The cosmos are gearing up for the gladiator match of the eon. In the green corner, we have Hal Jordan, now a pure agent of unharnessed Will, out to discover the truth behind the disappearance of the Green Lantern Corps. In the yellow corner, we have Sinestro, leader of the Sinestro Corps/Yellow Lanterns and the supreme face of fear throughout the universe. Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so too. Don't get me wrong, I'm not necessarily complaining about GL fighting his most awesome villain - I'm just wondering if perhaps it's come too soon? To recap: Hal Jordan has returned from his celestial form of pure Will. He's scouring random sectors of the cosmos for any information he can gather on the whereabouts of the Green Lanterns and the cause for their disappearance. Simultaneously in Sector Zero, former location of the Planet Oa and home to the Guardians of the Universe, a withered Sinestro looks out from his terrace on newly christened War World. He has won the day: the Green Lanterns are lost, the Guardians are no more and the Sinestro Corps has been accepted by the people as a force for good in the universe. The only thing left to do is to snuff out the final glimmering remnant of hope from a now extinct corps: Hal Jordan.
This was a very slow-moving issue; in fact, it felt a lot like the premiere Rebirth title, only inverted. Whereas the first one-shot was all about Hal Jordan and his awesome ability to harness and control pure unfiltered Will, here the focus is all on Sinestro and his ability to do the exact same thing, only with Fear. He absorbs the Parallax Entity in nearly the identical way as Hal Jordan, thus illustrating the dichotomous split between the two former allies: one as a force for good, the other for evil (yes, an oversimplification but it works). It leaves an all too familiar taste in the reader's mouth, almost as if this was just a straight continuation from the Rebirth one-shot. It's not bad, just kind of boring.
The art is a completely different topic altogether; it's good, real good. After seeing Ethan Van Sciver's efforts in the initial Hal Jordan & The Green Lantern Corps: Rebirth, I thought the artistic bar was way out of reach; enter Jordi Tarragona & Rafa Sandoval. Their combined work is breathtaking, inspired even. Green Lantern is a unique character in the DC Universe because his rendering has to be immaculate; the impressionistic approach just doesn't work for him. More so, it takes a very special kind of artist to really bring GL to life. Someone who is the perfect balance of skill, imagination and attention to detail. It's rare to find a single artist who possesses all of these merits in sync; to have two is nothing short of excellence.
It's obvious that Venditti is building towards what will inevitably be an awesome showdown between Hal Jordan and Sinestro. I would have hoped for a little bit more plot progression since the issue so closely mirrors the Rebirth one-shot but that can be forgiven, it is only the first issue after all. A lot of questions were raised without answer: how will a now rejuvenated Sinestro conduct himself and the Yellow Lanterns? Will Hal Jordan be able to control and contain the sheer power of his newly forged ring? And perhaps most importantly, when he struck the hammer to the anvil, did anyone else in the universe hear it?
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