Absolute Green Lantern #15 is a contest of wills between both the Backstars and our Lanterns and Tomar Re and Jo Mullein, still trapped inside the Lantern ship itself. The issue opens with the voice of Oa speaking to one our Lanterns, this time John Stewart. It’s a distracting enough force that he’s hit with the full power of one of the Blackstars, the Absolute Universe’s Katma Tui. She raises a fair question: what exactly can the gold power do, beyond protect John? It leaves him pondering out of the actual fight, where he’s needed most.
“It lets you philosophize while the world burns,” says Katma Tui, before she races beyond him to attack the remaining Lanterns.
One of Absolute Green Lantern’s most intriguing aspects is how the color spectrum of the Lanterns is redefined, having different associations between colors and the people chosen for those powers. That, combined with the idea that each power chooses a person because of their own way to deal with injustice and wrongdoing in the world, shows how they themselves would go about engaging in a conflict.
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By comparison, there’s a particularly gruesome moment in which Absolute Guy Gardner changes his own biological form to become a weapon itself against the Blackstars.
Time was never on their side, but time is disappearing quicker and quicker with the confirmation by Blackstar Salakk that the minute they destroy the ship, their ability breathe in space will disappear and they’ll suffocate and die. Bleak, to say the least.
That’s not the only time crunch the Lanterns are working with, as Jo continues to fight Tomar Re in battle of mental endurance and quick-wittedness. She argues with him and he raises points for the sacrifice of the 2,000 person population of Evergreen. Jo disagrees with his methods, thinking that kind of loss of life isn’t acceptable as Tomar declares that that level of psychic pain is the only thing to break Mogo’s constant focus.
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Jo bests Tomar Re, a false sense of gratification and accomplishment around her quickly stalled out as Re tells her there isn’t time to find “another way” as she put it, as Mogo is here and now. The “when” of the problem is entirely irrelevant. A greater threat than anything else they’ve faced thus far, with the Lanterns greatly over-powered, leaves the words ‘to be continued’ all the more nerve-wracking.
I’ve sang no small amount of praise for Absolute Green Lantern, and I’ll continue to do so, especially when examined through the lens of how someone chooses to fight against wrong in the world. While the series continues to be slower paced than the rest of the Absolute line, I trust Ewing’s planning and understanding of the world he’s built. Things have built up so carefully, there’s a clear intention and plan for the story.
There’s praise to go around, with Sid Kotian’s energetic, dynamic art, particularly with Jo’s own green power and her besting of Tomar Re. It moves off the page, helped along by Pressy’s colors.
With a final page reveal that an altercation between our Lanterns, the Blackstars, and a certain someone in the Lantern mythos is finally upon is, Absolute Green Lantern #15 is the point of no return for the gang.
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