Who'd Like A Cocktail? #215

It's the car.

Delayed from the weekend, here's a quick look at last week's comics:

GREEN LANTERN #17 - Simon Baz faces off against Black Hand while we get a glimpse at what the newly-released First Lantern can do as he flexes his reality altering muscles which, thankfully, are still a little weak due to the Guardians leeching his power all these millennia. Just as Baz releases the imprisoned Guardians, Black Hand sends him to his death where he meets Jordan and Sinestro.

It's a splendid start to the Wrath of the First Lantern storyline although, if I'm honest, the premise feels a little well worn. How many times have we had the omnipotent, power crazed bad guy who wants to re-create reality? The Anti-Monitor, Hal Jordan as Parallax, Superboy-Prime. Still, it's well written and enjoyable enough.

GREEN LANTERN CORPS #17 - the First Lantern shows Guy Gardner what things would have been like in his life if Gardner had made a different decision or had been in one place rather than another and leaves him demoralised.

It's all very It's A Wonderful Life with the issue being nothing more than scenes from Guy's past being replayed with different outcomes. It's also not entirely clear how or why the First Lantern appears here - one minute he's on Oa at the end of Green Lantern #17, the next he's here. Still, nice to see that Guy's New 52 past still includes a stint as Warrior.

GREEN LANTERN: NEW GUARDIANS #17 - the First Lantern appears to Kyle Rayner and, as he did with Guy, shows him various episodes of his life with various different endings. Kyle, though, fights back unexpectedly by being both selfless in the choices he makes and willing to give everything up which the First Lantern wasn't expecting.

Again, there's no real connect between the end of Green Lantern Corps #17 and this issue. Sadly, new artist Aaron Kuder's work isn't doing it for me yet, either.

JUSTICE LEAGUE #17 - the League reserves hold their own until the main team arrive and beat the crap out of the Trench and the Atlanteans with Aquaman taking down Ocean Master and becoming King of Atlantis. There's a showdown with Vulko and while both the Trench and the Atlanteans retreat, Aquaman forces Ocean Master to be imprisoned in Bellereve. As Aquaman prepares to leave to take up his throne, poor old Mera's left alone.

Not bad at all - things get wrapped up and it ends with the League planning to get new members in, Amanda Waller starting up the new Justice League and the shadowy bad guys starting up the Secret Society.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #1 - a masked guy runs from what appears to be Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman but we'll come back to that. The rest of the issue is basically Steve Trevor and Amanda Waller discussing setting up a new JLoA with little vignettes of the characters involved. Hawkman's shown as a brutal, possibly delusional, guy; Katana's out for revenge which the new JLoA will facilitate; Vibe's compassionate and a little self-doubting; Stargirl's famous but approachable but appears to be haunted by someone with the name Pemberton; Catwoman's recruited so she can track down whoever's using her real name; and J'onn J'onnz is back in business and knows why Steve Trevor's really going along with this. Oh, and the masked guy at the start? Turns out he's Green Arrow and he's likely to have been running from Professor Ivo's androids.

It's not bad on the whole; I'm no real fan of Finch's art and some of the page compositions seem a little cramped, but maybe that's just a reaction from months of Jim Lee's multiple splash pages. It's also quite a grim start to the series - lots of veiled threats and secret plots with nary a chuckle amidst the gloomy pages - but maybe that'll change as it goes along.

SWORD OF SORCERY #5 - Amy returns to Gemworld and she and her mother head off to find out more about Amy's father who lays in state, transformed into turquoise, in his father's house. There's a bit of background and it's revealed Amy's grandfather betrayed his son and Grace years ago. The assassins hired by Mordiel strike but are defeated and a rougeish thief inherits the turquoise powers.

Not bad but, with cancellation looming, I get a sense of wrapping up and preparation for Amy to head to another title, maybe Justice League Dark.

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And what made me smile:

Geoff Johns adds another simple, effective idea to the Green Lantern mythos - the hand of creation, so tightly bound up with the GL books for decades, is shown wearing a Power Ring, something that makes so much sense, it's hard to think why it wasn't done before.