Absolute Green Lantern #6

The Absolute Green Lantern series is back for a sixth issue, with a title that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, ‘Qard, Rao, Sur, Aur’. With that, it’s time for our Absolute Green Lantern #6 review! The last issue of Absolute Green Lantern certainly left off on a compelling note, as we seem on the precipice of understanding at least a little more of what is going on in this story. Unfortunately, Absolute Green Lantern #6 didn’t end up being the gripping, narrative revelation I was hoping for – in fact, on the contrary, this sixth issue is unfortunately my least favourite issue of the comic so far.

Today, I’m talking all things Absolute Green Lantern #6, and spoilers lie ahead! Consider yourself warned! Without further ado, let’s get into the review!

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Absolute Green Lantern #6 Review

Image by DC Comics

Appropriately, Absolute Green Lantern #6 opens within the giant Green Lantern that started all of these extra-terrestrial happenings, as a golden-coated John Stewart speaks to his old friends, offering some insight as to what is going on. While there’s a lot of talk going on in Absolute Green Lantern #6, the gist of it is that all of the people that we watched die throughout the Absolute Green Lantern series so far are actually alive, but are unconsciously floating around in this miniature celestial world. While this certainly undercuts the stakes that the series had relied on up until this point, it was somewhat expected – I doubted that characters like John Stewart and Guy Gardner would actually die so early on.

This experience was also a little lost on me based purely on how creepy the whole thing is. In some ways, the world now inhabited by John Stewart feels like some sort of alien heaven, where all beings can exists ‘without fear’, but I’m not sold on this peaceful facade. There’s something sinister to this universe, something that will perhaps make for a very compelling arc in future issues, but for now just leaves me feeling uneasy. My feelings on this world were in no way helped by how much lore-dumping happens in it – Absolute Green Lantern #6 is an absolute info-dump in many ways, and while Green Lantern fans who are a little more in the know about the lore of these characters may be feasting on all of this glorious lore, I’m feeling a little left in the dust by how densely all of these explanations are being presented. Absolute Green Lantern #6 left me feeling a little overwhelmed, and not in a good way.

On the bright side, the visuals of Absolute Green Lantern are allowed to thrive in this section of the comic. While I’ve always been largely unfamiliar with the world of Green Lantern, I was always intrigued by how colourful and visually stylish the characters were, and Absolute Green Lantern #6 really plays with this visual freedom. As always, the artwork is stunning throughout the chapter, but the celestial storyline allows for Jahnoy Lindsay to really go to town on crafting an engaging and vibrant visual experience. I doubt that I will ever speak on the art of Absolute Green Lantern in a negative way, but regardless, the praise is worth re-iterating in each review – a comic like this could easily be let down by poor visuals, and Lindsay ensures that the series never falls into this trap.

Image by DC Comics

I do need to criticise Absolute Green Lantern #6, however, for its overall muddled feeling – for the sheer amount of lore-dumping and exposition that John Stewart provides in this issue, we still don’t know a lot about what’s actually going on in this series at a logistical level. Don’t get me wrong, there’ll always be the element of the unknown within this series – that’s inevitable considering its cosmic horror identity (which I do feel it’s lost somewhat across these past few issues). However, it feels like Absolute Green Lantern #6 has gotten us to a point where the characters in this story have a greater understanding of what’s going on than we, the reader, do, which is never a great look when it comes to superhero stories.

For all of its pensiveness regarding extra-terrestrial topics, however, it’s remarkable how quickly Absolute Green Lantern #6 blasts through long-standing issues in the series, making them feel like wasted time in previous issues in hindsight. The entire conflict of ‘The Black Hand’ feels like it gets glossed over here, as Sojourner essentially tells it to ‘let go’ of Hal. Unfortunately, this entire sequence raises the question of not only how Jo pulled this off, but also of why we spent so much time dealing with this issue from the very beginning of Absolute Green Lantern, if we just needed to tell it to leave Hal alone? I’m sure ‘The Black Hand’ has not been completely eradicated, and so it’s likely that its grasp lingers on Hal, but still – the entire thing feels choppy and unfocused.

While I’m sure many Absolute fans will appreciate the mention of Gotham City in Absolute Green Lantern #6 (and admittedly, it excited me a little), this dialogical cameo actually raises some concerns for me about the impending arrival of Absolute crossovers. With an Absolute Batman and Absolute Wonder Woman crossover on the horizon, and Absolute Evil looking to unite the universe’s villains in the near future, it raises concerns for me about how well these series’ are standing on their own, before taking on any sort of crossovers. In its current state, I don’t believe that Absolute Green Lantern is ready for any interaction with the other Absolute properties, and while this Gotham mention doesn’t confirm that happening any time soon, it does raise some eyebrows about just how soon DC will be looking to merge these storylines together.

Image by DC Comics

Absolute Green Lantern #6 ends with Jo and Hal crashing at an old friend’s place, as Hal seems to be recovering from the forced removal of ‘The Black Hand’ from his body. I would imagine the upcoming issues of Absolute Green Lantern will see Jo taking on some more street-level hero’ing as busy work while Hal recovers, but in many ways I think this structure highlights the real flaws of Absolute Green Lantern as a whole. There’s some very high-level cosmic horror ideologies going to work in this series, and too often they’re contrasted with underbaked, dare I say boring, human storylines. We’ll have to wait and see what Absolute Green Lantern #7 delivers to confirm my hypothesis on this, but something tells me things are going in that direction.

So, Absolute Green Lantern #6 was far from the enlightening issue of this series that I was hoping for, but it certainly raised some interesting theoretical talking points about the nature of this universe, and when paired with such stunning visuals, there’s still a good time to be had here. What do you think of the sixth issue of Absolute Green Lantern? Be sure to let us know in the comments, and thanks for reading!

See also: Absolute Superman #10 Review

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