Future State: Green Lantern #2explores the Green Lanterns in DC's Future State universe, putting the spotlight on each Lantern and what they mean to certain fans. With Thorne and Soy set to boardGreen Lantern in March, I hope they continue to push the Green Lantern Corps into a bold new frontier. Read Full Review

Future State: Green Lantern #2 offers a look at the possible future for the Green Lantern franchise, setting up stories for 2021 and perhaps years to come with offerings from @GeoffThorne @CozyJamble @andie_t @robertvenditti @TomRaney_art @dextersoy and more! Read Full Review

There are a lot of characters here, some of whom feel like throwaways, but it makes a good case for Thorne as the franchise's next lead writer. Read Full Review

Robert Venditti creates a pretty interesting storyline. Hal is met with some pretty alarming situations, and I'm curious to see how this will all play out in later series. Read Full Review

A decent read with great characters, both old and new. A setup for what is to come in 2021 for the Green Lantern Corps and a tease of the future, indeed. Read Full Review

Just like before, if you're a Green Lantern fan, this is a pull list must, and the future looks awfully bright for the ring slingers. Read Full Review

John Stewart goes to war, Teen Lantern goes into the dark and Hal Jordan looks for answers in possibly the best Future State take out so far. Read Full Review

It'd have been nice to see some Lantern slinging action in this book while the writers build toward a past catalyst that hasn't played out yet. This is a risky storytelling device from DC, but it could work out in the long run. But unless you're a major Green Lantern fan there's not enough substance here to warrant tracking down. Read Full Review

At the end of the day, this begs the question of, "who were these stories for?" While they do show the resolve and will the various Lantern's possess, they rarely offer anything new to the mythos. Reserving any use of the Green Lantern rings until the very end of the second issue becomes even more confusing, especially for new readers who might pick up these collections and wonder why the series is even called "Green Lantern." Unfortunately, these tales do little to engage with new fans and will only confuse and dishearten current Green Lantern readers. Read Full Review

While the art is strong throughout all three stories, I found it hard to care about the main chapter of this book and the backups just came off as something tacked on without a lot of thought behind it because the timelines between them feel weird and how our heroes are maintaining their power feels off. Just a lot of this book didn't seem to mesh and didn't seem to do a lot with the page space they were given. Read Full Review

The main story in Future State: Green Lantern #2 picks up in the midst of the ongoing planetary evacuation while John Stewart has been captured by the Khund cult, but Geoffrey Thorne's scripting never stirs any emotion. Read Full Review

Future State: Green Lantern #2 is another weak entry in the Future State event. Backup stories should never have to rescue the main feature, yet both issues in this series have failed in that regard. At $5.99 readers should rightly expect a strong story, and this just doesn't have it. Four out of ten lanterns. Read Full Review

Sadly, Geoffrey Thorne's story was the weakest.

I really Teen Lanterns and Hal’s story in this issue. The John piece wasn’t compelling in the slightest, and John is my favorite lantern.

For once I'm interested in Teen Lantern, and Robert Venditti's portrayal of Hal is always a treat. The one thing dragging this issue down is Thorne's John Stewart story/Raney's artwork.

The main story was absolutely awful, I am really worried about the post-Future State GL book. The backups were so-so, but were mostly pointless. The Hal Jordan one was the best of the bunch and seems to be a teaser for some future story, but even it was mediocre at best.

The John Stewart story is full of clichés we've all seen a thousand times before. It's fine, if I'm being generous. The Teen Lantern story was shockingly pretty good. I mostly enjoyed it after those first two pages that were a bit annoying. The Hal Jordan story just confuses me. It obviously connects to the rest of Future State, but it ends in a cliffhanger (in a very loose sense, since there's no story), and I'm not sure if it's supposed to be happening now or in the future. I guess we'll see.

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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Throughout the first story, there are alien words that are meant to be common slang terms. "Chaff," "strocking," "kletch," etc. They are as stupid as the stories they spawned from. I do not care about these characters, their war, or their weird alien space god.

I was really excited for Future State, I thought it had the potential to be a massive pallet cleanser from the convoluted mess that was Metal. This makes the New 52 look like a masterpiece.

I'm only giving it a 3 because of Hal's story and Dexter Soy's art.

Future State Lanterns remain one of the weakest, most boring and least interesting tales I've had displeasure to read about in years. I do not care about its events no matter how hard I try, that's how poorly conceived it is.

Why is that? Well, considering that Green Lanterns are generally detached from Earth's internal affairs and operate in space, it truly doesn't matter if there are any big status quo changes there, nor future elseworld events occuring as we speak. They make their own mythology and rules, so take that, Future State. Anything can already happen in their comics, no matter the branding.

Take Keli's short story, for example, which is easily this book's only highlight. It's a fun little tale exploring not only her loose and uncertain connections to the corps, but also her humanity, fears. It's great, and I wish she got a chance to develop as a person in the main continuity's comics, since so far she's been completely sidelined even by her own creator. If DC did what Josie Campbell did here, but on much larger scale, giving it more time to unravel through several issues, I'd be all for it. And truth be told, it wouldn't matter in the slightest what continuity said comic belongs to, since as I said, Lanterns can do their own thing no matter when and where.

The last short, featuring Hal Jordan, falls flat and for some odd reason the protagonist reminded me of the infamous Batman from All-Star Batman and Robing the Boy Wonder by Frank Miller. I just smell a delicate scent of psychopathy coming from him, paired with disdain for anyone he encounters along his way.
Yeah... count me out for now, I don't care.

Overall this comic is plain bad, and the only saving grace of it is Teen Lantern's short one-off. It's hardly enough to make me recommend this book, though. Not when it's only 1/3rd of it, and the rest is quite unbearable to read. more

Future state and the new “writers” they brought in are dogshit

Wow! Just WOW! I wouldn't have thought it possible to write a GL book this badly yet here it is. The 1st and 2nd story are pointless and the 3rd story does little more than serve as an excuse to thrust Sojourner “Jo” Mullein into the main title. Save your money kids.

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Mingthemerciless - Feb 10, 2021

Say what you want about Morrison but hes having a ball on the main lantern book. Future State was tailor made for great lantern stories. DC blew it.

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The combat scenes are so baffling and tedious, and the characterization is sparse and flat.I really don't know why I continued to read this and tried to believe that it might be better.

WTF this is literarily a piece of shit

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SenpaifenixJäger - Feb 9, 2021

Really hahahaha it's nice to know that I don't waste my time on this. tks

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Thorne's main story continues to be boring and one dimensional. Teen Lantern, one of the worst ideas to come along in quite some time, was at least coherent but it didn't feel like a story rather than a "what's this character doing" bit.
The Hal story seems to be the one that at least connects well with the rest of Future State and should have served as the first story in the first issue since it did a good job of letting the reader know what's going on in all of this. Thought the cliffhanger ending was a bit of a surprise since it implies there's more to be continued even though we don't have a book with Hal in it announced yet.