Customer Reviews

Tales of the Green Lantern Corps, Vol. 1

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This reprints amongst other things the mini-series from 1981, which has huge implications for Blackest Night and the Black Lantern Corps. This mini is a big space epic, the first ever of the new genre of epic mini-series, preceding Contest of Champions, Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars and Crisis on Infinite Earths. Rather than random stories about alien Green Lanterns, this series contains the seeds of Geoff Johns' work on GL since Rebirth and including the Sinestro Corps War.

While Staton has a more cartoony than realist style, he's a consumate GL artist and has illustrated one of the most popular period of the series, teamed with Steve Englehart in the mid-80s. His slick look is still a clear influence on the current artists of GL such as Ivan Reis. Contributors include Mike W. Barr, Len Wein, Paul Kupperberg, Robin Snyder, Kurt Busiek and Todd Klein; Art by Joe Staton, Dave Gibbons, Carmine Infantino, and others; Cover by Brian Bolland.

Presenting the 3-issue TALES OF THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS miniseries from 1981! Also included are backup Corps stories from GREEN LANTERN #148, 151-154, 161, 162 and 164-167.

I became a huge Green Lantern fan after reading the more recent work (Rebirth, Sinestro Corp) and loved this trade paperback because it pulled together stories from 20 years ago that are heavily part of the mythos and backstory. I enjoyed also that it wasn't just Hal Jordan stories- I'm glad he was there, but they highlighted the fact that the Corp is a polyglot, and featured some on the non- human Green Lanterns. Knowing something about these characters makes them much more powerful as supporting characters when following Hal Jordan's storyarchs.

This was a fun collection of different Green Lantern tales from members of the Corps all over the Universe. Lots of strange weird fantasy worlds and characters. Of course we have our main man Hal Jordan, but there is so much more packed into this. Beware the power! Green Lantern's light!

The Green Lantern Corp are an intersellar police force made up of being from across the universe. While the Green Lantern comic usually focuses on the Earthling members this book puts the focus on the many fascinating alien heroes created over the years. In fact the section starring Earth's Lantern is weakest part of the book.

This collection opens with the 3 part mini-series Tales of the Green Lantern Corps where the entire corps must face off against Nekron, lord of the unliving. Years later this story would inspire the Blackest Night cross over which is probably the only reason this was reprinted. Unfortunately it's a deeply flawed story. In order to make Hal Jordan look heroic the writer make the rest of the corps look like fools. Faced with a threat to the entire universe they give up and prepare to go home and wait for the end. Twice. Luckily Hal is there with a heroic speech to win them back.

After the Nekron story we get several short stories about some of the alien Green Lanterns. These are much better, more focused and filled with cute ideas. We see a pacifist Green Lantern try to stop invaders without violating her principals, an apprentice try on the ring for the first time, and a retiring Lantern get a surprise.

This book is interesting but nothing too special, I found Vol 2 slightly more interesting since it focused entirely on the aliens while this book was weighted down with a mediocre beginning.