General Zod really gets around these days. Superman’s second most iconic villain popped up in Action Comics and Suicide Squad last year, and his eugenics through punching routine made for some crazy plot shenanigans in both books.
Now Robert Venditti has him taking on the Green Lanterns over the fate of an entire world. That’s a compelling enough plot to carry an entire arc, but the real meat of #37 is the tension between the Corps and the newly restored Guardians. Venditti devotes nearly half of the issue to the dynamic between the Lanterns and their creators through a conversation between Ganthet and Jon Stewart.
The tension in these scenes are palpable, as are the narrative stakes. The constant back and forth that Stewart and Ganthet engage in is surprisingly gripping, and ties in thematically with the Zod-centric latter pages.
All of this flows organically through Venditti’s deft characterization and dialouge. He writes each character with a distinctive voice that rises above the cacophony that always threatens to overwhelm team books. Unfortunately his take on the Zod portion of the issue is less compelling. There’s plenty of fisticuffs, and that’s fun, but there’s simply not enough groundwork done to justify focusing on Zod over the more interesting first half.
Sandoval’s pencils make up for the lag in the issue’s second half. It’s hard to go wrong with several pages of Zod punching Green Lanterns when it looks this good. Sandoval captures the brutality of action while retaining the iconography that sets the violence of superhero comics apart. His art captures the wild creativity of the Green Lantern constructs and the sleek lines of kryptonian armor in intricate detail that never looks too busy. That’s a feat in a book set in the Green Lantern corner of DC Comics.
-Andrew Fontana
Rating: 8.0
