The Green Lantern Annual #1 // Review
It wouldn’t be a Grant Morrison comic without some prerequisite reading material to go with each issue. Managing to once again, breaking the mold of the current decompressed storylines. Morrison, joined by artist Giuseppe Camuncoli, deliver yet another one and done issue for any fan looking to join along this cosmic odyssey. With Silver Age callbacks and even some to his time with Mark Millar on The Flash, this issue is pure nostalgic comic book fun.
As Hal Jordan wakes up at a family reunion, readers are reintroduced to Jordan family members long since forgotten, in total Morrison fashion. While trapped within the home, the family discovers a very familiar frequency imp before being bombarded by more of his kind after the fugitive. Hal Jordan’s ring takes a sudden dive due to the interference from the frequency imps hounding the home, before falling himself into an epileptic seizure. It is up to Hal’s cousin Air Wave, Silver Age hero not seen since Blackest Night, to help take out these alien invaders. The two Jordan men work together to save their family before a quite ominous ending closes out this chapter.
Giuseppe Camuncoli brings a new flavor to the title, perfect for this quieter moment home with the family. Steve Oliff continues to layer each page in magnificent colorwork while still retaining an approximation of the overall ore established aesthetic. Camuncoli’s rough pencil style is a stark contrast to Liam Sharp’s calculated artistry. It adds to the fun and charm of a Jordan family reunion while Morrison takes even that concept to the next level. Sheer imaginative artistry to accentuate the pure fun of this one-shot issue.
Yet again harkening back to his time on All-Star Superman... When he takes his dog for a walk, it’s going to be somewhere grand like on the moon. Such is the same with Hal Jordan attending a family reunion, it will be anything but ordinary, especially with Morrison helming the scripts. The decompressed trend overruling the big two continues to be shattered with each new chapter. As Morrison continues to prove to creators and readers how to pull off a fleshed our entertaining story with one single issue.
Grant Morrison and Giuseppe Camuncoli work together and deliver an excellent detour away from the main storyline with a more quiet issue that only Morrison could produce. With yet another Green Lantern issue right around the corner, Morrison and Sharp will continue to push the mythos and the medium to new and exciting areas.
