Hal Jordan And The Green Lantern Corps #48 - DC Comics

HAL JORDAN AND THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS No. 48, Early September 2018

Chock-full of the Green Lantern Corps and featuring some truly scintillating space-based shenanigans of the highest order, Robert Venditti’s script for “Divided And Conquered” must surely have pleased each and every one of the publication’s 28,341 bibliophiles in July 2018. For whilst the twenty-page periodical’s plot quite understandably predominantly focuses upon the tense exploits of its titular character and his secret mission to stealthily infiltrate the Darkstar Stronghold “when everyone else is fighting” so as to “cut the head off the snake” by disconnecting the Controllers’ brains from the isolationist’s factory, the Florida-born writer’s penmanship is equally as up to the challenge of providing his audience with a comprehensive understanding as to just how the large scale invasion of Mogo is progressing as well.

Indeed, arguably this twenty-page periodical’s highlight is Kilowog’s bravely defiant defence of the Green Lanterns’ sentient homeworld, as the Bolovaxian geneticist leads the intergalactic police force in a noble counter-charge against Tomar-Tu of Xudar and his oribiting fellow Darkstars. Stunningly pencilled by Rafa Sandoval across a series of wonderful pulse-pounding panels, the widowed scientist’s fisticuffs with Tomar-Re’s beaked son provides plenty of punch and truly captures the sheer savagery of the fighting between two sides whose moral compasses are totally incompatible; “I know yer some poozer, Tomar-Tu. Don’t have what it takes to stay green, so you went and changed colours. You’ll be black and blue when I’m through with ya!”

Similarly as riveting a read though, has to be Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner’s fantastic-looking use of solid-light constructs to literally drive through their cold-hearted homicidal opposition. Whether this publication’s audience preferred the former Baltimore policeman’s “pedal to the metal” monster truck bowling over countless “jackasses”, or the one-time White Lantern’s far more sophisticated-looking Gundam-styled robot sweeping the spaceways clear with its over-sized samurai sword, the pairs side-by-side battle against a veritable tidal wave of mantle-wearing murderers is hard to fault.

In fact, Venditti’s narrative for Issue Forty Eight of “Hal Jordan And The Green Lantern Corps” even debatably will have had its fans cheering for the likes of the devious General Zod and Hector Hammond as the Kryptonian dictator temporarily allies himself alongside the likes of Arkillo and Orion in order to temporarily incapacitate swathes of Darkstars with his formidable eye-lasers. Whilst the “God Brain” provides the American author’s serious screenplay with some levity when he humorously bestows upon John Stewart and others the mental illusion of being at a celebration, a baseball game and a beach bathing party simply because “I just want everyone to be happy.”

Writer: Robert Venditti, Penciller: Rafa Sandoval, and Inker: Jordi Tarragona