REVIEW: Planet of the Apes/Green Lantern #1

Why does everyone suddenly want to go to Ape City? Tarzan just finished his adventures on the Planet of the Apes and now it looks like Hal Jordan can’t wait for his turn. No wonder the apes are mad at the humans, they are getting tons of unwanted tourists.

It all starts with Sinestro, because despite DC trying desperately to come up with another villain for Green Lantern, Sinestro is the best they’ve got. He’s busy killing lanterns of all colors, because he’s found out about yet another super secret weapon that the Guardians developed and then decided to flush down the cosmic toilet.

The Guardians tell Kilowog and Hal Jordan that despite their rings screaming that a crisis is coming, they should just hit the snooze button on the ring’s universal destruction alarm and go back to polishing their trophies. Hal waits about a half second for the Guardians to leave and heads to Earth where the universal no-no lies.

Meanwhile on the Planet of the Apes, Cornelius discovers the ring in a crater while looking for Taylor. He takes it home to examine it with Zira. After a quick look, the ring call to him and he puts it on and wanders out into the Forbidden Zone in his disorientation.

Back in our time/universe, Hal and Sinestro are fighting and trying to get to the weapon, when they are both knocked out in the sky and Hal wakes up on the Planet of the Apes. At the same time, the human mutants on the Planet of the Apes take time out of worshiping their bomb to demand that Cornelius give them his ring.

I really wanted to like this book and some of the reasons I don’t are my own issues ”“ and some are just problems with the book. On the side of my personal issues, Hal Jordan and Guy Gardener are the worst Green Lanterns. Why didn’t they decide to use John Stewart or even the new Green Lanterns on Earth?

The other issue is that Robbie Thompson (Silk, Venom: Space Knight) and Justin Jordan (Green Lantern: New Guardians, Dark Gods) went with an overly complicated story that involves a ton of Green Lantern lore and background. It is just assumed that you know the difference between the Green Lanterns, the Blue Lanterns, the Red Lanterns, The Purple Lanterns, The Burnt Umber Lanterns and the Yellow Lanterns. Then you have the Guardians being the biggest jerks they can be, by building yet another super-weapon that they don’t feel like admitting to. And so on.

Really there is a much simpler and better story to tell. What if Abin Sur had crashed on the Planet of the Apes and given his ring to Cornelius? You could have Sinestro trying to teach him how to use the ring as well as Cornelius trying to prevent the destruction of his world.

I guess we’ll see where this story leads…

[yasr_overall_rating]

Story: Robbie Thompson
Writer: Justin Jordan
Artist: Barnaby Bagenda
Colors: Alex GuimarÃ£es
Publisher: Boom! Studios and DC

Author Profile

Andy Hall

Sent from the future by our Robot Ape overlords to preserve the timeline. Reading and writing about comics until the revolution comes. All hail the Orangutan Android Solar King!