An old foe returns with an all-new plan! Check out the Comic Book Spot’s review of Green Lantern #21
Green Lantern #21
Written by: Jeremy Adams
Art by: Jack Herbert
Main Cover: Xermánico
Variant Covers: Ken Lashley, Laura Braga, Mark Spears
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: March 26, 2025
Picking up seconds after the last issue, Green Lantern #21 finds Green Lantern Kyle Rainer and his young allies battling the evil Starbreaker for control of the Source, a mere fragment of the magical fiber that connects realities––sounds important!
They put up a good fight but are quickly bested. Sorrow (former beau of Carol Ferris) corrupts Odyssey’s mind, revealing to us a slice of her origin and incapacitating her with sadness––Padmé style. Starbreaker, able to grow and shrink his body at will, evades the combined might of Superboy and Green Lantern and vanishes with the coveted MacGuffin.
Back on Oa, our heroes regroup to assess the damage. A roundtable of Green Lantern Corpsmen exposits the plot of the run, bluntly explicating the stakes if they can’t repair the emotional spectrum. How? By rebuilding the central power batteries of their sworn enemy lanterns!
On Earth, Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris (AKA Star Sapphire) thwart the Mind-Bomber (a bottom-tier telepathic crook not seen since his one-issue debut in Superman Family #211 back in 1981). But just as they apprehend the petty thief, recurring Green Lantern antagonist Hector Hammond takes the Mind-Bomber into custody under the jurisdiction of the Department of Extranormal Operations.
Hal and Carol are reasonably suspicious of Hammond’s sudden change of heart and government backing, so they enlist the help of fellow superheroine Dove to infiltrate the HQ of the D.E.O. Surprising no one, readers included, Hammond’s probity is a thinly-veiled charade: the Howard-Hughes-mustachioed baddie waxes aloud on his evil plan while harvesting the brain of the Mind-Bomber––alas, we hardly knew ye!
Despite the all-elbows style of wading through plot, Jeremy Adams should be forgiven for his sometimes on-the-nose writing. For better or worse, the latest issues of Green Lantern harken back to an era of simpler comic books, where CMYK color-printing reigned supreme and frivolous villains like the Mind-Bomber were part and parcel to a serialized story numbering in the hundreds.
Small inclusions still entertain, such as Hal’s donut constructs to save cops from falling out of the sky–like great, green life preservers. Or the humor in Mind-Bomber’s appearance and immediate death (8 pages later), which is likely a reference to his equally quick introduction and demise in 1981 (which we all vividly remember… right?).
What this Green Lantern run lacks in originality, it revests with casual mirth – a simple, junk-food funnybook to thumb through on a lazy Wednesday. To paraphrase Cee Lo Green, ‘It ain’t a Ferrari, but it can still get you there.’
