As I’ve mentioned in the past, Green Lantern is a series I’ve always found more interesting in concept than in execution. Despite the odd excellent story here and there (usually involving Alan Moore and/or Dave Gibbons, or when teamed up with Green Arrow), I’ve often felt that a great idea has been wasted on some pretty boring characters – John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, and none moreso than Hal Jordan himself. I was mildly entertained by Green Lantern : Rebirth, which brought Jordan back to life and hastily retconned his evilness (short version : a big yellow space worm did it), but it didn’t take long for the resurrected Lantern’s own title to become a snoozefest itself.

Nevertheless, I like to pop my head around the door from time to time to see what’s happening with the series. Lately, though, that’s proven difficult as the interminable Sinestro Corps War has gone on – while I’ll admit the idea of a “negative” version of the GL Corps isn’t a bad one (and we’ll gloss over the fact that it was already done decades ago with the Star Sapphires), it’s possible to run something into the ground, and so it’s proven, with the imminent promise of a whole spectrum of Corps based on different emotions (and the Black Lanterns, who rather than being a civil rights movement are apparently all dead. See, never say that power rings aren’t equal opportunity). It’s all a bit tiresome, to be honest, and despite Geoff Johns’ enthusiasm for building a “new” GL mythos, it’s also somewhat impenetrable for new or casual readers.

That said, the latter point is something you can’t really aim at the current story arc – dipping in this month, I was somewhat surprised to find the second part of a story titled Secret Origin. Yes, despite the fact that there’s nothing about Emerald Dawn that really needs retconning, and that all the pertinent details were conveyed back in Rebirth, we’re once again being taken back to Jordan’s flyboy days and the appearance of a certain red-skinned alien. While it may appear pointless at first glance, you can at least see a few reasons for doing this – for starters, it provides a handy few months worth of material at a time when, Batman aside, the big characters can’t really do all that much as they wait for Final Crisis. Secondly, it allows Johns to retroactively insert elements of his newer mythos into the history of the character – and so we see that Abin Sur’s death was, at least in part, down to a growing sense of fear corrupting his ring and will-power, and we’re even shown the Sinestro/Parallax logo in his eye at the critical moment.

Just because there are reasons to revisit Jordan’s origin, though, doesn’t mean that the book itself really justifies its existence. This isn’t Superman : Birthright, after all – nothing truly significant is being changed here. It’s simply a retelling, with a few extra details added in to make it more relevant to the current state of play. There are various examples of… well, I don’t know what you’d call it, really – “retrospective foreshadowing”? It’s all “Oh, look, Carol Ferris hates Hal, we know how that turns out” or “Hector Hammond is Carol’s boyfriend, that adds a new layer!”, and that kind of thing. Perhaps the one interesting addition – an explanation of just why Abin Sur was flying a spaceship in the first place – isn’t even Johns’, it came from an old Alan Moore story (the same short story, in fact, out of which the entire “Spectrum Corps” and forthcoming Blackest Night storyline has been spun).

I mean, it’s all perfectly solid, serviceable stuff – Ivan Reis’ art is decent enough, it’s never jumped out at me but it does the job and there are no glaring flaws – but you just wonder why the current GL readers need a fresh telling of a well-trodden story. If you like classic, All-American flyboy type tales, then I’m sure you’ll get a kick out of it, as you probably find Jordan himself far less annoying than I do (I mean, his Superman-esque debut appearance comes when he rescues a fighter jet… from an accident that he caused himself). But, while this is evidently being pitched as a Big Deal – the sort of thing that will get collected in future trades as “the definitive GL origin story” – it winds up feeling like little more than pre-event filler.