Halfway There (100 Books ... 50 Left)

47. Columbine by Dave Cullen
48. Green Lantern: Rebirth by Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Scriver
49. Green Lantern: No Fear by Geoff Johns and several artists
50. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

You can read my post on Columbine over at Stop Trying to Inspire Me.

At the halfway point, I still seem to be in my "comic book" phase, but I think that's ending because the Green Lantern trades were ones I recently nabbed with an Amazon gift card. I have been a casual fan of Green Lantern for years but never really committed to buying the book beyond a few issues here and there; however, when Geoff Johns took over with Rebirth (and helped jump-start its sister series Green Lantern Corps), I began to take more notice. After the company-wide crossover, Infinite Crisis, I was hooked, and read the book until I stopped buying monthly comics altogether.

So, what I'm doing is going back to the beginning of the current series--about five years--and reading everything. The story is this: the Green Lantern you remember from Super Friends is actually one of thousands of lanterns who make up an army of universal protectors. His name is Hal Jordan and he was considered the "greatest" lantern (running a close second, btw, is John Stewart, the African-American GL who was in the Justice League cartoon. He was also a GL and a major player in the comics through the 1980s and 1990s). Back in the mid-1990s, he went nuts, killed nearly every other Green Lantern and became a villain named Parallax. The last remaining GL ring was given to a guy named Kyle Rayner and he was the lone Green Lantern for the better part of the next 10 years. Jordan, as Parallax, died in a self-sacrifice/redemption story and then became The Spectre, God's spirit of vengance.

That's where we are when Rebirth starts, and Jordan is brought back to fight Parallax, which isn't him, but the living embodiment of fear who once possessed him and was the reason that Green Lanterns had a weakness for yellow (there is a spectrum of "power," each corresponding to a feeling and in a later storyline we see lanterns of each color--red=anger, orange=green, yellow=fear, green=willpower, blue=hope, indigo=compassion, violent=love, and black=death). He survives and No Fear is about reestablishing him as a hero and seeing the reactions of some of his longtime villains when they realize he has come back.

Johns is a great writer and is obviously at work on a science fiction epic. Rebirth is a great jumping on point and does a great job at taking what are some of the more ridiculous comic stories of the past and making them work; he has a deep understanding of DC continuity but definitely knows how to get a newbie hooked. With No Fear, he starts laying the groundwork for a much bigger story that will make you want the second collection and the third and anything thereafter, as the current Blackest Night storyline has its roots in the very first pages of Rebirth. But it's not just sci-fi geeky, it's pretty badass. Hal Jordan is a gunslinger, a Captain Kirk/Han Solo type who se flaws make him more interesting than the constantly heroic Superman or always brooding Batman.

As for To Kill a Mockingbird, this was the third time I have read it and this fall will mark the first time I am teaching it. This is one of those novels that I don't think I will ever tire of, and I found myself seeing a lot more than I remembered when I read it as a sophomore in high school and right after college. It's honestly one of those "you must read this before you die" books for me and I could gush about it for 1000 more words but anyone who is reading this (both of you) probably already knows that and if you don't you should. Go out. Read it. NOW.

Whew. Halfway there. Coming soon: Wuthering Heights, more American history, nomal people, and The 'Mats.