2 out of 5

It’s not Liam Sharp, but I really liked Giuseppe Camuncoli when I first saw him (a while ago now, on Hellblazer), and so that seemed like an intriguing art-pairing proposition for Morrison’s Green Lantern annual.  While flipping through, I wondered if Giuseppe had really changed this much in the intervening years; the art… wasn’t very good.  I could hardly sense what I recalled from his style.  Turning back to the credits page, and there it is: Camuncoli on layouts, Trevor Scott on finishes.  And I’m sorry, Mr. Scott, but I don’t think your Michael Turner-esque figures were the right match for this title.

Grant has a couple of different macro and micro writing styles he cycles through, but something that’s remained pretty consistent is that he packs a lot of information into his panels.  Not necessarily in an Alan Moore way, where background details tell an additional or supporting story, rather that Grant likes to keeps things moving, and so several story beats happen at once.  And when he’s paired with artists he can’t quite capture that, such as the case here, the writing tends to fall apart.  Furthermore, as Grant writes this annual in his chirpy, Big Two, proclamations-only style, the writing comes across as especially weak and simple-minded.  Thankfully, for a story called ‘The Wireless Ones,’ about a race that’s taking over our radio waves, Grant mostly old man syndrome of blaming all the world’s ills on our phone / social media addiction – I mean, a character gives a speech on it, sure, but it’s amusingly brushed away a moment later – and his grasp on Hal Jordan’s everyman method of solving things, instead of just relying on his ring, keeps the tale relatively grounded and readable.

The story is otherwise a bit exclusionary for a casual GL fan such as m’self, and one waiting for the next ‘arc’ in the ongoing to complete before reading it, as Grant jumps head first into a wide cast of characters – Hal’s family, extended family, and neighbors – and Scott doesn’t give them much visual personality.  The ‘bad guys’ are a rather boring design, and Steve Oliff’s colors are just… bland (though I feel like that’s mostly keeping with DC’s house style).  Grant delivers a pretty great solution to things, but like most annuals, it’s all so incidental feeling, i.e. very skippable.