Yes...John Stewart is Awesome

So...I finally understand what all of the hullabaloo about Mosaic is about. I managed to pick up the entire run the other day, and have been greedily devouring the issues. And I can say without fear of contradiction, that yes, indeedy, John Stewart is AWESOME!

Now, I've always liked John...just not as much as I like Guy, Kyle and Hal. Heck the more I see Alan, the more that I like him too. And Kilowog is simply fabulous. But John seemed to me, to be the quiet one, the sensible one. Not flashy, but managing to get the job done. Smart certainly, but a little dull perhaps, at least in comparison to his fellow Lanterns.

But in Mosaic, John Stewart rocks. There are wonderful facets to his personality that have been mostly left unused since Mosaic ended, and that is a shame. I loved it in #5, when he and Hal are at odds, when John is able to summon up different aspects of himself...and all Hal cans summon are exact replicas in return. Hal is in the Gray-temple stage here, which according to Geoff Johns, means that he's being influenced by Parallax, but nevertheless, he is an ENORMOUS jackass, and by God, John shows him whatfor. See! It wasn't just Guy!

Mosaic is a fabulous concept. All the bits and pieces of various worlds brought to Oa, presumably by the former Guardian gone Mad, Appa Ala Apsa, aka the Old Timer. He went a little bonkers from lonliness after being stripped of his immortality by the other Guardians and reassembled all these different cultures and peoples from all over the galaxy. After his defeat, John is given the unenviable job of trying to keep them all from killing each other...since the Guardians feel that keeping them altogether is after all, not a bad experiment.

Naturally, the poor people in the adjoining cities and habitats are less than thrilled, but John really does a superb job of getting them to cooperate...at least some of the time. He even gives out rings to a group of kids who help out. There are some good aliens and some really cranky aliens, just like the human members of the group. Through it all John keeps his sense of humor and manages to come up with some truely ingenius solutions.

He also falls for Rose, who is sort of...kind of...one of Hal's old girlfriends, but they never really did anything together. Hal gets all dog in the mangerish over John's keeping her company, but that's just Hal. He also assumes that since she turns him down to stay with John, that she MUST BE MIND CONTROLLED!!
Oh Hal, your vanity is overwhelming!

The series went to 18 issues, and it turns out that the whole Mosaic idea was actually John's doing from the start, and that he's actually become a Guardian himself! I don't really know how they resolved this, since he obviously isn't a Guardian now, but still...it was an interesting concept.

So, if you see it, pick it up. It's pretty amazing. As is John. And yes, it was written by Gerard Jones, who was also doing the early Green Lantern issues, in Volume III.