Hey everybody, it’s time to dig into Green Lantern #11 written by Geoffrey Thorne, with art by Tom Raney and Marco Santucci, finishes by Maria Laura Sanapo, colors by Mike Atiyeh, and letters by Rob Leigh.
It is all out war on the planet Oa. On one side you’ve got Sojourner Mullein and Hal Jordan, both with functional Green Lantern rings. You’ve got the Justice League, the United Planets, the depowered Green Lantern Corps piloting Iron Man suits, and the Guardians fresh from their weird stasis/death/coma. On the other side you’ve got Koyos, a Guardian bent on ridding the universe of his own people and their creations, convinced that the universe can only grow and prosper naturally without their interference. Koyos is currently the size of Godzilla, and powered by a mixture of the Green Lantern Central Power Battery, magic from the sorcerer’s world, and the anti-chaos weapon we saw back in Green Lantern #1 (which I guess is what the yellow squid hat is?). The Bright Circle, a group of extremists from sorcerer’s world who adamantly hate the Guardians and echo Koyos’ beliefs, are supporting Koyos in the fight, and their leader Yridian seems to be the one maintaining the spell that’s holding together this unique mix of new power within Koyos.
It is sheer chaos, as the superior numbers of the Lanterns and their allies can’t compete with the overwhelming power of Koyos and the Bright Circle. And while the battle rages, Koyos makes his move. He uses his power to reach out across space, to every world touched by his people…we see the Helix, home of the Controllers, we see Zamaron, home of the Star Sapphires, we see Odym, home of the Blue Lanterns, we see Maltus, the original homeworld of them all…and all at once, Koyos begins to absorb them, ripping them apart and assimilating them into himself from billions of miles away. And once every last bit of their existence…all of their biology, all of their technology…once it’s all been absorbed into Koyos’ body, he intends to destroy himself, thus erasing the Guardians and everything related to them from the universe, once and for all.
Nemosyni, the Guardian who organized the resistance against Koyos, tells Jo that her ring has the ability to stop all of this, to “break their trinity” as she put it, and Counselor Fel confirms that Jo’s ring was made from a combination of Oan and Quardian designs, specifically to disrupt the combination of powers within Koyos. The only problem is that both Jo and Hal get shot with magic arrows that destroy their rings. But that’s ok, because just when it looks like there are no options left, here comes a fully-ascended John Stewart, now powerful enough to match Koyos in a fight.
While John holds Koyos at bay, Jo runs to the medical station, where Keli has been unconscious ever since her encounter with Jessica Cruz on New Korugar. Jo manages to connect with Keli just enough to release the gauntlet, and use its power to deal a decisive, devastating blow to Koyos, destroying the battery in his chest and disrupting the spell holding him together. That’s right, NOW the Central Battery is destroyed, on page thirty of issue eleven.
Now with Koyos vulnerable, John makes his move, claiming to be able to see what’s inside of Koyos and that he knows what to do. Next thing we know, there’s a blinding flash of light and both John and Koyos are gone, replaced by a massive ball of swirling energy.
But even if Koyos has been neutralized, there’s still the matter of the Bright Circle. And more urgently, the United Planets security brigade is in orbit, ready to nuke the surface of Oa, because they can’t afford to allow yet another cosmic disaster of Oan origin to ravage the universe. Their strike is imminent, and the energies erupting from Koyos have made all communications and sensors on the planet and the ships useless. So unless someone on the ground finds some way to communicate with those ships, they might all die anyway. Maybe Hal and the League could leave the same way they came, and evacuate everyone off-world through a Doctor Fate portal, or maybe John will pull out a last minute save…but I think there’s a genuine possibility that no matter what happens, we may lose Oa anyway. It makes me think that, even though they seem to defeat Koyos, he may end up getting much of what he wanted. Everything the Guardians made is already in ruin, the Central Battery is actually officially destroyed now, the final two functional Green Lantern Corps rings are gone, and this whole situation may be all the reason the United Planets needs to see everything related to the Guardians as a threat. I think it’s interesting that John had the chance to challenge Koyos in a one-on-one fight, and be directly told the beliefs that motivated Koyos to do all of this, because ultimately it’s going to come down to John to decide what comes next. He’s more powerful than the Guardians, and he’s in a position to choose what form the Green Lantern Corps takes when it’s rebuilt, and now would be a fine time to lay a new foundation and make something different. Which lines up nicely with the title of next issue, Nova Lux, or New Light. The title of this issue is Virdis Eques, which translates to Green Knight.
This arc ends next issue, and I did not expect to still have so many questions. Like what is it about Jo’s ring that was supposed to destabilize the power Koyos was using? I get that it’s the Quardian tech, but why is that important? Maybe it’s because Koyos is only supposed to be absorbing Guardian technology, so sneaking in some tech from the Antimatter universe of Quard would throw everything off? And does it even matter now that her ring is gone, and John is presumably going to solve the same problem in a different way? I am glad that Jo got a badass moment at the end of the fight, but I really wish it had gone to Simon instead…he’s the one who’s built a connection with Keli, and we even saw him successfully appeal to her just like this once before, in a previous issue of this arc. I understand wanting to make it Jo, since she’s one of the two main leads of the book during this arc, but she and Keli never laid the groundwork for this kind of trust. Also, I don’t know where the gauntlet went, but Jo clearly doesn’t have it anymore after that blinding flash of light.
It feels weird to say this, in the middle of the big climactic battle the whole arc has been building to, but the thing that got me the most excited was a brief glimpse of the planet Odym, the original homeworld of the Blue Lantern Corps…because there’s a blue Central Battery and a Guardian in white on Odym right now! This is huge, this is a massive step towards bringing back the Blue Lantern Corps, and as far as I know it’s coming totally out of nowhere. The last time we saw Odym was in Green Lantern New Guardians, where The Reach and their army of Blue Beetles overran the planet, forcing the remainder of the Blue Lanterns to relocate to a new homeworld. And while their new homeworld also had a blue Central Battery, we never see them take the one from Odym, so this might be the original Central Battery that got left behind. Their second Central Battery, by the way, was destroyed when the being named Relic came to their second homeworld to drain all of their power. And we don’t know exactly who this Guardian is, though maybe it’s Sayd, since John does mention her by name. Either way, I’m very excited by the prospect of bringing back the Blue Lanterns in some form, so I will be incredibly upset if we’re being shown a glimpse of their return only for them to be wiped out for a third time.
Speaking of other Corps being wiped out, Zamaron and the Star Sapphires are in pretty bad shape too. I know Geoffrey Thorne doesn’t like there being a ton of Lanterns, but come on…this issue came out on February 15th. You can not wipe out the Star Sapphires, the Lanterns powered by love, the day after Valentine’s Day.
…and in the middle of all this, we got a brief aside where Lonar takes one extra moment to elude to the fact that everything he’d been doing with John up to now was only meant to power up John so he could go fight the real threat, which is something entirely separate from Esak and Koyos, so I guess we’ll deal with whatever that is later.
I think my biggest takeaway from issue eleven is that a lot is hinging on issue twelve. The fate of the Green Lantern Corps, the fate of the Star Sapphires and Blue Lanterns, and what the future of this series is even going to be. DC has already released its solicitations through the month of May, and instead of glimpses at Green Lantern number thirteen and fourteen, we got nothing…no sign of any Lantern books for two months after this arc ends next issue. A lot of people look at that, and the fact that John Stewart seems to be among the characters dying in the April issue of Justice League, and think that means bad news for Green Lantern as a series…but I don’t really think so. If the book were canceled, due to poor sales or any other reason, the solicitation for issue twelve would have advertised it as the final issue in the series. I think it’s more likely that there’s a reason pertaining to a storyline they don’t want to spoil…after all, the death of the Justice League is part of the buildup to Dark Crisis, which is DC’s big event starting June, and at this point we know very little about the event, or the direction the universe will be going in. Or maybe something big happens in Green Lantern issue twelve that they didn’t want to give away, and we’ll learn the future of the series next month. I really don’t know, but I don’t think we’ll have to wait very long to find out.
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