DC Comics reviews 11/6/19 – Justice League #35, Batman #82

Green Lantern: Blackstars #1

I’ve enjoyed Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp’s Green Lantern even when it veered into super weird territory. With his limited series spin-off series, Morrison takes a detour over at even crazier land resulting in a disjointed and hard to follow first issue. In fairness complaining about Morrison going unconventional in his comics is a somewhat silly complaint. That level of unpredictability has always been one of his charms.

That doesn’t help him much here as Blackstars largely has Hal Jordan taking a back seat while Belzebeth prattles on and threatens an assortment of alien creatures. This also doesn’t fully connect the dots from the end of Green Lantern #12. Admittedly regular readers could fill in some blanks, but Morrison doesn’t make it easy for them. I’m sure for a lot of readers the reason to buy in to this mini-series is seeing all these events from Hal’s perspective, but he has very little dialogue and is largely a non-factor. For most of the issue it’s hard to determine if Hal is even in his right mind or is under someone’s control.

While Sharp is taking a mini break, Xermanico is perfectly suited to partner up with Morrison as the artist on this mini-series and has no problem reaching the level of detail and bizarre looking creatures Sharp made the norm in his run. Colorist Steve Oliff stays on board to provide some form of visual continuity so the artwork looks great.

There’s not a lot here to suggest that Blackstars needed a spin-off book as this storyline might have played better in Hal Jordan The Green Lantern. Morrison has earned enough faith to show some patience and wait to see where he’s going, but this wasn’t the most exciting entry point to the world of the Blackstars.

Rating: 6 out of 10