Green Lantern: War of the Green Lanterns (DC)
Written by Geoff Johns, Tony Bedard & Peter J. Tomasi, drawn by Doug Mahnke, Tyler Kirkham, Fernando Passarin, Ed Benes & Ardian Syaf
Collects Green Lantern #63-67, Green Lantern Corps #58-60 & Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #8-10

After the events of Blackest Night, the Green Lantern books had a little time to do their own thing before coming back together for the next big event, War Of The Green Lanterns. As it turned out, this also marked the end of this run in the old DC continuity as Flashpoint soon followed and everything was replaced with the New 52, though the GL books seemed to come through mostly unchanged (at least as I’ve seen in the first few volumes of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps). For reference, the volumes that lead up to War Of The Green Lanterns include GL: Brightest Day, GLC: Revolt Of The Alpha Lanterns and The Weaoponer and Emerald Warriors.

Alright, so the basics of this big event are that Krona, the being who looked back on the origins of the universe and accidentally unleashed evil is still around as a shrunken, crazy Guardian. He’s collected all of the emotional entities, trapped most of the main Lanterns in the Book of the Black, possessed the Guardians with the entities and put Parallax back in the main power battery to infect and control all existing GLs. Since they already had experience with Parallax, Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner, John Stewart and Guy Gardner are able to resist long enough to ditch their rings and eventually put on new ones. Hal goes with Yellow, Kyle Blue, John Indigo and Guy Red.

From there it’s a matter of them figuring out how to master these new rings while also saving the galaxy from an army of mind-controlled Green Lanterns, including the biggest one of all, Mogo. Incredibly hard decisions have to be made, but in the end the heroes come through with a very hard-fought victory that results in one of them getting ousted from the Corps.

While the idea of yet another big GL crossover might not seem like the most interesting thing in the world, I will say that this one offered a lot that the others didn’t. For one thing, the rainbow of Lanterns is not around aside from our four main heroes. I also enjoyed how it focused mainly on the four Earth GLs working together, something that didn’t happen in the other events until the last few chapters. Also, while the universe might seem crowded with so many different and new Lanterns, this story really focuses on the GLs which is kind of nice.

War of the Green Lanterns: Aftermath (DC)
Written by Tony Bedard, Peter J. Tomasi & Scott Kolins, drawn by lots and lots of folks
Collects War Of The Green Lanterns Aftermath #1-2, Green Lantern Corps #61-63 & Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #11-13

As you can imagine, the stories included in War Of The Green Lanterns: Aftermath deal with everything that happened in the wake of that story. There’s a plot to kill Sinestro who has a Green Lantern ring now, everyone hates John Stewart for taking out a major player in the Corps and the other Corps members seem to generally dislike Earthmen because they cause so much trouble. Of course, they also seem to forget that, without Earthmen like Hal and Kyle there wouldn’t be a Corps at all, but I guess small details like that are easily forgotten in the post-battle, post traumatic stress-filled Oa.

Overall, the tone of these stories is pretty down, but that makes sense from a story perspective. On the other hand, Guy gets to have a bit of fun as he goes on three one-off adventures in the final issues of Emerald Warriors, one of which teams him up with Batman. But, the sad tone actually makes sense on another level when you realize this is the very last Green Lantern Corps collection set in the old universe. As I mentioned above, the GL books made it through the change pretty unscathed, but there’s something to be said about closing out on something of a down note.