Green Lantern Corps #24 Review

GREEN LANTERN CORPS #24
Written by Peter J. Tomasi
Art by Patrick Gleason and Prentis Rollins

Well, Mongul is one messed up individual. Apparently, the planet he's seeded with the Black Mercies has a ring around it. Nothing special, right? We've seen lots of planets with ring formations. Hell, our solar system has a bunch of them in the outer parts. Well, not like this one. It's made of dead bodies and it's thick enough to impede the Lanterns' descent to the planet. Awesome.

Oh, speaking of the Black Mercies, I was afraid this issue would turn into a rehash of the last Green Lantern appearance by Mongul where Ollie and Hal had perfect dream worlds for two issues before taking down Mongul in the span of a few pages. Well, not this time. It appears Mongul has reverse engineered the Black Mercies to be more in line with the Sinestro Corps' fear motif and they now generate absolute fears for those they enslave.

Ion and Arisia received a two page splash page depicting their inner fears and Ion's appears to be related to the Blackest Night prophecy from back in the old Alan Moore Green Lantern Annual. It seems to have him getting attacked by shadowy figures with giant metal poles, similar to the White Lobe's stabbing him with the lead pipes in the Annual, a scene where a rainbow of rings pierce his chest, showing the various corps' rings flying through his chest, and other shots of him failing as Ion and being the "last one", in reference to last Green Lantern. Not a spot on reenactment, but pretty interesting nonetheless. Arisia's fear sequence showed her buried alive, from back when she "died", and even a shot of what looked like Parallax escaping from a Manhunter's body and jumping at her. Something to look for in the future or just random fear related dreams?

The rest of the issue deals with some boring, for me, at least, recaps of Mongul's origin and history for those that don't know who he is or only came on during the Sinestro Corps War and the search for Ion and Arisia. The GL's retrieve both, who appear to be alive, but in critical condition, but are interrupted by an angry "queen" Black Mercy that seems upset they killed so many of her children. Not sure how it will put up a fight, though.

Where was Mongul during all this? Well, he was making some kind of planet seeding gun construct as he fired the modified fear Black Mercy seeds into space to, I supose, land on random or targetted planets and begin spreading fear and taking over those planets, too. I suspect he'll show up next issue for the showdown with the Green Lanterns.

Finally, we had a seen with the sciencells on Oa, where Sinestro, and every other Sinestro Corps member held captive, begain cutting themselves and drawing symbols on their cell windows. I'm not positive, as I don't have my Corps symbols memorized, but I think they looked like the Red Lantern logo, but it could have simply been the Sinestro Corps one.

Verdict - Must Read. It was a great issue that had some very interesting developments for everyone. I enjoyed the fear dreams Ion and Arisia had, although I still dislike Ion being out of action so easily, and was impressed with Mongul's continued plans and just about everything was done right this issue with the sole exception being that boring recap section.

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