New Guardians #3

Did the cover artist not get the notice that Ganthet's hair has been cut?

I really, really, really want to like this comic. I'm hoping it all comes together eventually. I'm hoping that it slowly reveals the reason for all of these different color rings internally instead of relying on the reader's previous knowledge of the Green Lantern storyline. I would go ahead and read Blackest Night except it's one of those big cross-over events that is never collected in a decent way. And picking up all of the single issues would be more work than I'm willing to put in at this point. I like going to the comic book store for comics but I don't think I'm ready to start shopping around at every place in Portland to find the books I need. Although there are some really great back-up comic book stores out here that very rarely disappoint. You know this is a good comic town when your back-up stores are every bit as good as your main store.

Let me just say my main comic book store is Excalibur Books and has been since I moved to Portland. Their store is much better than their website!

Issue #3 is mostly a confusing bunch of fighting scenes while sort of advancing the plot. Actually, the book sort of just jettisons the plot and kind of starts over. The first two issues were really just about getting one representative of each Corps on to Oa in a confrontation with the Guardians. So the rings going to Kyle lured them together. Then Kyle goes to Oa and they follow. Then Kyle wears the rings which actually just brings about the destruction of all the rings except the Orange ring and his Green ring.

Got that? Forget all that stuff with the rings that was the mystery in the first book because the rings are all gone and the Orange ring isn't actually an Orange ring anyway! It's an Orange construct! So now there are no random rings at all! It's just Green Lantern with one of each Corps member and the Guardians of Oa.

Except the Orange Corps member is missing. I guess their is only one Orange Lantern and he makes an appearance at the end of this issue.

I think the Guardians know this guy.

This reminds me of the Bill Cosby album where he tells some story and then says, "I told you that story so that I could tell you this one." I don't remember which stories he bookended that statement with. I think it might have been the buck buck story describing Fat Albert so that he could tell the story where they scare Fat Albert with the Frankenstein head. But I'm probably wrong.

This reminds me of that because the first three issues really are just setting up whatever is going to happen with all of these Corps members, the Guardians, and Agent Orange in Issue #4. Let's hope Issue #4 and beyond begin some kind of really interesting story. Because this whole concept of all of these colorful Corps is something I can really get behind. If it's told well and isn't just a confusing jumble of bullshit like the last four years of Green Lantern. Okay, that's not totally fair. I didn't read the last four years of Green Lantern. But the online synopses are a bunch of confusing crap!

And Agent Orange is a really stupid name for an alien.