War of the Mind-Controlled Green Lanterns
War of the Green Lanterns kicks off as a revamped, far more interesting take on Krona goes after his revenge on the Guardians of the Universe, using the Green Lantern Corps and Emotional Entities to do it. However to actually give us a war of Green Lanterns, Geoff Johns has to force it to happen.
The strongest part of this issue is Krona's confrontation with the Guardians and the method of revenge he takes on them. The use of the Emotional Entities is very fitting and really fits perfectly with Krona's newly established agenda against his former peers. How this experience affects each of the Guardians could easily turn out to be the most interesting part of this Green Lantern event.
There is a strange scene in this issue with the Book of the Black, and its only purpose seems to be sidelining the New Guardians so this can be a Green Lantern-only story. The scene works fine. It is just a little blatant in its goal and reads a bit more like a chore the story has to take care of rather than a more interesting part of things.
Misunderstandings and mind control are the two most overused and lamest methods to get heroes to fight. Johns goes with the latter to get the Green Lanterns warring. It is disappointing but not that surprising since the build-up to this really gave no reason why it would happen. The method of mind control is a little hard to buy, though. The Green Lantern Corps has had the yellow impurity for most of its existence without having this extreme effect, so what happens in this issue could use a little more explanation than what it given.
That said, the yellow impurity is interesting in its own way. By nature, Green Lanterns either repress or do not feel much fear. It is at least believable that most of them would not know how to cope with a sense of fear that has been artificially inflated with them. Hopefully, this story will do more with that, because in this issue, the affected Green Lanterns behave more like mindless drones.
War of the Green Lanterns is not off to as strong of a start as the Sinestro Corps War or Blackest Night. It suffers a little from Johns having to force pieces into place and the cheap use of mind control to stir up some conflict, but that does not make it a bad issue. Krona remains a very compelling villain, as does the method of his revenge. Since this issue mostly only suffers the sins of having to set the story up, the outlook is good that things will get better from here.
