GREEN LANTERN #36 came out this week. It was the first part of act two of the Godhead story line. While the various Lantern corps have been meeting and battling members of the New Gods, act two slows things down and drops a ton of infobombs on the readers. Writer Robert Venditti revealed a lot about the arc, its characters, and the history of the DCU pre-52. Here's what we learned this week.
Warning: There are spoilers to GREEN LANTERN #36 here. You've been warned.
5. In-fighting between New Gods
The New Gods all seem to be working towards the same goal: make the Life Equation into a weapon to use on Darkseid and destroy Apokolips. While the New Gods seem like the antagonist for this event, their actions are for the greater good. However, we see problems between father and son. As you may or may not know, if you read GREEN LANTERN: NEW GUARDIANS #35, Highfather helped Kyle Rayner and took him back to New Genesis because working with the Lanterns is easier than killing them off. His son, Orion, wants to fight and stop the Lanterns from draining the emotional spectrum. They're not worthy to have the power, in his eyes. Orion is a fighter and ends up leaving claiming it's the only thing he has a talent for. Could this lead to more turmoil within the New Gods ranks?
4. Everyone knows about Kyle Rayner
Kyle Rayner "died" a long time ago, saving the universe after Relic tried to stop the different Lantern corps from draining the universe of the emotional spectrum. However, the Guardians knew Rayner survived and he's been to the other side of the source wall. After quite some time, the Guardians reveal to the Green Lantern and Sintestro Corps that he's survived and no one is happier than Saint Walker. In addition, they reveal they lost Rayner, as he went onto New Genesis.
3. Blackest Night & Brightest Day are canon in a sense
One thing that reader have been unsure of since the start of the New 52 is which classic DC stories actually happened in New 52 continuity? Lots of new series seemed fresh and in their own world, but GREEN LANTERN seemed like more of a continuation of the Pre-52 run. As shown in the picture above, Sinestro mentions Blackest Nights and Brightest Days while going over their history together, pretty much letting everyone know that these stories happened in continuity. These were two huge story arcs in the last volume, so it's great to see that these events happened in the past. However, they may not happened exactly as we all remember because it was a different world. Does this mean that there's even more stories from Johns' iconic run that happened in the New 52?
2. An uneasy truce
Sinestro trained Hal Jordon. They've always had a bizarre father/son relationship. However, they work surprisingly well as a team. When there's something larger that one man can't handle on his own, Hal and Sinestro are usually good about setting aside their differences in order to fight the powers at hand. Here, Sinestro and Hal make amends, for now, and team up to find out what's going on with Kyle and the New Gods. This is a team up that needs to happen if the members of the Lantern corps want to survive this event.
1. Hal asks Black Hand for help
In the biggest "no way" moment of the issue, Hal realizes that the New Gods have searched out a member of every lantern corps in existence, except for one: the Black Lanterns. Although they aren't the powerhouse they used to be, Black Hand is still kicking around and running an all-undead circus that featuring the Flying Graysons and Harry Houdini. As twisted as that may be, Hal Jordan comes to the undead circus to ask for Black Hand's help, giving off the idea that this story is so large and problematic that Hal even has to work with one of his most twisted villains.
There you have it. Some huge things happened this week in GREEN LANTERN. What did you guys think of this issue and where it's headed?