Hitch, Ross and America’s Got Powers and An Absolute No Show Top The Wednesday Run – April 11, 2012

Editor’s Update: Turns out, the information about the release of one of this week’s featured title, gleaned from DC Comics’ own website is incorrect. Absolute Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Wars is now scheduled to be released in October, at least according to Amazon.ca. You can order it here and read about why you should after the jump.

But before that, as far as a single issue you should be picking up today, hands down it’s America’s Got Powers by Jonathan Ross and Bryan Hitch. Just when you think you’ve seen everything a superhero comic could do, these two creators come up with an absolutely brilliant concept (superpowered people competing on television for a spot on a team) and a stellar delivery. Ross’ dialogue makes you feel like you’re part of the tv show, while Hitch’s art is widescreen gorgeous. He makes use of double page spreads frequently, so I do recommend actually getting this issue in physical form rather than digital. For $2.99 and at 38 pages, it’s well worth it. America’s Got Power is currently scheduled to run as a mini-series, but I’m pretty sure we’re all going to wind up wanting more from these two. – Andy Burns

JP Fallavollita on Absolute Green Lanter: Sinestro Corps War

Green, yellow, orange, blue, red, indigo and violet.

Seven colours. That’s how many exist in the DC Comics universe. Well, in the Green Lantern corner of the DC Comics universe, anyway. Not including black and white, of course. And not strictly speaking either.

Beyond just colours, those are the various Corps (sort-of militaristic organizations made up of either good guys or bad guys or in-between guys in the DC universe) that are represented by a specific colour from the visual colour spectrum.

If you haven’t been following one of the greatest monthly comic book storylines to have ever been published in the history of comic book publishing, namely Green Lantern since 2005, than you won’t know that: red is the colour of rage, orange is the colour of avarice, blue equates to hope, indigo is likened to compassion and violet is the colour of love. Green is the colour of willpower – we all know that, being the Green Lantern fans that we are. But yellow?

Yellow means fear.

But on this Wednesday, yellow is also the colour of absolute awesomeness.

Absolute Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War
Written by: Dave Gibbons, Geoff Johns and Peter J. Tomasi
Illustrated by: A Whole Colourful Spectrum Of Artists  
Published by: DC Comics

Flashback nearly four years (has it been that long?) and I’m in Chicago on a comic convention road trip with buddies Denny B and resident Biff Bam Pop! E-I-C, Andy Burns. Deep dish pizza and sequential storytelling – it doesn’t get much better than that!

Anyway, it was on that trip that both Denny and I picked up the hardcover compilations of volume one and two of Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War. We read them simultaneously over that weekend, sometimes in silent amazement, most times out loud, girlishly eeking out: “Oh my god!” or “I can’t believe it!” or “Have you seen page twenty-eight yet?” or “I can’t believe they just did that!” or, of course, “Holy s@#%!”

The comic was that good. We probably drove Andy (a non-GL comic book reader) crazy with our shared glee.

In the series, head writer Geoff Johns, along with Peter J. Tomasi, Dave Gibbons and a whole host of outstanding artists, broadened the Green Lantern mythos to galactic widths. There was deep, long-standing history in the series now, prophecy and legend inherent in the characters. It was the dense, science fiction comic book version of Star Wars and until reading Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War, I didn’t realize how hungry I was for just that kind of mythology.

Neither did a lot of others. The series sold tons and made DC a bazillion dollars with spin-offs, tie-ins and toys. It brought the characters of Hal Jordan, Sinestro, the Green Lantern Corps and the pending “war of light” to the public masses on a worldwide scale. There wouldn’t be a sniff of a Lantern-based cartoon if not for this storyline. (Two fantastic standalone, direct-to-video animated movies, First Flight and Emerald Knights have since been released, plus there’s a new computer-animated ongoing television series out right now). There wouldn’t be a titular video game or a Ryan Reynolds-starred feature film – or the hope (blue!) of its sequel – if not for the series.

That’s all due to the enormous love (violet!) of Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War.

Even though it’s a little pricey at $100, the oversized visual treatment of this Absolute hardcover version will make this star spanning galactic war story seem even larger than it is. It’s the publishing size that the saga was always destined for!

So make the Wednesday Run this week and pick up Absolute Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War. In the next few decades, we’ll all look back and hold it up as one of the most memorably epic storylines in all comic book publishing history.

And there’s no grey tinge to that prognostication.

Every Wednesday, JP makes the after-work run to his local downtown comic book shop. Comics arrive on Wednesdays you see and JP, fearful that the latest issue will sell out, rushes out to purchase his copy. This regular, weekly column will highlight a particularly interesting release, written in short order, of course, because JP has to get his – before someone else does!