It's like a bad joke: get a six-issue miniseries, fill it with flashbacks, advance the actual plot by one hour on a good day. Alan Scott: The Green Lantern is badly structured, there's no way around that, but it's such a deeply disappointing book that that's somehow the least of its faults.

First things first: time-travelling in order to pass through walls is needlessly overcomplicated. Alan has been able to phase through walls (in a ghost-like manner, is the image the 1940s comics want to invoke) since his very first appearance, he's also previously been shown as able to time travel (Gotham Knights #10 from December 2000 calling!), there's simply no possible need for one power to inform the other except in the service of this book's endless efforts to make Alan look as naive as possible in what should be the heyday of his career.

The "twist" is a far cry from what we've been told in Vlad's 'Who's Who' entry in The New Golden Age primer, and even details like the ring being from a women's college betray internal continuity errors (issue #1 of this very same series told us it's a Southern Conference College Baseball Championship ring -- very much a real thing). Then again, there seems to be no continuity or canon this miniseries respects (Alan owning lakefront property? I'd hazard a guess he wouldn't need to share a room with Doiby Dickles in All-American/GL/Comic Cavalcade if he was out there owning a house on a lake).

What's deeply troubling to me is the repeated portrayal of gay intimacy as purely transactional (the rent boys from the previous issue, Vlad & his commanding officer), gay love as built on lies ("I really could sell you on anything."), and gay characters steeped in stereotypes (the anachronistic use of "old queen" in #2, Alan's motel bath here). If the fact hadn't been highly publicized, I never would have guessed there are any LGBT creators involved in this book. At the end of the day, the main character has next to nothing in common with the Alan Scott we've come to know over the decades and that has nothing at all to do with his sexuality & all to do with his characterisation. more

goated. Don’t listen to the homophobic fake reviews this is the best issue of this book so far. The complex relationship we’re getting between the green and red lanterns is awesome and if one of them was a woman those guys would all agree