ACW #602 – Green Lantern

Action Comics Weekly #602 – Green Lantern
“Requiem”
Writer – James Owsley
Art – Gil Kane
Letters – Albert DeGuzman
Colors – Anthony Tollin
Editor – Denny O’Neil

Hey, welcome back for the second week of #ActionComicsDaily… and look what we have here, a beautiful George Perez Green Lantern cover!


Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that… 


… except… hey, wait a sec… can we get a zoom?

No, no… just a little bit more.

Oh man, ring’s on the wrong finger!


—

We pick up right where we left off last week, Katma Tui lay dead in John Stewart’s apartment… and Hal has just returned from robbing a South African Mine (I’m sure that’ll never come up again).  John is, understandably upset, and recounts his discovery.  Ya see, Star Sapphire hung around until John returned so she could inform him that this slaughter was a “message” for Hal Jordan.  Hal does what any responsible hero would do… gets outta dodge!

We jump ahead several days to Katma’s funeral service… and learn that when Guy Gardner learned of her passing… dude just laughed.  Ice cold.

Speaking of “ice cold”, after the funeral ends, Star Sapphire shows up and pushes a bunch of the mourners into an open grave with a bulldozer!  This springs Hal into action.

He gives Carol chase through the skies, however is pulled away when she blasts an Air Force jet that is passing over the city.  Hal’s gotta decide whether to continue pursuing the baddie, or abandon the chase and, ya know, save a whole bunch of lives.

Naturally, our man chooses the latter… and, while the jet does crash causing plenty of property damage, he sees to it that it’s just about the safest crash on record.  The pilot gets out, and several willpower constructs manage contain the impact.  We wrap up with the pilot approaching our Lantern and offering him a copy of the Coast City White Pages, which he claims was given to him by “that… crazy broad”.  Hal takes a peek and finds Carol Ferris’ listing has been circled.

—

When we took a look at the first part of this serial, it almost didn’t even feel like a superhero story.  I mean, we did have Hal in costume for part of it (when he was stealing diamonds)… but, otherwise it felt kind of like a slice of life.  The Stewarts tiring of Hal and Arisia’s loafing, Katma being killed by Hal’s crazy ex-girlfriend while making dinner… it just felt, I dunno “different”.


This installment kinda brings us back into more or less straightforward superheroics, what with the battle over Coast City, and diverting from the chase to save the day.  That’s not a bad thing, but it is a little bit jarring… least it was for me.  I guess maybe I was just looking for a little more interpersonal stuff.  Though, too much of that could become indulgent.  I guess it’s a fine line.


The highlight here was the insane funeral scene.  First, we hear that Guy Gardner, jerk-face that he is, actually laughed when he had heard that John lost his wife!  That seems almost beyond the pale… even for Guy, doesn’t it?  I mean, I don’t know how John and Guy ever worked together again after that… I’d just wanna beat the hell out of him anytime we crossed paths!


Then… we get the absolute nuttiness of Carol sweeping a bunch of mourners into an open grave.  It’d be hysterical if it wasn’t so tragic!  I guess it just goes to show that Carol is completely out of her mind… and, in that regard… it does the job!


Overall, while I think I’d have preferred a bit of a more “chatty” chapter considering we just lost a long-term Lantern, I understand the necessity of moving the story along to its next beat.


Tomorrow: Major Kasaba can SEE Deadman… but how?!