Green Lantern: Blackstars is out 11/6/2019. — **Green Lantern: Blackstars** is out 11/6/2019.

By d. emerson eddy — The Green Lantern from Grant Morrison, Liam Sharp, Steve Oliff, and Tom Orzechowski was one of the best series over the past year. The first season was not so much a wild reimagining of the property as a collation of numerous ideas in new and entertaining ways, building an overarching tale of Controller Mu's manipulation of events to lead to Hal Jordan choosing an inevitability. That choice led to this new series, with reality rewritten and the universe remade by Mu's will in Green Lantern: Blackstars #1.

Grant Morrison is no slouch when it comes to new realities and multiversal ideas, having in previous works created entire new worlds with rich backstories like it was easy. The central concept here in this new world is simple: the Guardians are dead and there were never any Green Lanterns. That led to the rise of Mu's Blackstars, who include among their number a few familiar faces as they bring their “peace” to the universe. It's a bit more complicated and enigmatic than that, hanging largely on the actions of Belzebeth and Parallax, but it's an interesting start. Especially as we see what happens to the demons of Ysmault and Mongul. Morrison has more wild ideas up his sleeve and I feel like something huge is yet to be revealed.

Xermanico takes over the line art duties for this series and he does an incredible job. Liam Sharp is a tough act to follow, especially since Sharp has been doing some of the absolute best art of his career on the book, but Xermanico seems up to the challenge. There's a great sense of weirdness to the designs of the different demons that works well for the characters and the overall layouts to the pages are quite interesting. Steve Oliff's colors keep a certain amount of consistency from the mothership, bringing a similar color palette as we saw in The Green Lantern, but now focusing on purples, reds, and blue as the primary color bases. It gives the impression that it's the same story, just shifted perspective.

Steve Wands comes aboard to provide letters for this series and largely continues with the same visual style for word balloons and headings as Tom Orzechowski. There is, however, one primary difference that gives a different feel and it's the narration boxes. They take a mixed case font, which I find interesting. These narration boxes actually feel like someone telling a story, but thus far aren't readily attached to a specific voice, so it's a mystery either to be revealed or just to be taken as that omniscient third person narrator.

Overall, Green Lantern: Blackstars #1 is an excellent start to this next chapter in the story from Morrison, Xermanico, Oliff, and Wands. If you're reading The Green Lantern, this is absolutely NOT to be missed. If you're not, this is still a worthwhile entry point into the narrative, delivering a well done beginning to a story of a group of “peacekeepers” taking over the universe.

Green Lantern: Blackstars #1
Writer: Grant Morrison
Artist: Xermanico
Colorist: Steve Oliff
Letterer: Steve Wands
Publisher: DC Comics
Price: $3.99

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d. emerson eddy is a student and writer of things. He fell in love with comics during Moore, Bissette, & Totleben's run on Swamp Thing and it has been a torrid affair ever since. His madness typically manifests itself on Twitter @93418.