Hey everyone, we’re back with Green Lantern #3 written by Geoffrey Thorne, with art by Tom Raney and Marco Santucci, colors by Michael Atiyeh, and letters by Rob Leigh.
And the good news is that John and his one thousand Quest Lanterns had enough time to get through the barrier and build a Sector House before the Central Battery exploded and cut power to all of their rings. The bad news is that, as far as we know, the only two Lanterns in the Sector House when that happened were Saalak and G’nort. John survived the vacuum of space because he happened to be paired off with a Green Lantern named Amanita, who did…something with spores I guess? I don’t know how mushrooms work. But John survives long enough to be found by a woman named Saqari, who lives on a quiet, out of the way world named Sergilon. And right away, we get to the core theme of this chapter: the passage of time.
John lost consciousness the moment Amanita moved in to save him, and by the time he woke up at Saqari’s house, his hair and beard had grown in. And since the planet doesn’t have anything in the way of long range communications or spacecraft, John remains stuck there for 145 days, almost five months.
Saqari is the mother of ilo, who’s a member of John’s team during Future State, but is still just a kid at this point. The two of them have lived on this planet, within the confines of the barrier, for their entire lives. They’ve never heard of the Guardians or the Green Lantern Corps, and they make reference to historical events that happened inside the barrier a hundred years ago. Why’s that matter? Because the barrier’s only existed for a few weeks. Which means there are three possibilities: The Guardians are lying…which they probably are, just not about this…or Saqari is lying, which I don’t believe she is…or nobody is lying, and time moves faster inside the barrier. And if it’s that last one, then suddenly Future State Green Lantern makes a lot more sense.
Something that made Future State Green Lantern a little confusing to follow was the fact that not all the stories took place in the same timeframe. The John Stewart story was clearly taking place years down the line, while the other seemed to take place close to the present. And I chalked up that inconsistency to the fact that Future State Green Lantern was an anthology, with each story being told by different writers, and mistakes were made. But if time does pass differently inside the barrier, then what I thought was a mistake may actually be a major plot point central to this entire story.
John has been on this side of the barrier for about half a year. Geoffrey Thorne confirmed on twitter that Future State Green Lantern takes place fourteen years in the future. We don’t have enough actual numbers to get exact with this, but fourteen years for John could end up being a year or less for the rest of the DC Universe outside of the barrier. And this makes me really want to know who constructed the barrier and why…my first instinct is to think that someone powerful set all of this up to create something that would normally take an incredibly long time, thus the need for a region of space where time can move faster. But this early, I couldn’t even guess who it is or what they want.
The planet does get ransacked by Qinoori Raiders, which John recognizes as coming from outside the barrier, which makes you wonder how they got in? It took a thousand Green Lanterns working together to breech that barrier, so were the Qinoori just passing through when the barrier was being constructed? Do they have some means of safe passage in and out of the barrier? Do they know who’s behind all of this? And are they here to foreshadow the arrival of another character, because the only notable thing the Qinoori Raiders have ever done is destroy the homeworld of Ferrin Colos, main character of the Darkstars series from the early 1990s. John was a Darkstar for a while, he joined after the last time the Central Battery blew up during Emerald Twilight. There are echos of a lot of old storylines in this book, and I’m not prepared to write any of it off as a coincidence.
These a scene where Saqari is probing John’s mind to see if he’s safe to have around, and we get this fun school dream where John forgot he had to give a report and they’re all classmates, and it made me realize I would gladly read an alternate universe story about all of these characters going to high school together. Then I remembered that’s literally what DC Super Hero Girls is, so I’m covered. Digging around through John’s memory was a pretty quick and efficient way to give us a lot of information in just a few pages. It also gives us our first look at a Green Lantern named Kenz, who you may remember as the person in command of the ship supporting John during Future State Green Lantern. She’s a new character that was created for this run, and I’m surprised to learn that she’s one of the Lanterns who came in with John, and not someone native to this region of space who he met once he got stranded here. But doing it this way makes a lot of sense…the Quest Lanterns were scattered when their rings failed, which means that any survivors have had half a year to gather resources and make connections, which will be a big help to John if and when he finds them.
The mental link with Saqari also instantly solves the problem of how John will communicate without his ring’s translator, as Saqari gave him some knowledge while they were connected. The only thing specified is language, but she also says there’s “other stuff” which can basically smooth over any logical inconsistencies with John’s ability to function out here. They also made him an amazing jacket and this is a great Green Lantern uniform that had better stick around for a while. Cosplayers take note, this looks awesome.
While all that’s going on, Sojourner Mullein is back on Oa trying to track down any survivors and figure out what caused the Central Battery to explode in the first place…which is difficult, because she’s been forced into a bureaucratic position that she never asked for. Since there’s literally the nobody else, she’s expected to deal with all the politics of being Oa’s representative on the United Planets Council, which she absolutely hates, but doesn’t blow off completely because the United Planets is helping to organize a large scale search and rescue operation to find as many Green Lanterns as possible, based on the most recent assignments given to them by the Guardians before everything exploded. There’s been no mention of the Guardians, by the way. I don’t know if we’re supposed to assume they died, but I think their sudden absence is very telling. I felt it last issue, but the further we go, the more I tend to think that everything that’s happening is going according to the Guardians’ plan…they’re immortals, they see the big picture in a way nobody else can, maybe all of this was for the sake of putting all the pieces in place to handle whatever’s happening beyond the barrier…also, I absolutely think the Guardians know exactly what’s going on inside that barrier, and it’s why they sent John in the first place.
…but either way, Jo’s putting together a team to help her get to the bottom of what happened to the Central Battery. Simon is injured, but the cybernetic cast that’s healing his arm also has the ability to make big laser guns for some reason, so that’s useful. I hate this little remark he makes about how he always thought his ring would fail him one day, like he’s saying he was right to not trust it, which totally ignores all the character growth he went through when he shared a book with Jessica for a few years…though to be fair, that growth was already undone by Dan Jurgens when he ended that series in the most disappointing way possible, but that’s a topic for another day. What’s important is that Simon is on board to help Jo, and it seems like Keli will be on board too, now that she knows she didn’t fail to save Simon from the explosion.
So far it looks like the only other backup they’ll have is from Hal Jordan, who’s on Earth in the Hall of Justice, with a functional ring. We saw in Future State that Hal’s ring still worked because Cyborg was able to build something that would amplify the trace amounts of power left inside of it after the Central Battery was cut off, so Hal still has power but it’s pretty limited, though he’s still better off than almost everyone else. We get a few one-off panels showing us some of the other survivors, scattered around the universe. Isamot (who I assume is protected by that harness he’s wearing), Princess iolande, Rot Lop Fan, I think that’s Kyle, and Arisia who as far as I can remember her species can’t survive in space, but they can do that thing where they go into a death-like coma while their bodies regenerate, so maybe that can help somehow? I don’t know, but she’s probably ok.
Overall, I get a really good feeling from this book. The theme is strong here, as John is trapped in a place that’s launching him into the future as fast as possible, while constantly reaching back to forgotten yet influential moments of his past. I like the constant mix of teasing both the introduction of brand new things, and the return of obscure old things, and the feeling that both could be equally important to where the story is headed. And nothing gives me that feeling more intensely than the two pages dedicated to John’s memory of the time he and Katma Tui went to the beach. Why? Because based on the fact that she’s there, plus the architecture in the background, plus her saying that this is a staycation since he’s the Guardian of this world…this scene takes place on Oa, after the end of the John Stewart solo series Green Lantern Mosaic. I’ve said it before, but this series has been almost universally ignored since it ended, despite it representing one of the most important times in John Stewart’s entire history…and not only has Geoffrey Thorne directly referenced the series in two out of three issues of this book so far, he’s now shown a willingness to continue the story of Green Lantern Mosaic past its final pages. There was never any attempt to reconcile who and what John was at the end of that series with what DC wanted him to be next, so they just dropped all of it and made John something else that fit the mold better. The book ended, and then Emerald Twilight happened, and we really didn’t see much of John again until he joined the Darkstars, and from that point on nobody ever really said much about Green Lantern Mosaic. Nothing about the status quo of that series ending was ever resolved…and now, we might finally see that resolution, in a way that strengthens John as a character by using new content to bridge the gap to his past, while having a big impact on the future.
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