Amid a dying universe, the Green Lantern Corps has to find their way home. That’s your elevator pitch for Green Lantern Corps: Edge of Oblivion. In the first issue, they try to shine a little light to bring the rest of the Corps their way. It goes drastically awry, and they find themselves as the ostensible saviors of a dying planet.
Edge of Oblivion is pretty standard superhero fare, and, more than that, pretty standard Green Lantern Corps fare, but it’s effective. Tom Taylor’s dialog is solid, and his characterization of the GLC regulars like Kilowog, Guy Gardner, and John Stewart is spot-on. Other characters, including the new ones that pop up, get their chance to shine. Altogether, Taylor’s story is no-frills, reasonably clever, and interesting enough to keep the pages turning.
Ethan Van Sciver went from being one of the most interesting artists in comics, to being one of the most boring. His work on Green Lantern: Rebirth, albeit plagued by delays, was terrific, and earned him all-star status at DC. The story felt urgent and grand in scale, largely because his art created a sense of wonder and impact. As the years go on, Van Sciver seems to care less and less. Here on Edge of Oblivion, he shows up… and that’s about it. He sure… drew the book. But, the same problems that affected the atrocious (not just on his end; what was anybody thinking with that?) Flash: Rebirth are present in Edge of Oblivion; muddled layouts that make group shots impossible to make out, careless anatomy, an inking job that you’d be kind to call ‘lazy’. If that wasn’t enough, take a look at the backgrounds. Or, try to; you can’t. There aren’t any backgrounds.
This is certainly not a groundbreaking story, but, for what it is, it’s entertaining. It adds an interesting new wrinkle and, perhaps, an interesting new set of characters into the Green Lantern Corps stories. If you can get past Ethan Van Sciver’s deeply boring art, and the doldrums of a superhero story that’s been told over and over again, Tom Taylor’s script, and Edge of Oblivion as a whole, will guide you through to something fun. Sometimes, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, so much as keep it rolling.
