Flashpoint- The World of Flashpoint Featuring Green Lantern
Quick Summary
Pros: The three main story arcs are exciting, emotional, and contain a great message. All of the stories provide an interesting and enjoyable twist on familiar concepts. The volume’s artwork is almost all positive.
Cons: The Green Arrow chapter is just alright. The Hal Jordan story concludes with a somewhat unoriginal ending.
Overall: This Flashpoint tie-in volume gathers together a number of solid stories. The vast majority of the collection combines satisfying and meaningful storytelling with artwork that complements it. There are a few negative features but nothing too significant. As a whole, this volume can be for anyone but will really appeal to fans of Green Lantern, fans of Frankenstein, or fans of more emotional stories in general.
Story
Flashpoint: The World of Flashpoint Featuring Green Lantern collects a series of mostly positive stories. Many are marked by emotional tales of sacrifice and dedication, where monsters have more humanity than people or where heroes are forced to do what is right no matter what the cost. Many of these stories also feature creative subversions of standard DC Comics formulas, which are always interesting to see. There are a few places where the quality of these stories drops, but these drops are never too significant. In the end, this is a solid collection that performs well as a tie-in to this event.
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The World of Flashpoint Featuring Green Lantern opens with its strongest story. The Green Lantern chapters, written by Adam Schlagman, give readers a chance to see the typically doomed Abin Sur in his rightful role as Earth’s Green Lantern, subverting his standard passing of the torch to Hal Jordan. It is a wonderful twist, partly because Abin proves to be such a wonderful character. His passion for life and his dedication to doing what is right provide inspiration and work as a fantastic contrast against the grim realities of the Flashpoint universe. Plus, his story is interesting and its connections to the main event make it even better.
From here, The World of Flashpoint Featuring Green Lantern dives into the wild and weird world of Frankenstein and his monstrous comrades. This story, written by Jeff Lemire, is partly good because it is so different from most mainstream comics, swapping out dashing heroes for an honorable troupe of horror figures, but is also good because of the emotions found in these same characters. The downside is that there are places where plot points feel a little ridiculous, particularly in some of the antagonists’ actions.
Then, the volume tells a quick story about Green Arrow, written by Pornsak Pichetshote. It reimagines the Emerald Archer as a weapons manufacturer with a generally uncaring attitude about the world. The story is good while it lasts but ultimately feels too short to be truly worthwhile.
Finally, The World of Flashpoint Featuring Green Lantern closes with a story arc, written by Adam Schlagman, about a Hal Jordan who never received a Green Lantern Ring. Like the opening arc, this provides a great twist on the standard DC Universe, one that shows Hal is capable of acting without fear even when he is limited to the actions of a normal human being. It also closes on a deeply emotional final sacrifice that really hammers home this message. However, the unfortunate part about this story is that the final sacrifice feels way too similar to the very famous conclusion of Independence Day, which takes away from the experience.
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Art
The quality of the artwork in The World of Flashpoint Featuring Green Lantern ends up being similar to the quality of the storytelling, mostly positive with a few very minor exceptions. The volume’s opening story arc features some of its best artwork, mostly provided by Felipe Massafera and Robson Rocha. These chapters are able to depict the grounded reality of violence on Earth on one page and then depict gorgeous, otherworldly planets and imaginative Lantern constructs on another. Later on, Ibraim Roberson provides some dark and gritty visuals to pair with the horrific story of Frankenstein’s adventures. And finally, the volume concludes with Ben Oliver and Cliff Richards’ impressive take on Hal Jordan’s life, with structures that make the airborne combat engaging and character depictions that hit the perfect levels of emotion. There are a few minor problems throughout these stories and the Green Arrow chapter doesn’t look the greatest but, for the most part, the visuals in the book are impressive and help it.
Continuity
Flashpoint: The World of Flashpoint Featuring Green Lantern is a collection of separate tie-in comics relating back to the main Flashpoint (Review) event series. Our “Flashpoint Reading Order” explains how these comics relate to one another.