Ok everybody, it’s time for Green Lantern #5, written by Geoffrey Thorne, with art by Tom Raney, Marco Santucci, and Andy McDonald, colors by Michael Atiyeh, and letters by Rob Leigh. And if the last few issues have left you missing classic Green Lantern action, this issue’s got you covered, because Keli Quintella the Teen Lantern is storming New Korugar to take all her frustration out on Sinestro, who she thinks caused the disaster on Oa. And it’s all out war between Keli and the planetary defenses…drones, Yellow Lanterns, they’re throwing everything they’ve got at her and the constructs keep flying!
As soon as Keli reaches the planet’s surface, she’s put to sleep by a Yellow Lantern, and I guess the identity of this character is supposed to be a surprise since they put her in that hooded cloak and never say her name, but…I mean, it’s very clearly Jessica Cruz. Even if we didn’t read her Future State story that showed her getting the yellow ring, or the solicitation for the upcoming Green Lantern Annual with her on the cover, the issue still has more than enough information to make it clear. The symbol over her eye, the familiarity with John and Simon, even the way she talks in the narration…it lends a little tragedy to the reunion with Simon that happens right after Keli gets knocked out, as he lands on New Korugar to collect the Teen Lantern under the authority of the United Planets, dressed in a full suit of high tech armor, while Jessica stands there in her Sinestro Corps uniform, and both of them feel so far away from their days as partners in the Green Lantern Corps. Simon doesn’t even realize it’s her.
I gotta say, this didn’t play out anything even remotely like I expected it to. I was sure we’d get Keli bursting into Sinestro’s chamber, picking a fight with him directly, and Jo showing up to protect Keli from Sinestro’s finishing blow, before talking to Sinestro to try and gather information. But you know what? The events of this issue actually make way more sense than what I thought would happen. Because of course Sinestro’s homeworld would have tight security to repel invaders…after everything that planet’s been through, and knowing how Sinestro feels about control, of course Keli would never make it all the way to Sinestro. And of course Jo wouldn’t fly after Keli herself, why would she? New Korugar has membership in the United Planets, and a United Planets Council Member was standing right next to Jo when Keli stormed off, so of course they’d send a retrieval unit invoking United Planets jurisdiction to take care of the situation.
And despite how much this issue has gone against my expectations, it has started to deliver on something that I’ve been wanting since Future State. We’re already seeing Jessica’s time as a Yellow Lantern used as a way to explore the meaning and power of fear. Jessica has a different perspective on fear than most other Green Lanterns, since her life was totally dominated by fear for multiple years…if anything, her Green Lantern ring served as a teaching tool to let her slowly make progress in dealing with fear. And I know some people view her getting a yellow ring as a regression, but as her narration in this issue hi lights, a lot of people make a lot of assumptions about the way fear works, and most of us don’t get it because we haven’t lived it. But Jessica has, and it’s how she’s able to understand what Keli’s going through right away, and exploit that fear to stop the fight, in a move that helps flesh out Keli as a character a little bit more…she couldn’t wait to leave home, and we already knew that she saw being a super hero as her ticket to a better life, but now we’re beginning to realize the painful memories she’s trying to leave behind. Keli doesn’t have that many people in her life, most of the people she knows are the Green Lanterns and Young Justice, and she only met them within the last year. But they’re who she latches onto since she’s lost almost everyone else. She hates the thought of being left alone, of surviving while people she cares for die…it’s why the disaster on Oa had such an effect on her, and why she was so utterly devastated when she thought she’d failed to save Simon’s life. She’s in the process of learning what every super hero has to come to terms with: the fact that no matter how powerful you are, you’ll never be able to save everyone. The problem is she’s a traumatized eleven-year-old kid, so that lesson isn’t going to come easy. Hopefully Keli will be able to spend more time with Jessica, who might be just the guiding hand she needs.
Now Jessica does have some things to say about the nature of fear and how it’s used by the Sinestro Corps, and I fully expect some fans to dislike it, because the implication is that Sinestro and his Corps don’t really understand fear. And the first time you hear that, it sounds really dumb. The people who’re powered by fear don’t understand it? How would that even work? The thing is, it actually makes more sense than you think.
When Sinestro first formed his Corps and went to war against the Green Lanterns, it was never his intention to win the war. He states flat out that his ultimate goal was to create a big enough threat that would force the Guardians to change the laws governing the Green Lantern Corps so that the Green Lanterns would have to start doing things more in line with the way Sinestro always thought they should. Sinestro never needed the best possible recruits, he just needed enough bodies wearing rings to force the Green Lanterns to change….and you can see that every time a yellow ring chooses someone.
With most power rings, you’re selected because of something strong within yourself. The ability to overcome fear, the ability to inspire hope, the great love in your heart…but the Sinestro Corps recruits people for the fear they make others feel, meaning their worthiness is’t based on a trait that’s inherent to who they are as people, but rather it’s based on how other people perceive them. If someone out there is terrified of you, then you could be chosen for the Sinestro Corps…and since what is and is not scary is completely subjective, there is no standard for worthiness, and literally anyone can gain membership. We see that hi lighted in a big way during the Sinestro ongoing series, when in a moment of desperation, Sinestro temporarily recruits as many heroes and villains on Earth as he can find, giving them all yellow rings. And when people like Superman and Wonder Woman are successfully inducted into the Sinestro Corps, that should tell you something about how easy it is to qualify.
And none of this means that Sinestro and his Corps are somehow lesser, or worse than we thought they were…all it implies is that fear is more complicated than the way we’re used to thinking about it. It’s actually not that different from what we learned about willpower over in Far Sector…willpower isn’t just one standard thing, willpower is itself a spectrum, there are different kinds of willpower, and the will to overcome fear just happens to be the most common type, which is why the Guardians chose to make it the basis for their Corps. The entire reason Jo’s ring still works is because her ring runs on a different kind of willpower, and never drew power from the Central Battery at all. This whole thing makes me think back to issue one, where that guy (who I’m going to assume is a time traveler until something proves he isn’t) talks about how we might not actually understand the Emotional Spectrum as well as we think we do. That’s a detail that’s gotten lost in everything else that’s been going on, but having Jessica join the Sinestro Corps is an excellent way to start exploring and questioning what we think we know about how these powers really work.
Then we switch focus to John Stewart, in the the wake of the battle against the Qinoori raiders. Even though John and the townspeople won, their location has been compromised, and everyone has to leave their world behind. They have starships that haven’t been used in generations, and it takes some work, but John helps them get the engines running and then leads everyone to the Light House, the redesigned Sector House that he and the Corps built as soon as they made it through the barrier. Over the last six months, the Light House seems to have become some sort of hub run by the hand full of Lanterns who were still there, and those who managed to make their way back. This includes Salaak, G’nort, and a very angry Kenz, who blames John for the three hundred Green Lanterns who’re presumed dead…which is unfair, but emotions aren’t logical. He was in charge, and they died on his watch, so she’s taking her anger out on him. At last until they get a distress call from Kilowag and Hannu, who’re hurt and pinned down, in need of rescue.
I was surprised to see John’s story go second this time, though it makes sense since it was very much a transitional chapter meant to put everyone in place for the next act, while everything on New Korugar was a much more weighty, character-focused progression of the story. The most awkward part, though, was the choice to have so much of this section narrated by ilo, and I suspect there’s two reasons for it. The first being that, according to Future State, we’re eventually going to see ilo grow up and become a much more active player in the story, so getting in their head for a few pages is a way to establish them a little more and start pulling ilo out of the background. The other reason is for expediency…the story can cover a lot of ground very quickly if it’s told from the perspective of a character who doesn’t fully understand what’s going on, and isn’t included in most of the important conversations. Making ilo the POV character this time let the story fast-forward to the Light House while glossing over the details, which is a shame because I clearly like getting bogged down in the details, and ilo isn’t interesting enough yet to make pages like this feel fulfilling.
That’s gonna just about do it for this time, but just so you know, before we get to Green Lantern #6 next month, there’s one more issue coming out this month. The Green Lantern 2021 Annual comes out August 31st, and looks like it’s going to be a double sized Jessica Cruz story, by the same creative team as her Future State story, and everything about that makes me very happy. So make sure that issue is on your radar if you’ve been enjoying this series, or you’ve just really missed Jessica starring in her own book like I have.
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