Seeding Distrust Within The Corps In Green Lanterns #52

A group of Green Lanterns have arrived too late to help a fallen comrade and are now under fire by an army of starships, firing down on them. As if this wasn’t enough, the rings seem to be putting the Lanterns against one another, messing with their communications and dropping messages that seed distrust. Can Hal Jordan swoop in and save the day?

We’re into part three of “Evil’s Might” and we don’t have much more in terms of information for this Green Lanterns arc. As it stands, not much has changed from the first chapter back in issue #50. There’s more intrigue and mystery as a strange voice is sending messages to specific Lanterns, but that’s been the case all along. We’re no closer to figuring out who’s behind this.
It is interesting to see just how much the Lanterns rely on their rings. They don’t question what’s happening at all. They just assume that these people that they’ve worked side by side with for years have suddenly flipped out and started acting crazy. Granted, this kind of stuff has happened to most of them before, but still, you’d think they’d try to talk to each other before flying off the handle.

Green Lanterns #52 reveals that the rings have little to no security. You know how some folks are worried that smart home devices like thermostats and doorbells could be hacked? Imagine having a Green Lantern ring, one of the most powerful weapons in the universe, getting hacked and causing an untold amount of damage and possible loss of life. You’d think they’d have better antivirus software on those things.
Marco Santucci’s artwork makes up for some of the story’s shortcomings. This issue opens in an all out war with the Lanterns in the midst of heated space combat. It’s like something out of Star Wars. Lasers are flying in every direction. The Lanterns are the sole opposition for this massive fleet that is decimating the planet below. Most of the ring-slingers are just firing energy beams, but we get occasional constructs keeping the invading forces at bay, such as a huge tomahawk from Guy Gardner or a jackhammer from Kyle Rayner.

The green energy pulses like a shining beacon of hope in the stars. Colorist Hi-Fi captures this perfectly. I wonder what shade of green this is as it’s always the same color, radiating brightly off the page. In this case, it contrasts with the bright yellow and orange of the ships’ laser blasts.
Although we are no longer to learning who is behind this conspiracy, Santucci creates a great framing device to underscore where this is coming from. The very first page is broken up in a nine panel grid that opens with a close up on an evil grin and shining red eyes before zooming out to reveal it’s hidden within a ring. This sequence is shown in reverse on the final page.

You get a real sense of the stress the Lanterns are under from Dave Sharpe’s letters. There are many instances where the words jump in size and pop out of their word balloons. This jives with the combat setting and all the violence expanding around them. I did smile a bit at the name of the fallen Lantern, Penelops and how serious Hal Jordan takes it. He practically yells the alien’s name like William Shatner shouting “KHAN!” in Star Trek 2 and it’s a pretty ridiculous sounding moniker.

This arc in Green Lanterns feels like a retread of the War of the Green Lanterns storyline from a few years ago. You’d think the ring-slingers would be better prepared for something like this by now. There’s an added element of these new forces and whatever Eon is, but it doesn’t quite come together. I have faith in writer Dan Jurgens, however I hope this arc picks up soon as we’ve basically been treading water for these three issues.
Green Lanterns #52 from DC Comics is currently available at your local comic shop and digitally through ComiXology and Amazon Kindle.