While I won’t recycle The New Day joke once again, it is a new chapter for the Green Lantern Corps. It’s no secret that Lost Army started out with promise but slowly dissolved into a mess. Now former Earth 2 writer Tom Taylor returns to DC to finish up what Cullen Bunn started. What’s even better is Ethan Van Sciver joins him and veteran fans will remember the stamp that EVS has left on the Green Lantern legacy. So with that being said, let’s see what Tom Taylor and Ethan Van Sciver have in store for The Lost Lanterns.

Since this book is clearly a continuation of Lost Army but on the flip side this is a new number 1, with the idea being new readers can jump on without past knowledge Granted that this is the first issue but there is nearly nothing that connects Edge of Oblivion and Lost Army. The only connective tissue between the two is the initial premise of Lost Army. Some part of me is a bit annoyed that Taylor seemingly moves away from any reference of Lost Army but then I remember how much I detested the series so a palette cleansing seems to be the right choice.

Even though it might not be a palette cleanser but instead set up for what Taylor has in store for the Green Lantern Corps. Instead of bogging down both new and previous readers with a recap of Lost Army, Taylor boils down the over arcing plot into a bite sized portion. The plot threads of Krona and Relic along with the mysterious pyramids may or may not come back into effect down the road but for this first issue none of those matter from my perspective.

A complaint I had with Lost Army was it’s heavy focus on John Stewart over the course of six issues. The spotlight seems to have shifted from John to Guy Gardner but thankfully Taylor remembers he’s writing about a team book and not a solo series. While it’s impossible for each character within the book to have equal page time at least Taylor passes the baton around within dialog sequences and no pointless flashbacks of Guy Gardner’s football career.

Only complaint I had with this issue is that the latter half of the issue feels a bit safe. It’s clear as day that there is more to meets the eye with these giants who assist the corps along with the seedy underbelly has the makings for familiar roads. I’m willing to give Tom Taylor the benefit of the doubt for the remaining six issues, but other than that a decent start.

Ethan Van Sciver’s art from a far could be pushed into the corner of big budget action super hero comics with little to no substance anywhere else. Those people would be wrong of course as Van Sciver’s detail in this issue stretches beyond the epic splash pages. The amount of personality between Chip and Guy as clash in verbal terms. Small facial expressions that adds dimensions to the characters that just can’t be conveyed with dialog. On a closing note I’m not sure if this was Van Sciver’s intentions on the “giant people” lower jaws gives them a creepy visual. In some angles it looks like they don’t even have jaws, either way it does give the reader a distinct visual cue for these mysterious characters.

Edge of Oblivion is off to better start than Lost Army just by simply remembering that this a team book. It’ll be interesting to see as the series go on and see what Tom Taylor brings back from Lost Army and how much he neglects. Finally if Ethan Van Sciver can keep up the level of detail from start to finish on this mini-series, then we have the makings for a memorable Green Lantern Corps story.

Green Lantern Corps: Edge of Oblivion #1 earns a 4/5

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