By Cat Wyatt

Green Lanterns #49 concludes the On the Run plot that has been going for the last couple of issues. Here we’ll finally get to learn why Jessica Cruz was on the run and how exactly everything ended up happening in the first place. There are still plenty of questions to be answered, but you know how it is.

As we saw at the end of the last issue, Simon has finally caught up with Jessica. One would assume, and naturally so, that Simon was furious and coming after Jess in order to arrest her. You’d be right for half of it. He is furious, but only because she didn’t trust him enough to go to him for help. He doesn’t want to arrest her – he wants to help.

This may seem odd at first, but remember that Simon has particular experiences that would predispose him to giving Jess the benefit of the doubt. Remember, he was falsely accused of terrorism once upon a time, so if anybody is going to assume that there’s a rational reason for Jess behaving this way, it’s Simon.

Jess still doesn’t remember why she acted as she did, but she knows who will have some answers for her – Accampo. There’s some good news/bad news to this situation. The bad news is that Simon’s arrival had scared off Accampo. The good news is that Simon is here and he still has his ring. So he can track and provide some extra muscle. Talk about a win-win there!

After a little plying they’re able to get Accampo to confess his side of the story. His boss, Obazaya V’Sheer, is at the center of it. He’s been having weapons created that will induce people into a violent rage – sound familiar yet? It should – Jess was hit by those very weapons. The cops that had shown up to arrest Accampo were on V’Sheer’s payroll and had intended to shoot Accampo with those weapons. If they had succeeded, Accampo would have gone into a violent rage, attacking the crooked cops and giving them the perfect excuse to kill him.

Unfortunately, they hit Jess instead. They weren’t expecting a Green Lantern to be the one attacking them, and thus they weren’t even remotely prepared for that first. While it isn’t mentioned, it’s clear that the weapons must also knock out temporary memory, since Jess still has no memory of the incident or the moments leading up to it.

Clearly, V’Sheer needs to be stopped, but it’s going to be tricky. Jess had to leave her ring behind, and Simon has to keep his ring locked down in order to keep Hal and the others from tracking it. That leaves them with little options and fewer resources for dealing with this guy. But still, they’ve got to try, right?

Their plan doesn’t go quite as well as hoped, forcing Simon to have to use the ring after all. On the bright side, this does alert Hal and the others, forcing them to show up right away. While they naturally want to arrest Simon and Jess instead of the actual antagonists here, Accampo kind of forces their hands by revealing the weapon and what is actually happening.

It’d be nice if this was the end of it, but likely it isn’t. Hal does cave and give Jess her ring back – but only because both Simon and Jess scold him soundly. After all, Hal was looking to arrest/take away Jess’ ring before this whole mess, so this was just a convenience excuse. We know that this is because Jess has altered her right, but then again, so has Hal. Why does he get to be the exception to the rule, and nobody else? While it’s nice that he concedes the point, it’s hard to avoid the fact that he did so too easily. Perhaps he’s feeling guilty for having gone after Jess in the first place? Or perhaps, once again, there’s more going on than meets the eye?

This was an okay conclusion to the plot. It’s nice that they acknowledged that Hal had been going after Jess for longer than this plot, though there are still many questions to be answered. Having Simon back Jess without hesitation was wonderful to see, even if parts of the plot got a bit clunky at times. It’ll be interesting to see if the next issue, titled What is Corrupting the Central Power Battery, is related to what has happened to Jess’ ring or not. It seems like a big coincidence, doesn’t it?

Score: 3/5

Green Lanterns #49
Publisher: DC Comics