Green Lantern: Future State #1 gives us a glimpse into the lives of some of our favorite Green Lanterns as they navigate their place in the galaxy without the power of their rings.  Read Full Review

Sometimes less is more, but Future State: Green Lantern looks to be the exception to the rule, as its three drastically different stories each deliver individually while also providing a unique prism through which to explore and appreciate the Green Lantern mythos. Read Full Review

I enjoyed the talent and the concept of Future State: Green Lantern #1. I eagerly await the next book to see what happens. Read Full Review

Up against a Khund invasion seeking to destroy a peaceful planet for resources, this is the closest we've gotten to Saving Private Ryan in a sci-fi comic book, with brutal fight scenes and shocking losses along the way courtesy of Tom Raney's surprisingly gritty art. Read Full Review

As a whole, the 3 stories left me fairly happy with this sharp directional change we've found ourselves amidst. But not without some reservations, I would like to know what happened to the Corps sooner rather than later. Read Full Review

Another uneven anthology, though this one is more good than bad. In fact, if it weren't for the lackluster story and terrible artwork of the opening chapter (which I'm pretty sure was ripped off of a Warhammer 40,000 novel), I could gleefully give this one a perfect 5/5 rating. Read Full Review

The light has gone out for the Green Lantern Corps, and who they become in the darkness, how brightly they remain determined to shine, is a surprise to everyone.  Read Full Review

For the first time in the Future State comics I've read, all of the stories in a single issue are fun, interesting and use the whole concept well. Read Full Review

If you take away a Green Lantern's ring, you still have a hero. With the power battery going dark, Lanterns are stranded around the universe, doing what they can to not only get out alive, but save some others as well. Get ready for some big sci-fi adventure. Read Full Review

For a bunch of characters that tend to get the rough end of the stick, unless they are in the main Justice League book, this book does a great job in establishing them in the future of the larger universe and goes someway to prove that these characters, yes even Guy, are heroes even without their rings. Read Full Review

Future State: Green Lantern #1 is an action-packed issue with two delightful side stories. Read Full Review

Altogether, Future State: Green Lantern delivers a satisfactory look at the Green Lantern Corps' future. Each writer does well at capturing their Lantern's voice and tone, and the accompanying artists suit each narrative. While the anthology format definitely lends itself to this portion of the DC Universe, there remains room to improve the balancing of the narrative threads. Despite this, Green Lantern fans new and old should not miss out on this fun and entertaining collection of stories. Read Full Review

Future State: Green Lantern #1 isn't a bad issue at all but it dances the history of the DC Universe up to this point. It's hard to not keep wondering what problem hit the Green Lanterns. Why are things like the way they are. It left me wanting to learn about that more than what was presented. That's good in a way but also a bit frustrating as well. Read Full Review

We get a good look at what three of our Green Lanterns from Earth are up to in 2035 in this book and while I find it odd that the Flash Family is without their speed and now we find out that the Green Lanterns are powerless as well a strange choice for DC to make concerning the future, it does lead to some fun to be had with that concept. Beyond that, though I loved the second and third stories in this book and only found the initial John Stewart one tough to swallow.   Read Full Review

"Future State" continues to show us yet another dark future, but there's still some entertainment to be had in the Green Lantern stories. Unless you're a G'nort fan. Read Full Review

Ernie Altbacker's story is more light-hearted than the other two. It involves Guy Gardner getting stuck on a planet outside of his usual jurisdiction and how he spends his time waiting for his ring to fix itself. Of the three, this one starts at the right moment, allowing for a beginning, middle, and end, but the comedy is all one-note miscommunication jokes and gets stale fast, which means the issue goes out on its lowest note. Read Full Review

Despite how much I enjoyed the “Book of Guy” it's not enough to save Future State: Green Lantern #1. At $5.99 this book needed a strong lead story and this anthology book just doesn't deliver one. While the Jessica Cruz story was just okay, it and Geoffrey Thorne's first Green Lantern story aren't enough to warrant the price tag despite the fun and entertaining Guy Gardner backup story. Five out of ten lanterns. Read Full Review

A ring-less direction for the Green Lantern Corps isnt as fun as you might imagine and proves too drastic a change to sell this idea of the Corps future as a shift in status quo worth developing. Read Full Review

Not as bad as I had anticipated, but great. The John Stewart story was interesting, and a solid read, but it was hard to catch up to in some places, and it made it frustrating. I wasn't looking forward to the Jessica Stewart but it ended up being my favorite actually, a very solid read. And the Book of Guy was perfect. Guy is annoying and insufferable and it works so well. So not a terrible anthology, but not great. I wish the back ups had been longer, as they were the best ones imo.

I really enjoyed the Jessica Cruz story but that was about it. Guys wasn’t so bad.

First story was downright bad, an incredibly generic story putting the readers in the middle of an action without any basic reasoning why - this would probably read much better if it was a second chapter of the story, but now there's literally zero reason for the reader to care about what's happening. And the story itself was...well, not good. Really enjoyed the second story, even if it was a bit dumb. Third one was fine, but definitely not something I'd read as a main story. Works fine as a backup to show what Guy Gardner has been up to recently.

" Heart beating a mile a minute. More fear than i've ever felt in my life. More than i can overcome. But for the frist time, i don't need to. It's all mine, overflowing like light. All i need to do is reach out... And take it."
- JESSICA CRUZ

This is an anthology of 3 stories about John Stewart, Jessica Cruz, and Guy Gardner. I would give the stories a 3.0, 7.5, and 6.5 respectively. The artwork in the first is straight up flawed while Guy's art was okay but not very compelling. Jessica's story may be recycled a bit but the writing was fun as well as the writing for Gardner. The writing for Stewart was, at best, an unfinished rough draft.

Overall...
Pencil/Ink: Flawed to Great
Writing: Flawed to Good
Story: Okay to Good
Layout: Okay to Good
Color: Okay to Good
Lettering: Okay to Good

Stewart: 3/10
Cruz: 6/10
Guy: 5/10

This review covers Future State: Green Lantern #1 and #2.

Green Lantern is the name of several characters in the DC Universe, but most people associate the name with Hal Jordan, the character created in the Silver Age of comics. It’s a little disappointing to see that Hal only shows up in one back-up story at the end of issue #2, and the story doesn’t do much other than set-up an appearance in the new series debuting later this year. Green Lantern series have always struggled with ways to shift focus around the Green Lantern Corps and the many characters but relegating the most well recognized version of the character to an afterthought brings down the whole experience.

The main story focuses on Lantern John Stewart and his command of a group fighting against a group of Khund (think Klingon) warriors set on massacring a planet of friendly blue aliens for the “God In Red” cult that calls out for blood sacrifices. Stewart must draw upon his time as a US Marine and fight these killers while commanding his troops and saving the innocent. It’s a fine idea that works to draw upon the character history of John Stewart, but the problem is that writer Geoffrey Thorne has decided to break the Green Lantern Power Battery at some point before this story, rendering all the rings useless. He’s basically taken away the one gimmick that makes these characters unique and turned them into random space fighters. It’s a shame because the art from Tom Raney and Mike Atiyeh feels dense and gritty and serves the action well and the premise works with John Stewart’s backstory. But by the time you get to the end and the “God In Red, the story falls into a lot of rather convenient coincidences to get things wrapped up in time (and luckily the “God In Red” is someone Stewart knows and can call, apparently). There’s two-thirds of a good story here, but the last one-third just kills it for me.

Each issue comes with 2 short back-up stories featuring other Green Lanterns, and depending on your level of fandom, you may or may not get your $5.99-worth out of each issue. #1 features Jessica Cruz and Guy Gardner and issue #2 features Teen Lantern and Hal Jordan. Getting these extra stories for a couple extra bucks doesn’t feel as bad as the other options DC has done with bundling and adding extra pages, but I still would prefer old school newsprint and lower price overall.

The first back up features Jessica Cruz on the Green Lantern Power Battery that is now floating aimlessly in space. She’s found a way to supply just enough power to keep life support system active for herself, but now she’s attracted the attention of the Sinestro Corps and has to fend them off without her own Lantern abilities. It’s a good story overall from writer Ryan Cady and the artwork from Sami Basri and Hi-Fi provides good, clean, crisp, classic, comic book artwork. This was the best of all the stories in terms of providing a story that felt like a real Green Lantern tale.

Rounding out the first issue is a Guy Gardner yarn written by Ernie Altbacker. In this one, Guy lands on a planet during a civil war when his ring gives out and the natives mistake him for a new Prophet to lead them in a new religious order. Without any other options, Guy takes on the role and works to bring peace to these people. Once he finally succeeds, another member of the DCU discovers the planet and sows discord, ending the story on a down-note. While I’m fine with a bit of a downer ending, the biggest problem is that story takes place over the span of twenty-five years, meaning that there’s apparently no place for Guy Gardner in the DC Comics Publishing Empire for the next generation. I also feel like the artwork from Clayton Henry and Marcelo Maiolo was a too cartoony for this story. While it was certainly full of expression and emotion, it felt too lighthearted for a what was ultimately a story of a lifetime of a failure and an end for Guy Gardner.

The second issue also has two back-up stories, this first featuring Teen Lantern from the Brian Michael Bendis version of the Young Justice comic series written by Josie Campbell with artwork by Andie Tong and Wil Quintana. I honestly knew nothing of this character before this appearance and this appearance doesn’t inspire me to want to know more. I found this character to be annoying and the other characters in the story to come across as silly even though they really shouldn’t have. I’m guessing that this was written as if it was meant for younger readers, but it wasn’t sold to younger readers. This story was included with stories meant for regular readers, so it doesn’t fit in this issue.

The final story is where we finally get our Hal Jordan story that most readers would’ve expected as the main story, especially since Hal Jordan is on the cover of this issue. Writer Robert Venditti doesn’t give us much of a story though. Hal gets on a spaceship and speeds off after a battle while monologuing about how tough the battle was and about how many have fallen, but it was necessary and how he’d do it again. Of course, we don’t really know what happened, but I’m guessing whatever it was is what caused the Power Battery to fail in the first place before all of these stories started. When his ship finally lands (or crashes), he finds himself next to Green Lantern Jo Mullein, the Lantern from the Far Sector series (how convenient). And here the story ends, promising to continue sometime later in 2021. While I liked the artwork by Dexter Soy and Alex Sinclair, the cliffhanger leading to a resolution later this year drains the story of all sense any future insight or artistic expression and instead is just an ad for the new series. I can’t help but wonder if this specific story was originally meant as a Free Comic Book Day giveaway, but repurposed thanks to AT&T’s re-tinkering of DC and the ongoing pandemic cancellation of public events.

Future State has once again shown us that the future of DC Comics is not the one that readers and fans are clamoring for. Making a series that focuses more on John Stewart instead of Hal Jordan isn’t a problem in and of itself, but then removing the Lanterns from the Green Lanterns is simply a mistake. There’s nothing in this Future State that makes me want to continue on with the Green Lantern books in the Infinite Frontier of 2021. Hopefully the next Crisis event that wipes out this continuity can make these characters fun again.

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This is just... just bad. While Geoff Johns surely has become a figure perceived as toxic if not straight up megalomaniacal, but you can't deny he can write damn well, especially when he writes about characters he deeply cares about. His Green Lantern run is legendary at this point, thanks to its tense storytelling, character development, universe-wide stakes and creativity. Yeah, creativity - an important thing when you're a writer, and precisely the ingredient this comic lacks.
Lanterns have one weakness. It's not color yellow. It's not wood. It's not even fear itself. It's their ring batteries. No surprise depowering them is a very common trope in the history of their comics. After all, if the scale can't get any higher, bring it down to almost nothing, to human level. And DC writers surely have done exactly that time and time again. Even in Green Lantern's 80th anniversary celebratory book, there was a short story featuring this trope in a rather comedic way.

What bothers me is that lack of imagination and creativity is only more noticeable when your story is an elseworld one, meaning it doesn't have to be restricted by anything, it can literally be anything you want it to be. And yet it's more of the same.

Jessica Cruz and Guy Gardner's short comics definitely are better, but are they enough to actually make me recommend this comic? Hell no. They're passable, but nothing more, and above all, they could really take place in any place, any time and any continuity, you begin to ask yourself what's the point of Future State it it doesn't even care to build any future in some of its stories? more

I didn't like this one. The first story is messy and suffers from the same problems as Superman of Metropolis from last week. It's too much. The second story is better, but ultimately doesn't tell a story we've never seen before with Jessica Cruz. It's very safe. The third story had potential, but ultimately wasted it.

Oh my god... that was just awful.

John Stewart: This felt like a horrible Star Wars fan comic that used old Green Lantern characters that no one cares about.

Jessica Cruz: One human takes down three Yellow Lanterns. Riiiiight. I would have liked it more if it started off with Cruz as a Yellow Lantern.

Guy Gardner: Was this meant to be funny? I feel like it was supposed to be funny.

Why have three Lantern stories about depowered Lanterns? This is almost as dumb as making Wally West a murderer again.

Once again DC goes to the well of depowering the Green Lanterns - one of the least compelling tropes for the franchise. The issue starts out without any clue as to what's going on, making the story a jarring start. The writing on the John Stewart story is very weak as well, so it doesn't make a good impression about the guy who's going to be writing Green Lantern post-Morrison. After seeing some of the stuff he's said online I can't say that DC has done a good job of picking new talent - he's more divisive than talented and I doubt I'll stick around for his run because I can't get behind that level of toxic fanboyism.
The idea of G'Nort as Salaak as cosmic tough guys without their rings is laughable and I don't know if Thorne is trying to be clever or if he just doesn't know the characters. Plus, without the power ring there's no language translation, so are we supposed to make a leap and think that everyone speaks English in space? I didn't like the art at all.
The Jessica Cruz story is okay if you can get past the idea that three Yellow Lanterns actually being held off by someone without a power ring. I think the writer did a better job at incorporating Jessica's mental illness that Sam Humphries did in his Green Lanterns run. Sadly the story is ended too abruptly.
The Guy Gardner story was a lot of fun, and in checking who the author was I learned that he wrote a number of episodes of the Green Lantern cartoon series, so I'm not surprised that this was the most enjoyable story in the issue. Like the Jessica Cruz story this one could have been better served with more pages.
The book as a whole is a miss, with more pages dedicated to the weakest story. If Thorne and Raney are the new creative team, I think we're in for some dark days for the Green Lantern franchise. more

Wtf is this shit. Please bring back pre-52 green lantern books.

SO BORING.

Nothing good about this one at all. Boring and uninteresting in every way.

Three stories all of them bad.

Story one depowered John Stewart: Hey folks, do you want to read a Green Lantern Story with no Green Lantern powers and lots of fighting between alien races we just made up and expect you to care about? Yeah, neither do I.

Story two Mary Sue Jessica Cruz: Do you remember Jessica Cruz The Green Lantern who didn't sell any comic books when she was featured in GL? Well we brought her back and made her a female Macgyver engineer because the story called for it despite it is completely out of the character we have established in the past. We could have used Hal, Kyle, or Simon but you know, reasons.

Story three Guy Gardner craps on all religious beliefs: Do you want to be insulted if you have any religious sort of belief at all? Then this story is for you! Not only do you get to enjoy pretty crappy art work but you get a healthy dose of smug Atheism for free!

Honestly is this the best DC writers have? Absolute garbage. more

Boring, clumsy, messy. Geoff Throne, an untalented hater who nontheless gets to write Green Lantern because of DC's lousy management. What do you expect?