REVIEW: Convergence: Green Lantern Parallax #1

STORY BY:Â Tony Bedard
ART BY:Â Ron Wagner, Bill Reinhold
PUBLISHER:Â DC Comics
RELEASE DATE:Â Apr 15th, 2015

As a contender for “longest title of the week” this book is in pretty good shape. As part of the ongoing Convergence event however, how does it shape up?

Three weeks in and my opinion regarding Convergence has changed from quietly hopeful to a melancholy “what’s the point?”. Seems to me that DC are putting out books which fall into two distinct camps, fan favourites such as Steph Brown Batgirl and New Teen Titans and books with characters and ideas that everyone hated Azbats (which is kinda ironic what with Mecha-Bat is out soon) and Hal Jordan as the villain Parallax. Those books in the former, if done right, act as a fond reminder and for the latter they serve as a push towards the current series, implying that the new books aren’t as bad as previous runs.

Tony Bedard is on hand for the re-visitation of Hal and Kyle. Both are powerless thanks to the dome, Hal suffering from the grief of his kinda recent actions. Bear in mind that recent means quite a number of years ago. Then lo and behold the dome comes down and off we go to defend this Metropolis against Lectropolis. It’s all pretty much by the numbers by this point. Bedard does his best, but to be fair it’s hard to bring your A-game when the book will have no repercussions. In fact GL fans will point out that Jordan as the big bad and how Kyle’s girlfriend was killed were two of the worst ideas used. Meaning that Bedard is kind of on a loser from the get go.

Ron Wagner is on art duties and does a good job in places, the prison scenes are great, yet falls into by the numbers when the dome comes down.

I liked Kyle as Â GL back in the day. However, it seems that DC are giving him a short shift. The book is clearly a Parallax book. Hopefully the second issue will allow Kyle to show how good a GL he was. But by that time, I am worried that my disappointment over the whole Convergence event may have turned me a little Parallax.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Author Profile

Johnny "The Machine" Hughes

I am a long time comic book fan, being first introduced to Batman in the mid to late 70's. This led to a appreciation of classic artists like Neal Adams and Jim Aparo. Moving through the decades that followed, I have a working knowledge of a huge raft of characters with a fondness for old school characters like JSA and The Shadow

Currently reading a slew of Bat Books, enjoying a mini Marvel revival, and the host of The Definative Crusade and Outside the Panels whilst also appearing on No-Prize Podcast on the Undercover Capes Podcast Network