Morgan Hampton and Jeremy Adams' Green Lantern Corps Vol. 1: New World Rising is a mixed bag, unfortunately, especially after Adams' excellent, parallel Green Lantern Vol. 5: Fractured Spectrum.

The book starts well enough, with a story that gets a strong boost from art by Fernando Pasarin, despite some continuity issues that are becoming increasingly worrisome in the Lantern franchise overall. But the middle two issues don’t hold up, nor the last one necessarily, and that’s concerning. Though Corps technically fine and treats all the Lantern characters well, when it’s in the shadow of Green Lantern and what this book could be, so far it doesn’t measure up.

[Review contains spoilers]

Strangely, the current Green Lantern franchise seems to be taking as canon continuity from Green Lantern: The Animated Series, and here too, the Justice League cartoon. In Green Lantern Vol. 1: Back in Action, Adams introduced to main continuity Razer, the Red Lantern from GLTAS; we didnt' get explanation or backstory, but I figured that would come in time. But as of Fractured Spectrum, Adams has also brought in Aya, the GLTAS AI that Razer was in love with, and here in New World Rising, Razer references GLTAS events — his becoming a Red Lantern and eventually a Blue Lantern, and Aya’s apparent death and his search for her. That’s all shaping up for a reunion between Razer and Aya in the upcoming Starbreaker Supremacy crossover of the sort we might have seen in a Green Lantern: The Animated Series season three.

No harm, really; Hampton and Adams could be simply grafting GLTAS continuity on to the mainstream, introducing two characters we’ve “never” seen before with a previously unrevealed backstory that’s about to come to the fore. What an uninitiated reader is to make of this Razer whose appearance hasn’t been explained after 20-plus issue of Green Lantern, I’m not sure, but such as it is.

But in New World Rising we find John Stewart not handling his problems so well (the death of his mother, creating a Lantern simulacrum of his late sister) and refusing to confide in his fellow Lanterns. Instead, he ultimately talks things out with Hawkwoman Shayera Thal, whom I would venture … he actually doesn’t know?

Here, the writers project animated continuity (John and Shayera’s Justice League relationship) on to two established characters, and that feels less fair to the reader — not new characters who suddenly relate differently than what’s been established, even for John’s arc to turn on it, for reasons exterior to the comics themselves. I’m sure anyone who’s all that interested already gets it, but at the same time, the writers could have established John and Shayera’s in-continuity background in a couple of sentences; to require familiarity with a different medium for the fullest understanding seems the lesser way to go.

When it was just a matter of Razer and Aya, in Fractured Spectrum, I didn’t bring it up. But with Razer and Aya and John and Shayera, then it begins to look like a pattern. If that’s the extent of it, again, no harm. The difficulty is when writers begin to take their conception of characters entirely from other media, the most egregious being both Barry Allen and Wally West written like the young Wally West from the animated Justice League (see Endless Winter for one of many examples). Adams has demonstrated an almost too-encyclopedic knowledge of the DCU proper, but come to think of it, Hampton’s Cyborg: Homecoming was specifically touted as “Teen Titans animated series-inspired.” Something that bears watching.

Again, the book’s first three chapters are an auspicious start. The writers make a cool decision to have Jessica Cruz as the Corps' “precinct captain,” we’ve got John Stewart having to team up with Sinestro, and Pasarin is on point — see the wordless background comedy with Guy Gardner while John books Kanjar Ro in the foreground. It culminates in an encounter with Atrocitus and the Red Lantern crew, perennial favorites. At the same time, the writers miss an easy win in using Blackfire with the Green Lanterns and not mentioning her Justice League Odyssey friendship with Cruz; also I wonder if Gene Roddenberry and/or Peter David would’ve liked to have been consulted about the “great bird of the galaxy” that erupts from Thanagar here.

With the fourth issue, the story itself takes a comedic turn, heralded by a switch to artists V Ken Marion and Amancay Nahuelpan. Their more animated styles are right for a story of Simon Baz and Teen Lantern Keli Quintela, and separately Guy Gardner and a timid Lantern recruit named Narf, to all run into trouble on an space station amidst alien gangsters. At the height of camp, Evil Star spouts, blaster in hand, “Say hello to my giant friend!” Meant to be silly, succeeds in being silly.

But, remembering especially Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason’s suspenseful, pulse-pounding Green Lantern Corps, I’m skeptical that Green Lantern comedy is really what the market wants, especially one that’s “punny” more than funny. There’s also the hard-to-overlook coincidence that Guy and Narf go searching for information on Starbreaker at the exact same station where Simon just happens to take Keli to find a spare part (or why Guy needs Space Cabbie instead of flying out of danger under his own power). The writers begin to parlay this into finally revealing the origins of Keli’s Lantern gauntlet, but the art is so overwrought and the hints so vague that this pivot couldn’t save it.

The final chapter fails to clarify things. One storyline sees Cruz and Jo Mullein try to rescue the embattled Mogo, a trite use of pages that affirms, yet again, that Jessica’s weaknesses are also her strengths. In the other storyline, Sinestro runs into the Sinister Sons, Sinson and Lor-Zod; not the writers' fault, but DC still hasn’t collected the Sinister Sons miniseries, and so there are bits — like with the captive whale — that are otherwise inscrutable to the audience.

But moreover, the last page tease of Starbreaker Supremacy makes clear not much has happened in the six issues of Green Lantern Corps Vol. 1: New World Rising. John and Sinestro went to Thanagar, Guy sought information about Starbreaker and didn’t get it, Sinestro went to Korugar, and that’s about it. The book looked good under Fernando Pasarin at the outset, and Morgan Hampton and Jeremy Adams portray all the Lantern characters well, but something seems distinctly lacking overall. Here’s hoping it’s pre-crossover jitters, and after that this title can get on track.

[Includes original and variant covers]