Green Lantern: New Guardians Annual #1
DC Comics
$4.99, color, 48 pages
Writer: Keith Giffen
Artists: Scott Kolins, Andrei Bressan
Have I outgrown Keith Giffen stories?
I don't read Green Lantern: New Guardians regularly, so I don't know much about the premise of this book. Which doesn't matter, since the whole point of this Annual was to set up Giffen's latest outer-space scenario.
Which is a whole lot like his other outer-space scenarios. You have a place where you never see two of the same species, without explanation how they could all form a society where, if nothing else, they can't reproduce. You have funny/ironic "future" signage which has only really been clever in Transmetropolitan. You have plenty of faux-alien Kiffen dialogue, which usually amounts to everyone talking exactly like snotty Earthlings, only with fake -- and juvenile -- cussing/slang. You have a really amoral society where even the heroes are scruffy and unlikeable. Yep, check the boxes, it's a Giffen comic book.
Specifically, this new place is called "Tolerance," it's a "free zone" near the "Tenebrian Dominion" and it gives lip service to the other space powers in the DCU (Lady Styx, the Guardians of Oa, the Spider-Guild, etc.) by saying this place is essentially between them.
And the major entertainment on Tolerance is called The Hunted, a reality TV show in which people are, duh, hunted, not only by professional gangs of bounty hunters, but also anybody can win the bounty by offing a runner.
Which is pretty familiar. I haven't seen The Hunger Games, and I don't read Avengers Arena, but I'm guessing the premise is somewhat similar. It also has overtones of The Most Dangerous Game and The Running Man. And since Giffen spends the first three pages setting this up, I'm guessing that it's the real reason this story is being printed, not to further the adventures of people in the title.
Speaking of the New Guardians, they have to go to Tolerance (surprise!) for reasons I forget. The Guardians in this case are Kyle Rayner (Green Lantern), Carol Ferris (Star Sapphire), Arkillo (Sinestro Corpsman) and Saint Walker (Blue Lantern). That's a lot of firepower, so don't worry, that's instantly negated, first by the requirement that they sneak into Tolerance, and then when they get there, somehow there's technology to negate power rings (which you'd think would be pretty popular all over the universe, but have never appeared anywhere else).
First, though, our nominal heroes meet a typical Giffen lead character, a scruffy, unlikeable Green Lantern named Jediah Caul, who says he is "deep cover" despite hanging around by himself on a space station in a Green Lantern uniform. (He also, for reasons we never find out, has a power ring imbedded in his chest.) You know he's important, because his introduction gets a splash page. And he won't help his fellow ring-slingers, because he's a Keith Giffen character, which means he's a jerk. But after some blackmail, he hooks them up with some smugglers named the Star Rovers, who, despite having a name from DC's 1950s Sci-Fi past, are a bunch of scruffy, unlikeable types. A ragtag band, if you will.
And (spoiler) they promptly betray our heroes, and Star Sapphire ends up in The Hunger Games The Hunted. Spoiler, she escapes. Spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, Jediah Caul ends up on the show instead, with his power ring nullified. Our heroes leave, whatever reason they had to go there forgotten (at least by me).
Sorry to spoil the end of New Guardians Annual #1 for you, but as you can see, the whole point of the book was to set up a new series, called -- duh -- "The Hunted." It appears in a new Sci-Fi title called, for no reason I can figure out, Threshold. And I have the first two issues right here in front of me.
Threshold #1-2
DC Comics
$3.99 each, color, 40 pages
Writer: Keith Giffen
Artists: Scott Kolins, Andrei Bressan
Threshold #1 picks right back up where NGA #1 left off, with Caul on the run on The Hunted. We also meet some other runners, both of whom are former DC Sci-Fi characters: Stealth (of pre-New 52 L.E.G.I.O.N.), Space Ranger Rick Starr (Showcase, Mystery in Space, Tales of the Unexpected). There are also references to Star Hawkins and Tommy Tomorrow (as "T 'om T 'omorrow"). Everyone we've met so far is scruffy and unlikeable, so I imagine Star and T 'om will be, also. There's also a new character named Ember, although I wouldn't be surprised if she isn't a carryover from Giffen's Legion of Super-Heroes, or a sidekick in one of those 1950s Sci-Fi series being re-imagined here.
Nothing much happens in issue #1, except a lot of running and what's supposed to be snappy dialogue. Ditto for the second issue, only Jaime Reyes (Blue Beetle) is added as a runner, and since I didn't read his recently canceled title, I don't know how or why he's here. Also, we meet scruffy, unlikeable characters Captain K 'Rot and Pig Iron, who in the pre-New 52 were Captain Carrot and Pig Iron of the Zoo Crew. Somewhere, Roy Thomas is stifling a sob.
As you can probably tell, my enthusiasm for this title is at a minimum. I feel like I've read every bit of this before, in some Keith Giffen (or possibly Jim Starlin) book before. In fact, it reads exactly like an issue of Starlin's Captain Comet, another book where 1950s Sci-Fi characters were re-imagined as scruffy, unlikeable people in a space setting where no two people look alike and talk with fake slang/cussing amid "clever" signage.
Which brings me back to my original point. Is this is as bad/boring as I think it is? Or is it just me? There's absolutely nothing original for me here, and the deja vu is so strong as to be overpowering. The "snappy" dialogue doesn't strike me as snappy -- it strikes me as juvenile. (Hey, look gang, they're cussing, only the bastiches get away with it by substituting fake cuss words!) Even the art seems like warmed-over '90s Image stuff.
In fact, all of it strikes me as pretty juvenile. So I ask again: Have I just outgrown Keith Giffen stories?
Replies
I read the first issue of Threshold and I liked it well enough myself. I haven't gotten the second issue, yet.
I wondered the same thing during his Doom Patrol series a couple of years back. Especially the Metal Men backup which I thought was terrible. It was just filled with these rapid fire awful jokes.