Fair warning: if you already know that you're not a fan of Geoff Johns' Green Lantern run,
then this video is not going to be for you. WOOF WOOF! Hey guys, it's me, Marcus AKA The Maddogg
and we're back with another video! Now I'll be the first to admit that I can often be quite
hyperbolic and there's been a few times on this channel that have announced that a comic is just
the best and rather than admitting that there might be a chance certain wrong I'd rather take
the egotistical approach of doing a full-on video talking about why I'm probably right so last time
I did this type of video we looked at Ultimate Spider-Man but today we're going to be looking
at Jeff Jones's historic run on Green Lantern and starting this list off at number 10 I've got the
fact that he gave the Guardians a storyline and I'm not saying that Jeff Johnson's run is the
first time that the Guardians ever really got a plot that's centered around them but I feel
like their importance was obvious throughout the entire series because when I was growing
up and I did read Comics that featured Green Lantern I often thought that they were in a
similar League or something like the celestials or maybe just like the watches and this organization
that exists to make sure that balance is restored what what Jeff Jones did is give each individual
member the Guardians their own personality and also their own agency so the way riffs that went
on within the guardian Millions people had to take sides and there were debates going on that
connected to the wider stories some of which had lasting consequences or wider implications
for the DC Universe as a whole before I read Jeff Johnson's Green Lantern when I didn't care about
the Guardians and I'd often think that they were taking time away from the bigger action that I
cared about but John's made it so that I cared as much about the guardian storyline as it did
about how Jordan Kyle Rayner or just any of the lanterns number nine a bit of a broad one but it's
the art I don't think there's many people that I could give this series of omnibuses to when they
flick through it and not impressed by at least one artist that worked on this title and I also think
that if you opened any of these books up at any page you would stumble onto something that just
looks phenomenal obviously the big standouts for me were Ivan rice and Ethan van skiver even though
I know there are controversies surrounding him but then later on he had phenomenal work by Doug
monkey which is a name that I'm still not sure if I'm pronouncing correctly yet Carlos Pacheco
and you also had Darwin Cook doing a couple of pages for one of the specials there was top tier
Talent throughout this book and it shows and what I liked best is that each artist brought something
different to the table in my eyes this is some the best art that's ever been done for some
of The Intergalactic DC Universe books and it's difficult to top it and I think it's going to be
even longer before we see another run that goes on for this long have such a phenomenal cast of
artists throughout it but to address one of my own controversies for a moment when I did my top 10
reasons that Ultimate Spider-Man is just the best I had a few people accusing me of actually making
that a top 15 which is a disgusting accusation to have people think that I'd only list it as
a top 10 list so that it would be better for the algorithm it just it offends me and I'd hate for
the same accusations to be thrown at me in this video because if I was going to make this a top
15 I'd have to have something in 15th Place and you know if you are twisting my arm I guess I'd
have the fact that this made outside of DC's Earth as interesting as inside it now I know
this is primarily because of the time when I was reading this series but I hadn't read a lot of
Intergalactic DC books sure I love characters like Lobo but that's mostly because he's Lobo
but even Green Lantern as a character was somebody that I saw as an Earthbound hero yeah of course
often the Justice League would go in some kind of Wayne Enterprise funded spaceship and go off
and fight on different planets but they'd always come back to earth at the end even the Watchtower
was always just outside of Earth so it didn't even really feel that distant Jeff Johnson's
Green Lantern would maybe pay attention to other planets and sectors and characters that I might
not have noticed before and because of that this series massively helped to expand my knowledge of
The Wider DC Universe and then because of that I paid attention to what Marvel was doing with
annihilation in the Guardians of the Galaxy so this series was fundamental for me exploring
more than just Eve within the big two Publishers number eight and I know some people are going to
disagree with me on this but I'm gonna go with Kyle rain now Carlina was actually my first
Green Lantern because he featured quite heavily in Grand Morrisons JLA so you think I'd actually
see it as a negative him not being the main character in this series but he's so heavily
involved and I think he still did a tremendous job when he wasn't the Title Character a lot of
stuff happened to him throughout Jeff Johnson's time on this title involving ion and Parallax
and I think Jeff Johns did a lot to evolve Kyle so that he could have some new and interesting
storylines but even if Hal Jordan was taking Center's stage John's made sure that caldros
didn't disappear into the background which it would have been very easy to do they could have
just made this an entirely hell-centered story but the fact that it still shows respect and time to
the character that was carrying the lantern before Hull came back made me learn a lot more about him
and the other Green Lanterns within this universe speaking of which I'm gonna go with the expansion
of the Lantern Corps the best part about this is it's one of those developments that seems
so obvious now that it's being done because of course if there's a Green Lantern and sinestra
other Yellow Lantern there must be other colors on the Spectrum throughout the Universe and I
remember when I first saw the Indigo Lantern logo on a t-shirt at Forbidden Planet I thought that
this was just going to be a gimmick especially then when they started doing all these Rings
which you know kind of had to collect so what I loved whilst I was reading this series is that it
allowed itself the time to establish each Lantern Corps as its own group it weren't just a copy and
paste of the Green Lanterns but with a different Hue applied each one connected with an emotion
which tied to the personalities of the members of that call because of this when The Wider battles
and wars were going on it felt like the stakes were so much higher because we'd connected with
each one of them Hal Jordan had pretty much worn every ring by the time their series was
finished and often especially in series that are trying to build up to a big company-wide event it
doesn't have that time to actually explore what it's talking about but you always got the sense
that Jeff Johns knew more about each Lantern chord than he'd put on the page even if in
hindsight now I still don't think I could tell you much about the Indigo lanterns well yeah I
am just kind of thinking about how much easier this would be if this was a top 15 list because
there'd be something that I would want to mention in 14th Place and I'm not officially including it
so it can still say top 10 in the title but in 14th Place I would include something like the
law fleas Christmas special I don't know about you guys but I often don't look for a Christmas
special when I'm getting into Comics law fleeves to me was that anomaly throughout the Lantern core
and I didn't really know too much about it it was just a bit greedy and had a weird horse looking
face and to counter the point that I made in seventh place I thought that he was going to
be the lantern called that they mostly just forgot about but this Christmas special was
sweet and wholesome it also managed to develop laughlies as a character I sympathized with him
a little bit and I love that they gave him and Hal Jordan a real moment and I think throughout
Jeff johns's run on Green Lantern it's so easy to remember the bigger moments but there are a lot of
great smaller stories is Scout routing that can often be overlooked number six I'm gonna go with
the rebirth of the Green Lantern Corps now yes this was something that was only started by Jeff
Johns and then was taken over by Dave Gibbons and eventually Peter J tomasi and Patrick Gleason but
honestly when I look back on it it feels like the Green Lantern core was something that was
kind of of its time I can see why it hadn't really been a big thing throughout the DC Universe for
a good number of years before this but what they emphasize and focused on is that at its core the
Green Lantern core ironically is a police force so they took a lot of tropes that happened throughout
crime dramas of having partners and having this more organized approach to it all and
brought that back to the Forefront of DC Comics and made sure that the biggest names were at the
front of it so you had Jon Stewart Karina Guy Gardner and kilowog right there at the front of
it leading the charge and because of that they had a spin-off series it became as interesting
to read as the main Green Lantern rot and what was great is that it felt like it was never too
distant from the main thing that was going on for Hal Jordan but he also never felt like it
was just piggybacking our feet and that gave us these great crossover issues that led to stuff
like the Sinestro core war and War of the Green Lanterns but admittedly that's something that
I'm going to talk about in an extra point so you felt like the two series were always interweaving
with each other but they also worked on their own which is why I'm very excited that Peter J tomasi
has been hinting for years that this is finally gonna get an Omnibus I feared it's going to be
2024 but whenever it is or if you wanted to pick up these on the buses you can get them from the
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funny though talked about all these Lantern calls I kind of wish that I could give some kind of
extra mention or I don't know 13th Place to the Red Lanterns and I'm not just talking about the
Red Lanterns as a group even though they have got atrocities and death star and just other
characters that I really like whoever being honest they're probably some of the most interesting ones
that have come out of this series what I'm talking more so about their spin-off series that they got
on the new 52 which yep still my jam but to me this is one of the most underrated series that
exists from The New 52 it surprises me that more people don't talk about this yeah I know
that this wasn't written by Jeff Jones but it was a byproduct of his run on Green Lantern in the Red
Lantern New 52 series gave us one of the best guy Gardener stories that we've ever gotten it makes
sense that you would join up with the Red Lanterns but it just gave us this really interesting story
that really reminded me of something like Splinter Cell Double agents yeah I'm really showing my age
there but although I do love all the lanterns that were created as a result of this run the
red ones are definitely my favorite and not just because I'm angry all the time number five all
of the events that came out of this yeah I'm talking the Sinestro core War Blackest Night
and the incredibly underrated War the lanterns often with a series that goes on for this long
it would be a story of Peaks and troughs but it seems like Jeff Johnson's run on Green Lantern is
just a story of Peaks and higher Peaks the events in this are amazing and some of the best that have
ever come from either of the big two Publishers last year for the season of events I went back
and reviewed Celestial core war on its own and it still holds up today it was smaller scale it
was just between the Green Lantern books but it still had wider ramifications on the DC Universe
and it just told a really great and interesting story without losing focus on the battle between
Hal Jordan and Sinestro then you have blackish now which I'm going to review later on this year
so make sure you subscribe but this impacted the entire DC Universe and it still managed to work
but then it brought it back to its own scale yet again for war with the lanterns and just
gave us a great story about the battle that was going on between these characters and it was just
great because each time you thought that this had reached its peak it just stepped it up yet again
and the majority of the time that I've looked at a creators run on a specific character I've often
pointed out that the series will get derailed if there's a big event that's going on yep I'm still
talking about you Matt fraction Iron Man but that wasn't the case with Green Lantern because DC had
the trust of him to be controlling everything that was going on anyway it's one of those rare times
that the guy who's pulling the big strings is also telling the ongoing series number four I'm going
with the fact that he carried its momentum into the new 52 and gave us one of the best Sinestro
stories that we've ever had and I feel like I'm saying that for a lot of the characters that I'm
pointing out but I will stand by that when it comes to Sinestro I'm gonna have to spoil the
concept but he gets his Green Lantern ring back and I just love the uneasy awkward tension that
goes on between him and Hal now the new 52 was meant to reset the entire DC Universe and even
though Jeff Jones was the one who wrote Flashpoint in the first place it seems like he kind of just
ignored that but still took the chance to reset and brought the story back down to a grand level
it wasn't about all the lanterns anymore because the vast majority of them had their own spin-off
series anyway so instead it went back to what it wanted to do from the beginning and just told the
story about HAL and Sinestro and overall the new 52 does unfortunately have a bad reputation which
is something that I do not agree with but I do love that Jeff John stuck with Green Lantern
through that change despite the fact that he was also doing even Aquaman and Justice League and
I think he was doing another couple of titles as well and gave us one of those titles that Wix is
a great Counterpoint to use anytime that somebody says that everything that came from the new 52 was
bad I've conveniently forgotten the number of the point that I'm on but I guess I can have an extra
one without it really affecting the title because me 12 point or whatever point this ends up being
is gonna be the fact that this finally puts on focus on one of the characters in the DC Universe
that wasn't part of the main Trinity now this may seem like a trivial thing and over the years DC
has always made a point of giving some of the characters Focus we always felt like characters
like Flash and Green Lantern and Green Arrow and all the others like that were off in their own
corner but Superman Batman and Wonder Woman always just shoved into your face and don't get me wrong
I like them but Jeff Johnson's Green Lantern felt like the first time that he was Front Page News
not actual Front Page News because Superman has to die for that to happen but all the focus was
on him and especially combined with something like 52 it felt like DC was finally paying attention
to some of the other great characters that they had they weren't just second to you they could
lead things and they didn't just have to live in the show Shadow with the Trinity I remember
the number that was at because in number three I've got the fact that this actually
had an ending how often do you get to say that a series that was coming out from either Marvel or
DC that was part of the main universe and not the ultimate series or announce World tale and
was gonna continue after that crater left still had an ending that felt satisfying even some of
my favorite titles like Daredevil by Bend if didn't get that chance because it had to set
up for when Brubaker took over but by the end of Jeff Johnson's Green Lantern one you could close
a book and if you never read a Green Lantern title again you would have a satisfying ending
I don't know about you guys but that's just something that I never really see happening
and obviously yeah by the time he was leaving this title Jeff Jones was a much bigger name
over at DC but the fact that DC let him do that despite the fact that they knew somebody else was
going to publish the next issue the month after phenomenal to me and it meant that this felt
like a complete reading experience number two I'm gonna go with the Redemption of Hal Jordan
now yeah when Parallax first infected him during Emerald Twilight I didn't really know what was
happening because of the fact that I wasn't born it was during that 90s either where DC and Marvel
just wanted to ruin the car characters that people would love for years and from when I was watching
I Fanboy when I was first getting into Comics they talked about how Monumental of a task Jeff John's
had I don't really understand the full weight of that but I'm still impressed with the fact they
managed to do it Green Lantern reboot didn't shy away from the fact that Jordan's reputation was
tarnished but Jeff Jones managed to find a way to bring Hal Jordan back into the light without
ignoring all the bad things that he'd done and in a believable way for the universe at the event and
he also just managed to bring Hal Jordan back as the Green Lantern sure Cal Rainer might have been
me first for others it might be Alan Scott or Guy Gardner if you ask me to picture Green Lantern in
your head it's always going to be hell Jordan and that's because of this Ron now before telling me
top pick I do want to have an honorable mention I guess between you and me our little secret we'll
call it the 11th place because then I guess I can get away with calling this a top 10 because this
definitely hasn't been a top 15. bought me 11th pick would be that time when hell Jordan punched
Batman now yeah I'm a massive Batman fan but still this is just one of those moments that you can't
forget I might be over hypingy it was just one page but still it stuck with me for years later
it also just shows how Fearless how Jordan really is and yeah I don't think there's any chance that
you'd ever see this in a Batman book but we got it in a Green Lantern one and for that I'm Gonna
Be Thankful but the number one reason why I think Jeff Johnson's Green Lantern run is just the best
is because it was the perfect jumping on point for new readers but it was still also a great
re-entry point if you've been a long time fan it would have been very easy for any Creator to have
come on and just abandoned all the continuity that had come before and sweep the history of
how Jordan under the rug and just start to fresh and act like nothing had happened or act like this
was the next part of the story and not really give new readers a chance to jump in but somehow Jeff
Jones managed to do the unthinkable and bring both of those groups of people together and still give
us a great story and a memorable series that went on for nearly a decade there's a reason why I put
this as one of the first picks I mean where to start Green Lantern video it's got a little bit
of everything and it was so important to me when I was supposed getting into this hobby if it would
have just been the six issue rebirth Series yeah I would have still enjoyed it and it would have
helped me get introduced to this character but I probably wouldn't be sitting here do doing this
video it's how John's managed to build on that momentum with a character that people either
dislike because of what he did in the 90s or just straight up didn't know who he was altogether and
make him the character at DC that you had to pay attention to so I'd definitely recommend it it's
one of the most important books to me when it comes to comics and despite the fact that it does
have its flaws I still think that it's just the best but that's the video hopefully you enjoyed
it I want to try and do more of these positive videos so in the comments section below let me
know any other series that you want to see me do with just the best on but until next time
just make sure that you stay safe and stay mad all you dogs with roof see you the next video