Green Lantern #41

By Robert Venditti, Billy Tan, Mark Irwin, Alex Sinclair & Tony Avina

Green Lantern #41 opens a new chapter in Hal Jordan’s life as the most wanted man in the galaxy, hiding out amongst the stars, no longer as a member of the Green Lantern Corps. He’s a renegade, and Robert Venditti manages to bring this exciting new beginning to life, offering a fresh perspective on Hal Jordan that is accessible to both veteran fans of Green Lantern books but also newcomers, who are picking up a book for the first time, and Venditti delivers on both accounts with some great, space action for the readers to enjoy, with the artwork from Billy Tan, inks from Mark Irwin and colours from Alex Sinclair and Tony Avina knocking it out of the park, heralding a strong, fresh beginning for the core Green Lantern line that hopefully manages to stay crossover free, because one massive problem that this reviewer found with the Green Lantern lines before Convergence was that they kept crossing over every issue in the next big Universe ending event after another. Time will tell whether the ending, especially with that cliffhanger, has anything in store for the future.

The issue itself a prison break storyline set in gladiatorial pits on an alien world. It’s an interesting new start and it doesn’t take readers long to realise that it’s the same old Hal Jordan, even if he may not have to answer to anyone but himself anymore. It’s a refreshing new take that should inject some interesting life into the Green Lantern Corps, and hopefully the cliffhanger can be resolved successfully. It helps that Hal isn’t the only character who we’re introduced to in these pages, with a variety of colourful and intriguing supporting cast members making their way into the panels of this book and it’ll be interesting to see what direction Venditti takes them in the future, because the usual cast seems to be put to one side for now.

The artwork is pretty great and it’s fantastic to see Billy Tan on this book as the penciler. He doesn’t shy away from bringing the variety of characters to life in incredible detail and that is no easy task when you consider that they’re all various different alien lifeforms. The colours from Alex Sinclair and Tony Avina help give this book a greater science fiction feel, and it feels ready-made for fans of big, sprawling science fiction stories to jump in where you should be right at home. The inks provided by Mark Irwin also add an extra layer of depth and detail to the comic as it gets off to a very strong start post-Convergence.

The ending is pretty good as well, offering an unexpected twist that should establish the upcoming Green Lantern: The Lost Army pretty well and it’ll be a book that should be interesting to read especially given what the title is implying (and that Cullen Bunn is on board which also helps because Bunn is an awesome writer), but for now, the core Green Lantern series is in a very strong place indeed with the strong creative team of Robert Venditti, Billy Tan, Mark Irwin, Alex Sinclair and Tony Avina. Let’s hope they can keep this momentum going.