Mosaic Comics

So there’s a new direct-to-video animated Green Lantern movie that just came out, titled “Green Lantern: Beware My Power”, and most of the people I know seem really mad about it.  The movie had detractors from the moment it was first announced, with some people getting upset that John Stewart was the focus of the movie instead of their favorite character, while others were busy getting mad about perceived inaccuracies between the trailer and the comic book source material. Some people even tried to extrapolate the entire plot from the trailer and then rage against a story that they themselves made up.  And then the entire movie leaked about a week before the official release, and that opened up the floodgates of angry people who couldn’t wait to tell you why something they didn’t agree with was the worst thing in the world. Probably the worst part about being immersed in online communities is how keyed in I am to the most negative parts of Green Lantern fandom…people who wan...

Back in the middle of 2021, DC did their first Round Robin, a tournament where fans would vote to decide which characters would receive a six-issue mini-series.  One of the early matches was a pitch for a Zatanna book vs a Green Lantern book starring Kyle Rayner.  And while both of them ultimately lost the Round Robin, the thought has stuck with me…what if that match-up was an actual fight?  Who would win?  I thought it might be fun to find out, and I’ve been reading Kyle Rayner stories for decades, so I took a look at a big pile of Zatanna stories, and now I’m pretty confidant that I know how this will go. So let’s set the stage.  We’ll say that the fight takes place in a training room in the Hall of Justice, where it’s shielded so they can cut loose if they want to.  This is a friendly match between two colleagues, and the winner gets to decide what charity Batman donates a billion dollars to, so they each have a good incentive to try their best to win....

It’s impossible to overstate how important good villains are to a hero’s story.  When handled correctly, a villain can embody exactly the kinds of ideals that would challenge the hero’s world view, turning their struggle against each other into an experience that helps us better understand both characters as they become much more fleshed out and well defined in the process.  It can be easy to forget just how many villains there’ve been across the different eras of Green Lantern, ranging from household names to obscure bad guys you may never have even heard of.  And it got me thinking…out of all the Human Green Lanterns, which one has the best overall group of recurring villains?  Who’s rogues gallery does the best job of exploring, challenging, and advancing the development of the hero? First thing’s first, we are immediately eliminating John Stewart, Guy Gardner, and Simon Baz.  These three are almost entirely defined by their struggles against their own pers...