Comic Reviews by Walt

Assault & Battery

Story: Ron Marz
Pencils: Daryl Banks, Derec Aucoin, Craig Hamilton
Inks: Romeo Tanghal, Craig Hamilton, Ray Snyder
Colors: Steve Mattsson
Letters: Albert DeGuzman
Assists: Eddie Berganza
Editor: Kevin Dooley
Published by: DC Comics
Cover Date: September 1994
Cover Price: $1.50

This is a pretty simple issue. Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner) is getting his butt handed to him in a fight with Major Force. Of course, it’s Major Force that deserves the beatdown–he killed Kyle’s girlfriend and stuffed her remains in a refrigerator…but that’s more a story and topic for some other post. As the hero takes a beating, refusing to give up his ring to the villain, it looks like it’s all over…but then MF wants one final answer from Kyle regarding a chunk of green rock found in the alley where he got his ring. This turns out to be the key to recharging Kyle’s ring, and he quickly defeats the villain…before the battle is cut short by the intervention of the LA Special Crimes Unit. Refusing to stick around for questioning, Kyle flies off. Waiting at his apartment, though, is another man who’d been known as Green Lantern–Alan Scott. Scott fills Kyle in on the basic background of the former Green Lantern Corps. As Kyle processes what he’s just learned, Superman and Metron show up to recruit him.

As tie-in issues go, thus far I’ve far preferred the Batman issue, feeling like it actually took place in the midst of the unfolding event. The Flash issue only just barely–at its end–touched the event, and now basically the same thing for this Green Lantern issue. I’d actually consider this almost a "Red Skies" tie in–that is, you DON’T actually need to read this to get anything extra, really, pertaining to the Zero Hour event. Having the context allows for a bit of empathy later in that story from what I recall, but for right this moment, I’m a bit disappointed by how un-connected this issue was.

I read this issue back when it first came out–after Green Lantern’s involvement in Reign of the Supermen and learning of new goings-on with the title, I jumped in with #50 (Hal’s villainous turn) and then followed the title from Kyle’s FULL premiere in #51 (which was functionally a #1, but in an age when titles didn’t get rebooted just because someone blinked)…so I was getting this issue anyway, it just happened to be part of Zero Hour.

The art isn’t bad, though there are a few more names involved with the art than I’m used to…whatever the case, if I didn’t see the list in the credits I don’t think I would have actually noticed…I just kinda flew through the issue, consciously trying to remember other details from this early, early part of Kyle’s run to contextualize. Story-wise, this is essentially a #5 issue, so Kyle is still being established, and there’s no real feel for him quite yet…so this works well, tossing the rookie hero into things as part of his initial journey.

As the issue of Green Lantern that this is, it’s worthwhile, and definitely a meaningful issue in the early development of Kyle…but as a Zero Hour issue, it’s tangential and really not needed (though I recall the #0 issue of the title being VERY tightly tied to the events of Zero Hour!).

Filed under: 2016 posts, The '90s Revisited, Zero Hour | Tagged: 1990s, Alan Scott, Albert DeGuzman, Comic Reviews, comics, Craig Hamilton, Daryl Banks, DC, DC Comics, Derec Aucoin, Eddie Berganza, Green Lantern, Kevin Dooley, Kyle Rayner, Major Force, Ray Snyder, Romeo Tanghal, Sentinel, STeve Mattsson, Zero Hour |