Welcome back lantern fans to part three of Lights Out. Now with the past two issues we have seen some devastating consequences thrust upon our corpsmen in green. Now Hal and the rest of the corps are on the run with low power and zero idea on what there next course of action should be. Now the baton has now been passed on to Justin Jordan and Brad Walker to carry on the momentum from the two previous action packed issues. So let’s open up page one and see what New Guardians has in store for us shall we?

This issue opens seconds after Oa has been obliterated due to the actions of our new friend Relic, and to start right off Brad Walker’s explosion of Oa is sheer eye candy in it’s destruction a beautiful way to see Oa off to the abyss. The reader is thrown right into the raw emotions that all the players involved are feeling. It’s quite interesting to see these heroes after such a devastating blow. Hal of course runs of emotions and wants to defeat Relic while the “New Guardians” want to preserve the corps. While Hal going off on somebody is pretty much the same Hal people have known for the past 10 years it’s when he calms down and actually listens to people around him, then we are given another small dose of Hal maturing as a leader. However because he is still Hal he pulls out that they need to go to The Red Lanterns and that Guy Gardner is undercover. I’m not reading Red Lanterns but while Hal seems to have matured a bit this little sequence should make any reader raise their eyebrows with a Scooby Doo like noise. More on The Red Lanterns next week though!!

Brad Walkers art during the first three pages are simply gorgeous, continuing his unique style for this title, but what Walker does best is he character acting. So many times during dialog scenes most characters can come off as stiff thereby removing the reader from the story. Here however every character feels alive due to subtle hints of movements that Walker displays. While the facial acting is a bit exaggerated, it’s nothing bad but (as it should) fit’s perfectly with the rest of the art.

However since the lanterns can’t seem to catch a break the most of the entities show up and without any warning collapse into Kyle’s body. The way Walker draws the entities as a primal force looking for a way to survive. It’s nice to seem them rendered as something else other than stoic.

After the joining Kyle is given a new costume but he doesn’t have any control but the entities have taken control with no real . The costume design is actually really cool looking and feels Parallax inspired (at least from this reviewers eye) plus having his mask now wrapping around his entire head is an interesting motif. Hal and Carol quickly try to deter the now controlled Rayner with no luck and Hal as always takes two steps back as leader using the remaining corps members to take down the entities. In a wonderful double page spread, the entities send Hal and the others to Ysmault for their “final moments.” So it looks like the entities have other plans and they see an offensive attack against Relic is not the best idea.

We get a brief interlude as we rejoin John and his new recruits looking for the Indigo Planet homeworld and here we get a nice nok nok joke. So it looks like both the Reds and Indigo’s will have a say in the battle to save the emotional spectrum from Relic. It makes sense and while this reviewer is tired of the emotional spectrum construct as a whole, I can’t deny that they all should be involved in some fashion.

We wrap up this issue with Kyle’s body, looking for Parallax and The Butcher. To see Kyle describe “fighting” the entities as mass oceans in that it’s nigh impossible. With the help of The Guardians, Kyle manages to “control” the entities inside him and with that Kyle comes to realization that Relic is right and that he has to help him…..Well if that doesn’t create some conflict for the final two issues and makes the reader come back for them then I don’t know what will.

Overall Green Lantern New Guardians #24 was a solid issue from the story that adds more spice to a already hot plate, and it seems that Lights Out is heading towards a very interesting conclusion.

Green Lantern New Guardians #24 receives a 4/5

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