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Green Lantern Annual #3 - Godhead, Finale: Fall of the Gods

4

It's the epic conclusion to the Godhead event!

Warning: There are some minor spoilers for Godhead in this review. We'll try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible though. Spoilery moments will be blocked out for your viewing pleasure.

The Good

It's the finale of Godhead! Keep in mind. going into this, that three different parts of Godhead came out this week: RED LANTERNS #37, SINESTRO #8, and GREEN LANTERN ANNUAL #3. That's the reading order by the way. Make sure you read this last if you're picking up the other books.

The book is filled with some amazing action sequences. Billy Tan, with Mark Irwin, Marc Deering, and Livesay and inks and Alex Sinclair on colors provide some brilliant art that is worthy of the final issue to this gigantic arc. Right off the bat, let's talk about the four page, fold out spread. That's right, four freaking pages of awesome featuring Black Hand releasing creatures from the Source Wall. The eye travels very smoothly from left to right as you go through these four, incredibly detailed pages. The color work here is really nice as well. We have pops of oranges and reds way over at the edge of page four, while the rest of the pages are very much in the tone of the colors you'd expect while dealing with Black Hand. The rage on some of the faces here is fantastic. This is one epic scene.

While we shouldn't be just pointing out giant spreads, there's another one really worth talking about towards the ending of the book, there's this gorgeous two page spread of a Hal Jordan construct lifting up New Genesis. It's a pretty stunning piece that defines Hal as a character. Even though these New Gods have waged war on the Lanterns, Hal is still willing to help them.

The action is there, the build up has kept the readers on their toes for the past couple of months, and everything is fitting into place. Writer Robert Venditti knows what he's doing with large scale battles and characters that reside in space (See also X-O MANOWAR). He really has moved Hal forward as a character in this event, and he's really developed Black Hand as a character and made him his own.

We do get a bit more of Black Hand here. He's a part of the show, but doesn't distract. Venditti gave him a very distinctive voice and has him on the edge of insanity the whole ride. While Johns had him be a bit more dark and sinister, Venditti's version of the character is ultimately a bit more terrifying because of how unaffected he seems with the idea of death and the war raging around him. The whole issue really balances out characters extremely well and ties up loose ends. With so much going on in this event, it's hard to imagine that everything would wrap up this nicely, but it does.

The Bad

The problem with the conclusion to all of this is that it's almost an unbelievable change in character for Highfather. He realizes that humans aren't so bad after they save New Genesis ad after Kyle tells Highfather that he's becoming his brother, Darkseid, with his tactics against the Lanterns. For such an epic battle, it just felt a bit of a weak ending. It was good but just doesn't live up to the rest of the event.

The Verdict

Events from the big two have been pretty dang mediocre, and while event fatigue has taken its toll on all comic book readers, Godhead is one of the few events in recent memory actually worthy of a read from start to finish. Venditti and crew truly knew what they were doing here and while there were some bumps along the road, overall, this was a fantastic event and a finale worthy of the story. Sure, the Highfather turn seemed to be handled a tad hastily, but all-in-all, this was a wonderful story both in concept and execution.