The Good
The Green Lanterns have really been through the ringer the past few years with event after event threatening to destroy the universe or the corps or something. Now, with a little bit of downtime, John Stewart and a few Lanterns head out to Zarox to help put an end to the criminal organization known as the Shadow Market. However, the Shadow Market is not your typical criminal organization. They're something much scarier.
While this issue starts off as a pretty straight-forward story of the Lanterns heading off somewhere to take a look at something mysterious going down, writer Van Jensen quickly pushes the story somewhere completely different. It delves into the world of myth and lore, which was not only an interesting turn, but one that really elevated this story into something incredible.
The bedtime story becomes the horror that the corps will eventually have to face. The build towards this is fantastic and Jensen is really pacing the issue out well, but those last four pages are what push the issue into the stratosphere. A child is reading a bedtime story with his grandmother and sees something. While the Lanterns can't find these creatures, the reader gets to see them in the end, and this is just a way cool way to open up this story.
Marcelo Maiolo does some amazing work with colors on this issue. The guy is one of the best colorists working in comics right now, and he has some great moments on this particular issue. Obviously, there are moments, once again, where Maiolo will highlight a moment in the issue by giving the reader a panel of two or three flat colors. It gives the moment a great amount of importance and gives each sequence a nice break. On top of that, we have both Bernard Chang and Mirko Colak. It's hard to tell which artist worked on what, which is a very good thing, since it won't distract the reader. These artists are awesome and give this series a defining look.
The Bad
Any time anyone calls themselves "The Guardians," I start to hate them and can't trust them. That's how I roll as a Green Lantern fan.
The Verdict
With everything going on in this series and how it was tied into so many other events in the Green Lantern universe, it was safe to say fans had event fatigue from the past couple of years. What GREEN LANTERN CORPS #38 does well is break that fatigue and give readers something a bit more grounded. Van Jensen is setting up something dipped more in horror and lore than anything else and it feels like a science fiction story rather than a super-hero book, which is a fantastic way to get readers excited for this series again. This may be a two or three issue story, but if you've enjoyed any of the Green Lantern books in the past, you're going to want to pick this one up.