Alright everyone, it’s finally time to talk about Green Lantern #12 written by Geoffrey Thorne, art by Tom Raney and Marco Santucci, colors by Mike Atiyeh, and letters by Rob Leigh. The long-awaited finale to Geoffrey Thorne’s first arc of Green Lantern. I’ve seen some people talk about this as the end of Thorne’s run, or the end of the story Thorne’s been telling…neither of those are likely to be true. This has always been planned as a run made up of three arcs, and everything we’ve read so far is just the first one. So while we still don’t know exactly what’s going on with the future of Green Lantern, understand that this issue was only ever going to end some of the plot lines that we’ve been following for the last year. But enough about that, let’s get into issue twelve.
So, if you recall, last issue we saw the renegade Guardian Koyos reach out across space to break down and absorb everything related to his own people…the Guardians, the Zamarons, the Controllers, the population of Maltus, the Star Sapphire Central Battery, the Blue Lantern Central Battery, and of course the Green Lantern Central Battery that was already in his chest. The plan was for him to take every last trace of his people into his own body and then destroy himself, so that the universe could finally move on and evolve naturally without their interference. But after Sojourner Mullein deals him a fatal blow, Koyos is left vulnerable, and John Stewart makes his move.
John is attempting to take all of the energy absorbed by Koyos, and stabilize it. That means taking the energy of the Green, Blue, and Sapphire Central Batteries, plus a ton of magic from Sorcerer’s World, and turning it into something new. But doing that requires John to use up all of the energy in his body, sacrificing himself to end the danger and leave behind enough power for his friends to rebuild and replace all they’ve lost.
Since John is basically creating a brand new fundamental force of the universe, it draws the attention of The Source, the vaguely-defined force worshiped by the New Gods, represented here as artist Jack Kirby, the person who created Darkseid and the New Gods for DC. The Source tells John that what he’s doing here, martyring himself to stabilize this energy, will never work, but John keeps pushing anyway, until his body is totally drained, and he begins to fade away. Ever since John first ascended, he’s been trying to reject it, pushing back against everything Lonar told him, determined not to let it change who he is. He’s seen power like this corrupt people before, and he refuses to allow himself to go down that path, so John’s priority has been to figure out a way to save everyone by using up all of his new power, even if it means he has to die in the process.
But it turns out that when The Source called John’s plan impossible, he wasn’t talking about stabilizing the energy left behind by Koyos, he was referring to John’s plan to sacrifice his life for it. All this time, John had been looking at himself and his power all wrong. Being ascended means that his power isn’t something external that he uses, it isn’t like wearing a ring…it’s a part of him now, it is him, there is no difference, no separation. Having this power is now his natural state, so even if he does completely drain himself, his strength will just return after a while. And understanding that fact is key, because once John is able to accept that there is no difference between himself and his power, it opens the door to a fundamental truth: that because it’s a part of him, that means it’s only a bad thing if he’s a bad person.
John’s success can be felt by everyone on Oa. Waves of energy erupt from the newly-stabilized ball of energy, repairing everything it touches, undoing all the damage that Oa has suffered since the beginning of this arc. Now the city is good as new, with this new power source sitting where the Central Battery once stood. Hal Jordan feels a strange connection to the ball of energy, like some sort of signal or beacon, and is suddenly able to recreate his ring. He’s then able to teach the rest of the depowered Lanterns how to reach out to the Beacon while focusing on what their rings mean to them, using the Beacon as a catalyst to will their rings back into being. And just like that, all six hundred depowered Green Lanterns gathered on Oa have working rings again…but not all of them are Green Lantern rings. Some of them, like B’dg, ended up as Blue Lanterns, while others, like Iolande, ended up as Star Sapphires….and I love how they blame Hal for it, though this was specifically done by John, to give all three Corps devastated by Koyos the chance to rebuild stronger, together. So as of right now, it looks like all of the Green Lanterns, Blue Lanterns, and Star Sapphires in the universe who have working rings are these six hundred people on Oa, all of whom used to be Green Lanterns, and every single one of them draws power from the same source, which I guess we’re calling the Beacon.
The only Lantern on Oa who didn’t get a ring back was Simon Baz, but suddenly the rings of all the dead Lanterns started swirling around him, and he could hear their voices whispering to him, when suddenly every single ring formed a construct body around itself, in the shape of the Green Lantern who died wearing it. Every single Green Lantern killed in the Geoffrey Thorne run are now living constructs, effectively haunting their own rings. The Source confirms that it was John who returned what was left of the fallen Lanterns, so they could still live on in some form, though we still don’t know anything about Simon’s connection to it. He did get a cool new costume despite still not having a ring, but I’m pretty hopeful that this is a sign of future stories finally delving into all of the unique powers that Simon has been able to exhibit since becoming a Green Lantern, like Emerald Sight letting him see glimpses of the future, and the ability to heal people through sheer willpower. There has always been something special about Simon, and the fact that it’s gone unexplored for so long is incredibly frustrating, but now it looks like that might finally change.
Now that he’s given the Lanterns everything they need to start over, John turns his attention back to the Dark Sector. Because remember, we still don’t know what Lonar was preparing John for, or why Esak was creating the Lightbringer, or why that entire region of space is hidden behind a barrier made of Hypertime. All John knows for sure is that his job isn’t done yet, and his Quest Lanterns are still fighting to liberate worlds from the Qinoori Raiders, without backup, and without rings. John appears before them, his power and his sense of self both renewed, sporting a new uniform and title to match them. He declares this the first of what I expect to be many worlds across the Dark Sector to be under the protection of the Emerald Knights.
The title of this issue is Nova Lux, which translates to New Light.
After all of this, I’m actually surprised that we still have so many Green Lanterns, considering that Geoffrey Thorne has said in the past that he feels the Corps has gotten way too big. Don’t get me wrong, reducing their numbers from 7200 to 600 is a big change, but it still leaves us with more Lanterns than we’ll ever see on a page. And to be fair, not all 600 of them are Green Lanterns, some percentage of that total are Blue Lanterns and Star Sapphires, and we don’t yet have an actual number for any of those three groups. But still, trading one incredibly massive number for a smaller, yet still massive number seems functionally the same, which is why I expect a lot of what’s coming next to be about the bigger picture of the DC Universe and how the Lanterns fit into it now that so much has changed. With such reduced numbers, it would be impossible for them to go back to business as usual…and honestly, after everything that Koyos did, I don’t know that the universe will even let them.
…that’s actually something that I think got lost in the chaos of this issue. Koyos won. Remember, his plan was always to die and take every last trace of his people with him, and he did it. And that’s one of the biggest failings of the last two issues, because until issue twelve told me that Koyos killed them all in issue eleven, I had no idea it even happened. And it must have happened last issue, because the only way the events of this issue even make sense is if Koyos successfully absorbed the Guardians, Zamarons, and Controllers, as well as the Blue and Sapphire Central Batteries. The only thing I can come up with is that, when we were shown those two pages in issue eleven of all those planets being hit by Koyos’ energy, that was them being successfully absorbed. And that one panel, where Nemosyni was calling out to Jo until she got cut off…I guess that’s supposed to be where she and the rest of the Guardians were absorbed? I don’t know, it’s really unclear, and neither the writing or the art did anything to communicate the fact that their disintegration and absorption was successful, because it looked like it was only just starting, and I don’t know how we were supposed to understand that all those characters were dead.
I also don’t really get how the rings came back, especially since Hal’s ring is apparently the same one he got from Abin Sur, which was destroyed in Emerald Twilight and used to forge Kyle’s first ring. Does this mean that Jo still has her exact, unique ring she’s had since Far Sector? Is all of this possible because there’s now literal magic mixed in with their power source? I really have no idea.
There’s also the matter of Keli still being in a coma, and her gauntlet somehow vanishing. I’m all for leaving unanswered questions to be explored in the next couple arcs, but this isn’t the way to do that. Look at how the mystery surrounding Simon was presented, and how that has me excited to see what comes next for him…compare that to everything related to Keli and her gauntlet, and it feels like a couple of lines thrown in as an afterthought, just to reassure us that she hasn’t been forgotten about, even though she hasn’t been part of the story since issue seven.
Looking back on this entire arc now, I stand by what I’ve said all along, I think this arc was a really fun ride, especially in the first half, but it ultimately suffers from being part of a bigger picture. I’ve had my share of problems with this book over the last year, but none of them were dealbreakers for me because I have faith that professional storytellers can outsmart me and come up with ideas that I can’t figure out until I’m eventually given all the pieces, and that anything that seems like a flaw now still has the potential to be a vital piece as we get closer to the end. Which is why it’s kind of detrimental that issue twelve isn’t really an ending, it’s just the end of the first third of the story, which means we don’t get the kind of cathartic payoff to all these plot lines and questions that we really need to have in order to feel good about the story. A lot of my faith in this story comes from the assumption that everything will eventually come together and make sense, but we just passed a major milestone in this story, and “eventually” just got a lot further away.
But no matter what comes next for Green Lantern, we know for a fact that both artist Marco Santucci and colorist Michael Atiyeh are officially done with their run on the book. Both of their work has been a high point of this run, especially the colors, which have only grown more vibrant and powerful as we got closer to the finale. So no matter what you think of the rest of this series, if you’ve enjoyed either of their work, reach out on social media and tell them. Spread some positivity, and help a few creators feel appreciated. And hey, Marco Santucci is the artist for Green Lantern: The Light at the End of Forever, one of the books sitting in the final four of the current DC Round Robin, so there’s always a chance we’ll get least six more issues of him drawing Lanterns in the near future.
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