To tie in with the upcoming 5 pack John Stewart figure, this week’s brief focus is on Green Lantern: Mosaic.
Mosaic was in many ways a doomed project. And by many, I mean in every way. Early in the life of the book
it got stamped with the dreaded “doesn’t fit editorial vision.” according to initial artist Cully Hamner. And everybody knows editorial vision is usually brilliant. Sooooo with that graveyard smooch planted on it’s lips, Mosaic was just marking time. It could have been treated to the phoned-in one-cheeked (half-assed) scriptwork of a writer collecting a paycheck.
But! Instead, impending doom ended up being possibly the best thing that could have happened to the
series.
The initial plot was straightforward: one of the Guardians (the uber-powerful big headed smurfy dudes for
the uninitiated) created a Mosaic world made up of cities from a vast array of civilizations across many
worlds, much like what the Beyonder did in Secret Wars. John Stewart was assigned to watch over this
patchwork world. A nice plot with plenty of potential. But as I said, it was doomed. DOOMED. For a
concept that seemed full of promise, it lasted only 18 issues.
Those 18 issues were damn good, though. Writer Gerard Jones really got to stretch out, and packed in stories that touched on alienation, racism, xenophobia, age-discrimination, surrealism, war, and much more more. It became evident that being on a sinking ship meant that Jones had the luxury of pushing at the boundaries of storytelling. As the series careens towards the final issue there’s the “kid in a candy store” feeling of a writer with nobody looking over his shoulder, throwing his arms up in the air and
making it count.
It makes you wonder what more writers would be capable of without the rickety finger of editorial holding
them down.
Fellow Lantern guest stars pop up here and there, but not to NBC sitcom excess (this week on Mosaic–
Elton John!) so it’s clear this this book is all John Stewart’s. There’s some significant character
growth and moments throughout the series that have had lasting impact on who John is as a Lantern and a
person.
It has not been collected in a trade yet, but the single issues are very easy to get. If you’re a Lantern fan, a John fan or this sounds like something you’d be interested in, go for it.