Green Lantern: New Guardians, Annual #1

Well!  So this is the new Annual for Green Lantern: New Guardians, featuring Kyle Rayner, or at it's supposed to feature Kyle, but let me just save you some time, if you happen to be a Kyle fan...and I am...he's barely in it.

Keith Giffen is the writer, and I'm personally torn, because I LIKE Keith Giffen, but this...this is dreadful.  And the art by Scott Kolins and Andrei Bressan is also not to my taste.  It may be to yours.  But I started this book with anticipation, and by the third page, I had to admit that I didn't have a CLUE about what was going on.

We begin...I think...with an alien world, and what appears to be some sort of contest going on, with teams hunting people, that is more or less televised (?) on this particular world, with the hunters having their fans, and earning points, and killing the hunted, and stuff.  There are a few amusing or at least mildly clever moments, mainly in the ads for the various hunter groups.

Then we jump to Arkillo who is hanging out with St. Walker, except that the latter doesn't seem to be particularly hopeful at all.  They are upset because there are too many people who are becoming part of the Third Army, and wish that there were more dead ones. 

Meanwhile, Carol Ferris, with Kyle is tow, shows up on the Zamaron's doorstep.  She doesn't know that they have thrown in their lot with the Guardians...who I would imagine plan to double-cross them at the first opportunity...and is supposed to be in charge of training Kyle in the use of the Violet Ring, but instead casually throws him off to some other Star Sapphire, and basically, that is the last that we see of Kyle, because they have a mission for Carol to perform.  She needs to go and have a little chat with Lady Styx, who hangs out at the place where the Hunters and Hunted hang out, and see if they can work out a deal of some kind.  Exactly what, I cannot tell you. 

So after dumping Kyle, she gets together with Arkillo and St. Walker and they somehow managed to find and contact a Green Lantern named Jediah Caul, who is deep deep undercover, and he's rude, obnoxious and dismissive.  He also pawns them off on a bunch of bounty hunters, who of course betray them at the first opportunity.  Carol is captured, and about to be hunted, when she does manage to have a talk with Lady Styx, who naturally tells her to get lost.  Then somehow, she is rescued, along with Arkillo and St. Walker. Did I mention that their rings don't work?  And I think they escape but Jediah Caul is captured instead.

Good.  I hope they blow him up. 

This was seriously terrible.  The dialogue made no sense, and half of the time I wasn't even sure who was speaking.  Carol sounded like a completely different person, as did they all.  I know that Giffen is better at plotting than dialogue, and I can surely believe it after reading this.  The artwork was unclear, and murky, and jumbled, and again, most of the time, I simply couldn't tell what the hell was going on. 

And there weren't any butt shots of Kyle, which is just Not Done!  Plenty of Carol, but who cares about that? 

I am going to drop this book.  Kyle is barely in it.  It's mostly about Carol and Arkillo and Larfleeze and St. Walker.  I like those characters, but I like Kyle better, and he's hardly doing anything, or barely even shows up.  And like ALL of the other books, this is just spinning its wheels.  I also don't like the new Jediah Caul character At All. 

I can hardly believe this, but I am panning a Green Lantern book. 

Give this a pass.