By Cat Wyatt

This issue of the Green Lanterns is the 50th, and therefore it’s certainly got something special in mind. For one thing, it’s longer than the standard issue, with a few extra pages thrown in for our benefit. The issue itself is titled ‘Evil’s Might Part One’ which certainly doesn’t sound good. It doesn’t look like they’re doing a tie-in with what has been happening in Hal Jordan, which means we’re about to see another major event happening in the outer universe for DC.

This issue starts off on Mogo, where we see one of the Guardians meditating. While we have no idea what it is he’s sensed. Clearly, he’s found it to be very alarming. Naturally, that’s concerning for us, though the Guardians have been known to overreact. They’ve also been known to under-react, so grain of salt and all that.

Meanwhile, John Stewart is in space sector 0811 responding to a distress call. There’s nothing much here, except for a damaged ship. It leaves you wondering who it was that called out for help. While John is doing a thorough check of the ship – because naturally, he needs to know what happened – he finds himself getting attacked by an unknown source.

We haven’t been shown much of his attacker, or really anything at all at this point. We know that they use blue energy of some sort and that they have many ships with them. If we assume that they’re hostile, and so far their actions seem to indicate so, then we could safely call this an invasion.

If said invasion is happening around the same time as the Darkstar threat…we don’t even need to go into explaining how bad that would be. The Green Lantern Corps are already stretching their resources too thinly. Not to mention they’re facing a threat that’s potentially out of their league. No need to throw more into that mix, is there?

The individual created that gets out of his ship to attack John looks oddly familiar. He’s wearing a blue and gold uniform, and has stark white hair. He keeps rambling about how John is not one of them; not one of the effort, not one of the direction. While he believes John is none of those things, he didn’t seem to have any problems teleporting him away from the spot.

Worse, John’s ring doesn’t seem to be helping him much. Actually, it could be argued that it’s making things worse. Such as when it reported that everything was fine, instead of calling for backup. That is…terribly concerning. There are very few things that can so easily confuse or override a lantern ring like that, and none of them are good.

Meanwhile on planet Nideesi, Guy and Kilowog are being kept busy. They’ve been talking with the High Priestess; or rather they’ve been trying to. Guy isn’t exactly the most patient of people, so it’s not shocking that he’s having little patience for her riddles and lack of direct answers. Essentially she can sense a great threat, but beyond that she can’t be more specific.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you want to view it, a man named L’Call can give them more information. You need, he’s come across the enemy, and he did not fare well in the fight. So now our two lanterns must rush off to get him medical aid before they can get more answers out of him. Though at least they have a better idea now, which is something.

While all of that craziness is going down, Jessica is on earth just trying to enjoy a day off. You’ll be surprised to note that she’s in a club – yes, you read that right. She’s been working really hard on her anxiety, and as it turns out if she can just let go and focus on the dancing she does pretty well for herself. This is fantastic news!

Unfortunately her good time is interrupted by Kyle and Simon. Apparently Kyle has been running them through training exercises, and part of his training is teaching them to be ready for anything to happen anytime. Which means that they’re training can happen even when they’re ‘on break,’ just like real life.

The Guardians have converged, and they all agree they don’t like what they’re sensing. It’s both familiar and not. More worrying is that they can’t reach John or Hal, and they’re second choices, Kilowog and Guy, are already out on their own mission, which at this point includes checking in on John Stewart, who hasn’t reported in for some time. That just leaves Kyle and the two new recruits.

John is still facing off against this unknown enemy, which is impressive considering how powerful he appears to be. John’s ring seems to be working marginally better, but obviously there are some lingering concerns over what happened earlier.

And as it turns out, there is a very very good reason to still be concerned about his ring. While it happily shields him and creates any construct asked, it will not call out for help. Now, this raises a lot of interesting questions. Is the ring betraying John here, or are we missing the bigger picture? Perhaps the ring is afraid to bring more Green Lanterns against this threat? Maybe it hopes to create containment by avoidance? Without more information it’s hard to do anything other than theorize.

Meanwhile Kyle and his team have arrived on Mogo just in time to realize that they’re help is desperately needed. There’s a storm raging on Mogo, something none of them can ever recall experiencing. Mogo is normally capable of controlling the weather on him, or at least that is what has always been assumed. It’s never so much as rained there…but now they’re facing storms strong enough to take down buildings. Worse, Mogo doesn’t seem to be responding.

It’s clear that something very wrong is going on here. It could be stemming from the rings themselves, but again without more evidence… The team is forced to split up to deal with the damage. Jess and Kyle are working on keeping the buildings upright, while Simon has been sent inside to help with the evacuation efforts.

If you’ve been worried about John this whole time, never fear. That guy is a fighter. By the time Guy and Kilowog find him he is not in good shape, but it’s likely a lesser lantern would not have survived. So give him credit where credit is due. It’s also worth noting that John is unconscious, and yet the ring’s constructs are still keeping him alive and breathing. That tells us something about the rings corruption, surely?

The Evacuation efforts on Mogo don’t go exactly as planned, or hoped. We’re left with even more questions about what has happened to our wonderful Green Lantern Corps. Just how far does this corruption go? Who can and can’t be trusted? And what about the rings? Can we trust anything that they’ve been reporting?

This was an interesting issue. They’re clearly building up for something big here, but it’s anyone’s guess where they’re going to go with it. It should be interesting though. Seeing how tough John is was pretty cool, though obviously it stinks to see him hurt so badly. Here’s hoping he comes back with a fury – it’d be incredibly satisfying to see him kick some blue butt after all of this is said and done.

Score: 4/5

Green Lanterns #50
DC Comics