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What do you get when you mix Atrocitus, Guy Gardner, Ganthet, and a secret agenda? Well, Emerald Warriors of course!! Peter J. Tomasi, Fernando Pasarin, and Cam Smith have come together to bring us a third Green Lantern title.

Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors

Writer: Peter J. Tomasi
Penciller: Fernando Pasarin
Inker: Cam Smith
Colorist: Randy Mayor
Letterer: Steve Wands
Cover: Rodolfo Migliari
Editors: Eddie Berganza and Adam Schlagman

With an ever-expanding universe, it was only a matter of time before a new Green Lantern title would hit the shelves. What was once a universe filled only with green, now we have many more colors from the spectrum filling our eyes. Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors showcases just a few more of the characters we have come to love.

At the end of Blackest Night, Guy Gardner had a secret meeting with Ganthet and Atrocitus, which left readers with many questions. Why was Gardner claiming that Hal will hate him by the end of his mission? What is so dire that Ganthet and Guy need to team up with someone like Atrocitus? Well, reading through Emerald Warriors #1 and #2, few questions are answered.

Atrocitus’s motives are being kept very quiet. He has made a deal with Guy Gardner, and is sitting back, waiting for Guy to complete the mission. He has sent Bleez to make sure that Guy stays on the “straight and narrow” and completes his task.

Now, while it may seem that Guy is alone in this, he is not. He is joined by two other somewhat famous Lanterns, Arisia and Kilowog. His two fellow corpsmen join him for completely different reasons, though. Arisia, who is really infatuated with Sodam Yat, wants to visit Daxam to see if he can be saved. Kilowog on the other hand, is tired of training rookie Lanterns, and wants to see the stars for some action.

As for Guy, well he is up to something big. REALLY big. So big, that he questions his legacy nearly the whole second issue, as if what he is doing will lead to his death. Tomasi is hinting as if Guy is on some sort of suicide run, a mission that upon completion, will be the end of Gardner.

The interior artwork really reminds me of Gleason’s stuff from Green Lantern Corps. The colors are identical, but the characters are drawn a bit cleaner. I enjoy most panels, but sometimes I feel like the characters get lost in an explosion. The close-ups are done really well, but when the view pans a bit farther out, you lose a lot of detail in the characters. I’m curious to see how Pasarin fares when he really has to draw a ton of characters in each panel like Gleason had to.

Tomasi had a pretty good run with Green Lantern Corps. It ran alongside the regular Green Lantern title pretty well, and I hope that Emerald Warriors can do the same. These first two issues have been pretty mysterious, with not a whole lot of substance. They seem to be setting up for some intriguing stories, but haven’t been too captivating thus far. I hope that it will pick up some steam in the near future.

Buy/ Skip/ Fanboys Only

This is definitely not a book for everyone. You have to have followed Blackest Night, and have some vested interest in Gardner, Kilowog, Arisia, and even Atrocitus to want to follow this title at all. I’m hoping that very soon we are going to see a lot more of the b-list characters of the other corps (like we have in the brief appearances of Bleez and Brother Warth), in order to make this book more appealing. So far, the brightest point of this series has been the amazing covers by Migliari.

Mike Parente
mike@comicattack.net