Review: Green Lantern- Wrath of the First Lantern

Quick Summary

Pros: The bulk of the event features excellent action and well-written emotions. The villain is great and his impact on the main characters adds some great drama to the narrative. The narrative features a great progression from start to finish. The event works well as an end to an important era in Green Lantern history. The artwork is almost all positive.

Cons: Some of the collection’s best features will be diminished for newer readers. The Rankorr subplot is lackluster.

Overall: This is an awesome event that captures some of the best parts of its component series. It has action, heart, drama, and a conclusion that hits all the right notes. The entire journey sucks you in at the start and keeps you interested the whole way through. Anyone familiar with Green Lantern comics should consider reading this event and anyone else should consider reading Green Lantern comics to make their way to this event.

Story

Green Lantern: Wrath of the First Lantern, by Geoff Johns, Peter Tomasi, Tony Bedard, and Peter Milligan, is an epic event that delivers on almost all fronts. The event introduces readers to the First Lantern, a powerful villain who immediately begins tormenting the event’s heroes. The physical and mental battle against this foe leads to awesome displays of action and touching displays of emotion. It also leads to a climactic conclusion that brings an end to an entire era in Green Lantern history. All of this will mean even more if readers are aware of what has been happening to the Green Lantern characters recently, though it will not be quite as appreciated by those who are not.

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Wrath of the First Lantern starts with the titular First Lantern visiting each of this event’s main characters and taunting them with emotional manipulation. His taunts range from offering to reunite them with lost loved ones, which he cruelly refuses to do, to destroying entire planets just to elicit an emotional response. His actions across these first few chapters immediately turn him into a disgusting and reprehensible villain, potentially even beyond the Guardians. This helps give the event some direction as early as possible, by giving the heroes and the reader someone to hate.

After the First Lantern torments the event’s main characters, the next portion of the narrative has them rally from their lowest point. Each of them are forced to confront the realities shown to them by the First Lantern, which, in most cases, nearly breaks their will to go on. However, instead of quitting, they redouble their efforts and set off to fight again. It is a great show of heroism that helps lead to an exciting finale.

This finale then goes off as well as the event’s other pieces. It has each of the heroes converge on the First Lantern, adding their own powers and abilities to the mix. Then, it introduces several fantastic twists as Hal Jordan comes back to life and kills the First Lantern with a living personification of Death. The victory is then expanded upon as the event details some epilogue stories, explaining how several loose ends were tied up and some independent storylines were addressed. The entire conclusion works well as an end to the event.

Speaking on this event’s conclusion, it is impossible to talk about this collection without commenting on its place within the Green Lantern mythos. This event is the cumulation of Geoff Johns’ nine year run with the Green Lantern series. This run saw Hal Jordan’s redemption, the introduction of the Emotional Spectrum, the creation of several different Lantern Corps, the Sinestro Corps War, Blackest Night, and, finally, the destruction of the Guardians of the Universe. It ends a magnificent period of storytelling by reflecting on and occasionally incorporating these concepts to make a narrative that is as epic and emotional as one would hope. Though I still consider the Blackest Night event to be the climax of this era in Green Lantern history, I feel like this event works perfectly as its conclusion.

Alongside all of this, Wrath of the First Lantern does a fantastic job in digging into the emotions of its characters. Kyle is forced to face several harsh realities from his past, Guy’s family problems continue, John’s survivor guilt is expanded upon, Sinestro’s issue with Korugar continue, Atrocitus questions the validity of his own mission, and Hal deals with his very complex history. Each of these stories add a ton of powerful emotions to this collection. However, none of them are more powerful than the ones dealt with in this book’s epilogue: as Sinestro and Hal’s parting is heartbreaking and Guy and Kyle’s time with family is heartwarming.

The only downside to all of this is that newer readers will not be able to appreciate many of this collection’s most significant positives. The impact of the conclusion will not be nearly as strong for anyone with little Green Lantern experience. In addition, none of the collection’s emotional moments will hit as hard. The writing throughout this read does a fine job in making the reader care about what is going on but newer readers will simply not have the same experience as older ones.

The only other negative is that the Rankorr storyline is lackluster. However, since this is only a small piece of the larger event, it does not have much of an impact on the book’s overall quality.

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Art

Wrath of the First Lantern has great visuals on display from start to finish. It features many of the talented artists that contributed visuals in the previous collection. This means that Doug Manhke’s serious and detailed work returns to the Green Lantern issues. Fernando Pasarin continues to depict awesome splash pages, most of which focus on some of this book’s most impressive battles, in Green Lantern Corps issues. Aaron Kuder’s work brings out great emotions in Green Lantern: New Guardians issues. And Miguel Sepulveda, once again, captures the ferocious rage of the Red Lanterns through some gruff and gritty chapters. In addition, this volume contains several beautiful pages from Szymon Kudranski, which perfectly capture the moody aesthetic of the scenes they depict.

It is also worth mentioning how wonderfully color is used throughout this collection. The First Lantern’s unique coloring immediately allows him to stand out as a villain. Meanwhile, balanced flashes of green, red, yellow, and blue make this volume’s battles look incredible. All of this is then turned on its head in a few black and white pages, which stand out as some of this volume’s best work. Overall, the visuals in this book look good and really help bring this comic to life.

Continuity

Green Lantern: Wrath of the First Lantern directly continues the story from the conclusion of Green Lantern: Rise of the Third Army (Review). It also continues many plot points from the first sixteen issues of the Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: New Guardians, and Red Lanterns series. See our “Green Lantern: Wrath of the First Lantern Reading Order” for more information.

The story here continues in the twenty-first issue of the Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: New Guardians, and Red Lanterns series. See our “Green Lantern: Wrath of the First Lantern Reading Order” for more information.

This volume also references other comic books, detailed below:

• Guy Gardner’s time as a Red Lantern is a part of the Blackest Night event.
• Many references are made to the battle against Krona and the last climatic meeting of the separate Corps. This all took place in Green Lantern: War of the Green Lanterns.
• Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend died in Green Lantern Vol. 3 #54, collected in Green Lantern: Kyle Rayner Vol. 1. 
• Kyle Rayner’s origin story is mentioned a few times. This origin story was originally shown in Green Lantern Vol 3 #50. 
• Tomar-Re died in Green Lantern Vol 2 #198, collected in Green Lantern: Sector 2814 Vol. 3.
• Mogo was killed back in Green Lantern Corps #60, collected in War of the Green Lanterns.
• Sinestro wielded a White Lantern Ring back in the Blackest Night event.
• Many pieces of Hal Jordan’s life are shown. These include:
  • His separation from Paralax in Green Lantern: Rebirth, part of Green Lantern by Geoff Johns Book One.
  • His battle against the Manhunters in Green Lantern Vol. 4 #12-13, collected in Green Lantern by Geoff Johns Book Two.
  • His fight against Sinesto and the Yellow Lanterns in Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War.
  • His encounter with the Red Lanterns in Green Lantern: Rage of the Red Lanterns.
  • His encounter with Larfleeze in Green Lantern: Agent Orange.
  • The war against the dead in Blackest Night.