the third issue of Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps, as ‘Sinestro’s Law pt 3: Innocents Lost’ continues developing the battle a revived Hal must face against the universal, fascistic forces Sinestro has sent across the stars to instil fear into the heart and minds of men, women and aliens. Robert Venditti still isn’t managing in his writing to reach any kind of interesting emotional core in what is quite an arch, space opera style comic, but his pacing here and level of incident is stronger. We may not see much of the returning Green Lanterns or Guy Gardner, both of whom after the recent cliffhanger’s are given almost nothing to do, but the rest has enough going on to maintain attention.
As seems to be the case every issue though, it’s the Sinestro at his villainous Warworld base sub-plot which maintains much more interest than anything Hal is doing. He invites Administer Lash, a high priest of the Sacrament, to his base and we find, interestingly, that Sinestro seems quite open to the idea of a fascist religion of sorts within his universal domain of order out of chaos, which to a degree seems surprising. His daughter seems to find the idea abhorrent but Sinestro knows Lash is useful, as he sends his wave of Sinestro Corps autocrats out into the universe to spread fear among planetary populations who succumbed to Sinestro’s law, believing presumably it would be just.
This may be the challenge Hal is facing, but it could also end up being the answer to his problems; while in this issue, as he desperately tries to save innocents from the Corps, Hal finds the fear within billions is only serving to juice up the power of the Corps (much like the Rage virus back on Earth is helping the Red Lanterns in Green Lanterns funnily enough), if those people can turn fear into anger it could give Hal and his other Lanterns what they need to strike back at the Fear Engine and put Sinestro in his place. We’ll see. Here Hal spends much of his time spinning out arrogant one-liners but battling against the odds and by the conclusion, things don’t look good for the Lantern.
While Rafa Sandoval’s explosive, colourful panels reflect the galactic, operatic nature of the comic, Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps still feels like it’s missing something, or perhaps even dragging out a story which could have been told much more quickly and economically. That’s happening, admittedly, on several runs in the Rebirth within DC, but often they have the strong character depth to back it up – sadly, Venditti’s run here simply doesn’t, and it makes the whole endeavour feel frivolous and a bit hollow. It may be worth exploring where this opening arc ends ultimately but beyond that? The jury remains out.
Rating: 6/10
Tony Black
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Originally published August 27, 2016. Updated April 14, 2018.
