Some thoughts about Green Lanterns: Rebirth #1

There are new Green Lanterns on Earth. Nothing out of normal but is there a reason behind it?

Both Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz are dealing with their normal lives in their respective ways but the appearance of a strange threat will force Hal Jordan to make them be better at their job as protectors of the Earth.

Rebirth is here and a new direction for these characters start now.

Written by both Geoff Johns and Sam Humphries, the title focuses on the two new rookies of the Green Lantern Corps, Simon and Jessica. The fact that Johns is helping Humphries shape the new direction demonstrates that he's pretty invested in making both characters work. However, this is not enough since Humphries' direction is not the best.

Since the beginning you realize that Humphries is making fun of the fact that there are several GLs on Earth which is appreciated but once that you go beyond that, there's barely anything else to see. The presentation is not particularly creative nor unique, the narration is okay but not really distinctive, finally the plot-points are not that intriguing.

One of the biggest problems for me here was the characterization, particularly Simon's. He might have been a bit of a hot head in the past but never to this level. He constantly disregards Jessica's role here by calling her a "rookie" when he's also quite new to the job which make him look like a hypocritical asshole. He even wanted Guy Gardner's dead which doesn't make a lot of sense since they used to work together and were friends last time I checked.

It seems like either Humphries didn't make a lot of research or he's purposely making this characterization to create conflict which is a pretty poor manner of doing so considering that Simon and Jessica's backgrounds are interesting enough to develope a nice dynamic.

Ethan Van Sciver and Ed Benes share art duties and their work is pretty solid in their respective sections. Sciver is as usual, the strongest part of it due to his style and history with the franchise.

Yeah, I'm not really excited about this so far but I guess I will keep checking it out.