Hey everybody, it’s time to get into Green Lantern #8 written by Geoffrey Thorne, art by Chriscross and Marco Santucci, inks by Juan Castro, colors by Michael Atiyeh, and letters by Rob Leigh. The title this time is “Lucis Lator” which is Latin for “The Bearer of Light”.
John, Lonar, and a small team of Quest Lanterns arrive on the planet Anacitus to save Kilowag, Hannu, and anyone native to that world who hasn’t been brainwashed into joining the cause of the mysterious Lightbringer. Everyone John wants to save is scattered around, so John puts them all inside multiple protective shields, then links those shields with tunnels, so everyone can reach the escape ship that lands inside one of those safe areas. Lonar insists that John needs to stop thinking like a Green Lantern and look at the big picture, embrace what he’s become, and fulfill his role as an ascended being. John thinks Lonar is full of crap, but can’t pass up the chance to fly through the Lightbringer’s portal and confront the problem at its source. What he finds is a massive Humanoid being made of light, with the same chest emblem as the angels, and the mysterious hooded figure in the chair that we haven’t seen since issue two when the Central Battery exploded.
As John makes his decision to fly through the gate, we get a reprisal of dialogue, some of it from just a few issues ago, when Saqari explained the history of the Barrier War…and some from the first issue of this story, when two specific Guardians (who we’ll talk more about in a moment) made this book’s first reference to what happened to John in the series “Green Lantern Mosaic”. And even though he makes the decision to fly through the gate, John clearly hates the fact that Lonar is right, that he has to abandon his instincts and fight a larger battle that he didn’t choose and knows nothing about. Free will vs fate is a big deal now that John’s got his power back…not only is John’s opponent someone who can subjugate others by removing their free will, John’s own ability to act freely is being subverted by Lonar guiding him down a specific path, which is ironic since John just recently regained a power that’s literally made of a tremendous amount of will. Though in a moment that’s probably foreshadowing a couple different things, John looks down at the brainwashed people marching through the gate and sees one who probably isn’t under anyone’s control, but seems to be playing along for now. Considering how much John still doesn’t know about what’s going on, that might be the best course of action for him to take too…although I can’t help but feel like the scene of him entering the gate with all of those quotes from earlier issues means he’s figured something out.
In all of this, there were two panels featuring Lonar that speak very directly to the nature of this story. The first is him literally telling us he’s there to be a guide, not answer questions, which is kind of irritating. Lonar seems to know everything, but is choosing to string us along. He does say that his ability to help is somehow limited, so maybe there’s a time travel reason he can’t interfere? I don’t know, but I find this character to be more annoying than anything.
The other panel is when John finally agrees to enter that gate, and Lonar just says “end prologue”, stating pretty directly that everything we’ve seen so far was just the setup to get John through that door. It’s a moment that I’m sure will infuriate everyone who hasn’t liked this book since Future State and has kept reading it for some reason, but if it makes you feel better, I think what he means is that John’s entire life up to this point has been the prologue, and the real story starts now. I was actually pleasantly surprised by how much this issue picked up the pace…when I look back on this story so far, most of the issues actually do cover a lot of ground pretty quickly, but it never feels like it in the moment. Love it or hate it, this story moves slowly when taken as monthly chapters, and I’d be really interested to hear from anyone who’s either waiting for the collected editions, or has just been letting the issues pile up before reading them. I was honestly shocked to see John take such a big step forward and suddenly be face to face with the being who may or may not be the Lightbringer, and I kind of can’t wait to pick up from this moment next issue.
Now, remember those two specific Guardians who were talking to John in issue one? Their names are Koyos and Nemosyni, and it seems they’re two of the most important characters in this story. Jo returns to Oa to find Councelor Fel going through partially reconstructed Guardians records, where they find evidence that both Koyos and Nemosyni disagreed with the way the rest of the Guardians were doing things, and had been secretly working together on something for a very long time. Nemosyni specializes in mechanical technology, and it’s unknown what special skill Koyos brought to the table…but it may be something pretty unorthodox for a Guardian, since he spent a month on Sorcerer’s World about two years ago. That’s the homeworld of Yridian and the Bright Circle, the group who attacked Oa and opened that portal back in issue one. I’m not super surprised by this, since I already thought the Brigit Circle was contracted by someone else, and at least a few of the Guardians have clearly known exactly what’s going on from day one, but the fact that he was there for a month…27 days to be exact…that is such a long time, literally anything could have happened on that planet in that amount of time. A Guardian with a secret agenda on a planet of wizards for 27 days. The possibilities are limitless, and I find that incredibly exciting. But even that’s only half as interesting as the possibilities surrounding Nemosyni, and what she was doing while Koyos was away from Oa. During that month, she spent ten days locked away in her lab…and five days on Earth. Apparently she spent a lot of time going back and forth between the two planets, and we’re shown five differently sized domes in her lab. And my first thought was to wonder what she was taking from the Earth and bringing to Oa, but now I think she may have been building something on Oa and transporting it to Earth. Councelor Fel finds records of green spectrum energy surges in Nemosyni’s lab, and evidence that she’d received weapon schematics from the Weaponers of Quard, the people who created not only Sinestro’s original ring, but all of the rings and batteries used by the Sinestro Corps, including their own Central Battery. Councelor Fel realizes that Nemosyni had been using this lab as a forge to make weapons, before being attacked from the shadows by Nemosyni herself, apparently the only Guardian who isn’t currently incapacitated.
We get one panel showing Koyos and Nemosyni trying to figure out the nature of Keli’s gauntlet…this moment takes place during issue one, since John and Simon are both there and John’s in his dress uniform, but this specific moment is new. This is the first time it’s been suggested that the gauntlet could be drawing energy from The Bleed, though it’s not the first time the multiverse has been brought up in relation to the gauntlet. Again, back in issue one, Koyos and Nemosyni state that they don’t think the appearance of this device in the hands of this child right around when the multiverse shifted due to Death Metal is a coincidence. Maybe the gauntlet is so powerful because it’s drawing energy from something outside of the normal DC Universe. Hell, maybe Keli isn’t even from this universe, maybe she’s from a universe where Green Lanterns wear gauntlets. The first time she ever appeared was during a Young Justice story where Gemworld was invading Earth, and Gemworld is a nexus of realities, so it’s possible that Keli didn’t start on this Earth. It’s also worth pointing out that this panel of Keli makes her look evil as all hell. No matter if you love Keli or hate her, there’s a whole lot about this character we’ve just been assuming this whole time, and maybe none of it is actually true. I’m not against the idea of Keli possibly being a secret antagonist who nobody suspects because she’s a child, and presents as though she’s experiencing trauma, but I think any sort of reveal like that would hit harder if we actually had an alternative backstory for her that the truth could subvert. As it is, all we know is what Young Justice issue nine told us about her life in Bolivia, and the brief glimpse into her mind we got when she encountered Jessica on New Korugar. It’s also possible that Koyos and Nemosyni were lying because Simon and John were standing right there, and they know exactly what that gauntlet is and where it came from. Hell, maybe they built it right there in Nemosyni’s lab. Maybe Nemosyni brought it to Earth herself during one of her many trips.
Also, there’s a panel of Jo and Counselor Fee looking through the Guardians’ logs, and there’s a pair of images of Koyos and Nemosyni doing experiments that really pique my interest, not because of what they’re doing in those moments, but because of how they’re presented. These are very clearly full panels that were drawn and then photoshopped into this page as video playing on computer screens…except that kind of thing is usually done as a reference to something we’ve already seen before, and this is the first time either of these panels have ever been shown. Maybe they’re from an upcoming issue, hell maybe they’re panels that were going to be used in this issue but things got changed, all I know is that presenting this information in this way calls attention to it, making me think it’s important. But for right now, all I can say is it sure does look like Koyos and Nemosyni are experimenting with the Emotional Spectrum, and that takes me back to issue one of this series, when Lonar first shows up and questions the way we’ve come to think about the Spectrum. The first issue of this story is becoming more and more important as we go on.
Anyway, all of this wold seem to paint Koyos and Nemosyni as villains working behind the scenes, eliminating Councelor Fel because she was getting too close to the truth. But here’s the interesting thing: when we get a look at those logs that Councelor Fel had recovered, the Guardians are talking about what to do about the the rise of the United Planets, and it seems like Koyos and Nemosyni are advocating for leaving this new alliance alone so it can evolve naturally, while it’s all the other Guardians who seem insistent on taking charge of things, talking about all other races like they’re children. There’s a panel referencing the first issue of this run, where Koyos and Nemosyni address the United Planets on behalf of the rest of the Guardians, despite opposing their position, which more or less confirms that the Guardians chose to join the United Planets in order to control the growth and development of the organization and its member worlds, all while appearing to be lowering their own status and relinquishing power. All of those concessions the Guardians made in issue two of this run, giving up one third of their territory, reassigning thousands of Lanterns…it was all for show, to make everyone think the Guardians were giving up power and authority, when really they’re positioning themselves to have more influence over the rest of the universe than ever before. As of right now, I think we’re meant to think that Koyos and Nemosyni are the bad guys, when they’re secretly trying to save everyone from the rest of the Guardians.
Speaking of the rest of the Guardians, there’s one more interesting wild card introduced in this issue. The Young Guardians from the Grant Morrison run have now merged with the much older Templar Guardians. Once it happens, the Templar Guardians are left visibly younger than they were before. I don’t know what the implication of this merger is, I also didn’t know Guardians could absorb each other like that. I would assume that they’ve each become more powerful, but I couldn’t even guess why they did this.
Now that I think about it, there’s a scene in this issue that might be a lot more important that I thought, because we check in on Iolande and the other depowered Green Lanterns who’ve been found and transported to Oa, and everyone’s confused and angry and wants to do something, but the United Planets lockdown isn’t letting them get involved. So Jo gets around that by using her United Planets privileges to officially recognize all former Green Lanterns as citizens of Oa, giving them free rein to go anywhere they want other than the Guardians’ tower and the science cell prison. She leaves Simon in charge of filling them all in on everything that’s been going on, and granting them access to the armory. It’s unclear how many Lanterns are now gathered on Oa, but it seems like a lot, and now all of them will be up to speed with the situation, and have the the ability to move freely across Oa, and have access to the armory. And I have to say, giving the surviving members of the Green Lantern Corps access to Oa’s armory is an interesting thing to do in the same issue where we find out a Guardian has been developing weapons in secret. I don’t know that we’ll find anything strange in that armory, but I can’t wait for them to go poking around in there. Either way, Jo and Simon now have a much larger force at their disposal on Oa, which they’ll likely need when everything inevitably starts coming to a head over the next few issues.
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