Last Light: Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps' Final Mission

If a good writer saves the best for last, then Robert Venditti is one of the best, as we say goodbye this week to HAL JORDAN AND THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS and its magnificent and oh-so-timely final storyline.

For those who haven’t been reading, this week’s HAL JORDAN AND THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS #50is the final issue of the series. But it’s more than a finale for the Rebirth-launched Green Lantern comic, it's also the end of an era. Writer Robert Venditti is leaving the Corps for new projects (you're reading HAWKMAN, right?) and concluding a run of suitably cosmic proportions. Let’s think about that for a moment. It’s easy to forget now, but when Venditti started on Green Lantern, he was taking over for none other than Geoff Johns (no pressure there). Six years has passed since then, and over that time, Venditti has followed boldly in Johns’ footsteps in redefining and reinvigorating the very foundations on which the Green Lantern Corps are built. He’s done this quietly and confidently, through different eras and a highly acclaimed reboot.

But to realize Venditti’s accomplishment, it's important to remember exactly what makes the GLC important in the first place. You need to look back at the core of the Corps, if you will, and give a close examination at just what makes them matter in the scope of the massive and ever evolving multiverse. So, it's a good thing that's exactly what issue #50, the finale of the appropriately named "Last Charge" storyline set out to do.

If you're coming into issue #50 after having lapsed on your GLC reading for a while, don't panic. The Corps can feel a bit dense at times, but you don't need to worry about going back and reading a full six years of comics to get the important moments out of the story. In fact, you could rewind the clocks just a bit, back to issue #42 and the start of the "Darkstar Rising" arc to get your feet under you and still do just fine here in the finale.