By Cat Wyatt

Green Lanterns Annual is an interesting issue, to say the least. The Lost Lantern is the first time in a long time that we’ve seen Simon, Jess, Hal, and Jon Stewart all working together for any length of time. This should be pretty exciting for those fans that have been hoping to see more interactions between our Green Lantern groups.

The issue starts with Jess and Simon flying to the Valker system. They’re here for a celebration hat only occurs every thousand years, and it’s done in honor of the Valkeans lost Green Lantern. It’s a huge honor for Simon and Jess to have been asked to give a speech for. Naturally, Jess has planned and over prepared for hers, while Simon only just found out about the whole thing…

We should probably take a minute here to talk about the Lost Lantern and what that legend entails. And yes, it is a legend. It happened so long ago that nobody is sure what the truth is anymore, but they still come together to celebrate and honor him. The most common belief and the reason they celebrate him is that he gave up his life to save his people. The planet he was protecting didn’t make it, but the people and culture did. So that’s why they remember him at the location of what had been his home planet. What looks like a planet sits in its place, but it’s actually a massive tomb for the hero. Again, there are no records going back this far, so it’s anybody’s guess on if he’s actually in that tomb or not.

Having to give a speech would normally be considered easy in comparison to a Green Lantern’s daily duties, and in any other situation that would probably be the case. But the Valkeans are very traditional and very much against anything ‘inappropriate.’ Fun fact: they consider most emotions, expressions, physical contact, and pretty much anything else you can think of as inappropriate. Not exactly the sort of people you’d want to have at a party…

After a quick and not so subtle reference to the budding relationship between Jess and Simon (take that as you please) the two are shown to their quarters. Simon seems more annoyed by the culture than anything, while it’s clear that the stress and newly added intimidation is getting to Jess.

For a guy that wasn’t even remotely prepared for his speech, and who literally decided to wing the whole thing, Simon did a decent job. Granted, the Valkeans don’t think so, but pretty sure they wouldn’t have been pleased regardless. Any emotion is too much emotion, which sounds so counterintuitive when remembering a soldier that gave his life for his people.

Meanwhile Jess’ speech…hrm. Ever heard the phrase ‘crash and burn’? Her speech could be the definition of it. She let that snobby Valkean get into her head, which resulted in her throwing out her carefully planned speech…and let’s just say that Jess cannot hash together a speech like Simon.

Everybody in the room knew her speech didn’t go well, herself, Hal, and Jon included. Obviously Simon was aware of it too, which is why he tried to cover for her sudden disappearance. And really, who can blame the girl for running after a catastrophe like that? Side note: the Valkeans noted her absence and found it to be inappropriate.

Jess took off for just a little bit of alone time to cool her head and blow off some steam. All of this is inappropriate, as a hologram version of a Valkean informed her. Anybody else getting really sick of these snobs? Anyway, Jess’ blowing off steam seem to trigger some sort of automatic defense from the planet, which promptly imprisoned her while saying it couldn’t identify her as a Green Lantern. Now that’s an interesting turn of events, isn’t it?

There are definitely a lot of pros to having a Green Lantern ring. Like the fact that it’ll alert your partner to your sudden and unexplained disappearance. Or in this case, Simon’s ring detected the sudden disappearance of Jess’ ring. With no flight trajectory for her ring that leaves only so many conclusions.

Another nice part about being a Green Lantern in Jess’ situation? She has three incredibly tough Green Lanterns that’ll come looking for her. Granted, it didn’t seem to do much good in this case, as all they did was get themselves imprisoned as well. But hey, solidarity right?

It’s interesting how they have Jess as the hyper anxious one, and yet she’s usually the most rational in these sorts of situations. At least she is once she’s given a moment to calm down and think. So it’s Jess that connects the dots with their current predicament: she was detained because this entity couldn’t identify her as a Green Lantern. That coupled with the fact that she’s surrounded by Green Lantern energy tells her one thing. The entity is using a ring (or other power source) older than hers, and it’s been out of the network, so to speak for too long. It’s out of date, literally.

With that in mind Jess decided to adapt her ring so that they could actually communicate with whoever is running this place. Her ring seems okay, but it’ll be interesting to see if there are any permanent affects to her ‘downgrading’ her ring like that.

Her plan does work, for the record, and it has one hell of a revelation for her when she gets to the core of the problem – literally. Here we get to learn the truth of the Lost Lantern, and it’s both heartbreaking and infuriating.

The Lost Lantern was put in an impossible position by the demands of his people, or rather, by their leaders, and made the only choice he felt was left to him. While he complied with his leaders demands, he chose to punish and imprison himself as well. This is somewhat understandable, as he felt himself just as guilty as the rest for being overly emotional. Plus he likely felt that he was betraying his own people, even as he followed their orders. And we haven’t even touched upon the fact that he felt like he was betraying the Green Lanterns as well. So to say this is a complicated and emotional situation would be putting it lightly.

It was interesting how the resolution to the conflict was to take a step back, evaluation the situation, and try talking things out. While it’s fun to watch the great fights the Green Lanterns tend to get into, sometimes it’s nice to have a different way of ending things. Not every fight can be won with force, as Jess proved here.

This was an interesting story, and it was fun seeing four Green Lanterns together like this, usually when we see a group of four Lanterns its Hal, Jon, Guy, and Kyle. While that team is fun sometimes it’s nice to see something different, which is what we got here. It’ll be interesting to see how this fits in with the two plots going on for both Green Lanterns and Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps. Both of them are deep in their own plots and issues, so who knows how they made time for this ceremony.

The artwork for this issue was okay, on the whole. The constructs were spot on, which considering how big of a role they played here is a very good thing. However some of the expressions and faces were a bit off. For example Jess’ face on page 7 is downright jarring (it’s the eyes). That’s just one example, and sadly every time that sort of thing happened it did interrupt the immersion of the plot. Otherwise the artwork was good and fit in with the typical Green Lanterns art style.

Score: 4/5

Green Lanterns Annual
DC Comics