KILOWOG, GREEN LANTERN CORP

The media push for the “Green Lantern” movie has been extremely aggressive of late, so it only seems right that DC would join in that promotion. This week gives the Green Lantern fans one shots featuring one of the more beloved alien Lanterns from the Green Lantern mythos: Kilowog.

Naturally, a Kilowog story written by Peter J. Tomasi, the scribe of the “Green Lantern Corps” and “Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors” titles, should be a decent read. Unfortunately, the book spends so much time trying to establish characters, attitudes, and correlations between comic book character and feature film interpretation that it doesn’t offer much of a Kilowog story.

All we glean of ‘Wog from this issue is how much of a reputation he has. Tomasi gives us a sense that not everyone in the Green Lantern Corps believes that Kilowog deserves the reputation he has. That leads to a predictable adventure wherein Kilowog proves that he’s always right, or something vaguely similar to that. Along the way, Tomasi drops in Kilowog’s trademark pet name for his charges and also shares the rumor that Kilowog is the only member of the Corps whose ring makes a sound when he fires it. Otherwise, this story doesn’t do much in terms of establishing Kilowog.

Carlos Ferreira’s art is serviceable, but rough. He does a nice job of drawing characters, but doesn’t seem to plan out the panel layouts very well, as character interactions within panels frequently come across as just plain awkward. One panel in particular towards the end of the book makes it appear as though Tomar Re is putting romantic moves on Kilowog, rather than comforting his comrade at the stunning news of the death of one of their own.

In the end, this comic is limp. I’d much rather prefer to read a great Kilowog story -- which I know Tomasi has in him somewhere – than suffer through a comic fans’ guide to the unnecessarily changed characters you know from the books as they will appear in the movie. Last week’s “Flashpoint” Abin Sur story was more enjoyable and offered more insight to the world of Oa than this book, which is a shame, because it has nothing to do with the upcoming film. This comic, however, seems like less of a prequel and more of a primer, gently easing comic book readers into the universe of the feature film Green Lanterns.