Passing the Torch

Over its 60-year history, DC Comics' ""Green Lantern"" series has grown convoluted and sometimes confusing. The title character is an Earth-born superhero who wears a ""power ring"" and belongs to an interstellar police corps founded by the alien race of Guardians. But over the decades, DC has kept replacing one Green Lantern of Earth with another, killing off characters and then resurrecting them, as editorial whims shift. In this collection's first tale, Green Lantern IV, John Stewart (who saw his role of Green Lantern ""as a distraction""), consults with Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern of the 1940s. Stewart has resumed his heroic career, only to be shocked by the crimes he witnesses. The other stories concern Earth's fifth Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner, who, accompanied by his girlfriend, Jade (Scott's daughter), is helping raise the formerly deceased Guardians, who have been resurrected as super-powered toddlers. The second story has one surprising twist that ties in to a classic 1960s ""Green Lantern"" story that few will recall, but it's otherwise a cliched environmental parable. In the final tale, Rayner and Jade are mystified by the disappearance of one of the blue-skinned female Guardian toddlers. Subsequently, the two heroes find and battle a blue-skinned super-powered adult female on another planet. Even some readers of this review will figure out the connection in far less time than it takes Rayner and Jade. Illustrated in drearily conventional superhero style, these uninspired stories will appeal primarily to completists.