"Devastating" Green Lantern Annual Announced

Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver, the creative team behind Green Lantern: Rebirth and a number of other best-selling titles for DC over the last ten years or so, will collaborate on Green Lantern Annual #1, due out in August, which will reportedly finally deal with dangling plot threads left hanging involving The Black Hand following the events of Blackest Night. Van Sciver had previously announced that he would participate in a Green Lantern project when he told his Facebook fans that he was leaving Firestorm last month. "Green Lantern Annual #1 not only brings the Black Hand story to a truly unexpected close, but sets up the major events that will heavily impact the entire Green Lantern franchise in a truly devastating way," Matt Idelson told DC's blog. "And there's no more appropriate pairing for this book than reuniting Geoff Johns with Ethan Van Sciver, given the Green Lantern history those two have under their belts." Given the cover of the issue, it would appear that a Green Lantern may die; it's very evocative of the bagged Death of Superman issue from 1992, which was written and drawn by onetime Johns collaborator Dan Jurgens. This also makes sense, given that the recent Free Comic Book Day issue revealed a new, human Green Lantern with whom fans were unfamiliar. If a Green Lantern were to die on Earth, his ring could seek out the next eligible candidate on the planet. Our money's on Sinestro, given the history that Johns and Van Sciver have with the character. If that were to happen, it would have broad-reaching implications for the Green Lantern family of books since Hal Jordan currently doesn't have a ring and uses Sinestro's to  simulate having powers. Stripped of his ring AND his partner, Hal Jordan may be legitimately left out of the Green Lantern Corps for a time if the new Green Lantern was uninterested or unwilling to share. Johns does little to put lie to that kind of speculation, effectively confirming that a new Green Lantern would be introduced in the story. "Working with Ethan means things change, things are revealed and new characters rise," Geoff Johns said on the blog. "It's the madness of our collaborations that started all this and will continue it. The universe is a dangerous place. And it's about to get even more so...". The 48-page story will be available on August 29. It seems likely that, with all of DC's major characters getting a big release that day, those "zero issues" recently confirmed at the Boston Comic-Con may be more status-quo-shaking than previously expected.