Review: Green Lantern Vol. 4- Dark Days

Quick Summary

Pros: The volume contains plenty of flashy and high-stakes action. The visuals are mostly positive.

Cons: The narrative is messy and reads poorly. Actions and concepts in the narrative often fail to make sense. The entire volume feels out of place after the events of the previous volume. The narrative undoes much of the development done over the past several volumes.

Overall: This is a below average comic in general and a terrible comic for those who have been following this series. It has a narrative filled with flaws, that doesn’t make sense at a number of points and that actively works against the past few volumes of storytelling. There are moments of high-stakes action and drama here but even they feel odd when paired against what happened in the last book . Readers with little Green Lantern familiarity, who are looking for a flashy book about battles in space may enjoy this collection, everyone else might want to stay away.

Story

By itself, Green Lantern Vol. 4: Dark Days, by Robert Venditti, is a mediocre volume that sacrifices storytelling quality and logic in favor of flashy action and high stakes drama. As part of the larger Green Lantern series, Dark Days is a terrible volume that tramples over multiple volumes of development while fitting poorly into the overall narrative of the comic.

This is a book with a ton of problems and very few redeeming qualities. It has a messy narrative, illogical concepts, and generally treats its characters poorly. It feels like a significant step backwards for the series, one that undoes much of the progress from the past. This volume is already not good on its own but is even worse when read by someone with Green Lantern reading experience.

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The major positives in Dark Days are rather sparse and mostly focus on the book’s penchant for flashy bursts of action. This volume details a large battle between the Green Lanterns and Larfleeze, several battles against the collection’s main villain, and a final battle that involves every member of the Green Lantern Corps. All of these battles have high stakes and generally feel pretty exciting. Unfortunately, these bursts of excitement are where this collection’s positives end.

The most obvious problems in Dark Days comes from flow of this narrative. The volume begins with the Green Lantern Corps just trying to recover from their latest ordeal; then it starts to follow the story of a criminal who escaped Oa; then this narrative is sidelined in favor of a crossover event; finally, the volume concludes by returning to the story of the escaped criminal. Meanwhile, pacing problems and a general lack of setup make the crossover event’s climax feel like it is coming out of nowhere. The end result is a messy storyline that frustrates more often than it pleases.

Alongside narrative problems, there are many portions of Dark Days that simply come across as illogical. The entire concept behind the Emotional Spectrum running out seems contradictory to the established nature of the Spectrum, as it is derived from the emotions of individuals. The quick decision to keep using the Emotional Spectrum instead of looking into the issue more does not seem right. There are also places where character’s actions seem way too over the top, with the biggest offender being Hal’s decision to call in the entire Green Lantern Corps to deal with one criminal.

In addition, Dark Days seems to actively work against all of the development done over the last three volumes and, in some ways, the development done over the course of Geoff Johns’ nearly decade long run with this series. This starts as the volume immediately and unceremoniously tosses out the romance between Hal and Carol, something that was specifically being built up in recent storylines. This problem gets even worse as the narrative implies that Carol has only recently wanted to love Hal in order to keep her connection to her Star Sapphire Ring and then has her quickly fall into a relationship with one of Hal’s friends. It is a bizarre turn that reads poorly from almost every angle.

Further damage is done through the way Hal is written. At the end of the previous arc, Hal seemed to come out of the event with a renewed sense of purpose and appeared to have become a better person through his trials. However, here, he is more impulsive, his actions are more haphazard, and he even does things that are downright hypocritical. It feels like his character went through a meaningful and life-changing experience only to come out as a worse person on the other end.

Dark Days also fits poorly when read after the events of Wrath of the First Lantern (Review). The previous event saw the rise of an incredibly powerful and ancient villain, who’s presence threatened all of reality. This volume repeats this premise but makes the villain even more powerful, as he is actually able to destroy Oa, and does so without the benefit of any setup. The entire ordeal left me wanting a low stakes adventure to simply have some fun with.

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Art

The artwork in Dark Days is one of the few consistently positive aspects of the entire collection. Billy Tan’s work here is bold, energetic, and creative, the type of qualities one would hope for from a Green Lantern collection. It makes the cosmic events of this comic look unique and helps present them in a positive and well-defined manner. It also makes the battles, one of this collection’s few narrative positives, look better and allows them to further stand out as one of the best aspects of this entire collection. In general, the visuals look nice throughout this collection and help it overall.

Continuity

Green Lantern Vol. 4: Dark Days continues the story from Green Lantern Vol. 3: The End (Review) and the Green Lantern: Wrath of the First Lantern (Review) (Reading Order) event. Issues from this volume also form part of the Green Lantern: Lights Out event, which will be explained in our upcoming “Green Lantern: Lights Out Reading Order”.

The story here continues in Green Lantern Vol. 5: Test of Wills.

This volume also references other comic books, detailed below:

• Salakk stepped down from his position in Green Lantern Corps #21, collected in Green Lantern Corps Vol. 4: Rebuild.
• Hal’s time as Parallax is mentioned. He was separated from Parallax in Green Lantern: Rebirth, part of Green Lantern by Geoff Johns Book One.
• References are made to Carol Ferris and Kyle Rayner’s recent roles in the Green Lantern: New Guardians series. This mostly refers to their actions in Green Lantern: New Guardians #21-23, collected in Green Lantern: New Guardians Vol. 4: Gods and Monsters.
• Guy went undercover with the Red Lanterns in Red Lanterns #21, collected in Red Lanterns Vol. 4: Blood Brothers.
• The Durlans’ evil plan has been in motion since Green Lantern Corps #21, collected in Green Lantern Corps Vol. 4: Rebuild.