Green Lantern #35

It's difficult to stretch my brain back to the first days of my comics-buying habit (this being the early '60s), but my interest was held by DC's comics, with occasional purchases of Superman and Batman-related comics.

But I'm pretty sure the first hero whose adventures I followed faithfully (or as faithfully as local distribution would allow) was The Flash. That comic quickly led me to Barry Allen's best friend among the DC heroes, Green Lantern (of course, I'm talking Hal Jordan here).

As depicted by Gil Kane, GL was a natural for comics, wielding a ring of power that could create virtually anything. His early adventures were terrific, and even though the later years were often unkind to Hal, you could always see the potential there, and often it shone through.

At least up until the point where they made Hal a mass murderer. At that point I walked away from the GL title for a long time.

It's a real credit to Geoff Johns that he was able to correct the many injustices perpetrated on Hal, and restore him to his proper place at the top of the DC pantheon. (I look forward to seeing him do the same with Barry Allen.)

Since that revival Johns has crafted some amazing stories, including the recent Sinestro War. The DC Universe is presently mired in the Final Crisis, so Johns was clever and dedicated the last seven issues of Green Lantern to telling Hal's Secret Origin, which clears up a number of questions from Hal's early days and thankfully seems to excise the terrible "Hal as a drunk driver" storyline we suffered through before.

Which brings us to the latest issue, in which Hal and Sinestro (who's still a Green Lantern at this point) form a grudging partnership and must face a blistering interrogation from the Guardians of the Universe. It's another excellent addition to the story Johns is building, and offers more insight to the schemes at work in the present day.

The art is quite good - penciller Ivan Reis manages to make an interrogation exciting, interesting and easy to follow - not many artists could do that. And he makes the Guardians menacing - that really surprised me.

As a long-time fan, it's heartwarming to see one of my childhood heroes back in top form, and being handled with intelligence and respect. Every comics character should be so lucky!

Grade: A-