Within the Manhunters’ Sanctuary

                The corridor’s floor, walls and ceiling were composed of grids of ancient stone, interrupted occasionally by silicon outgrowths of the technology of the Manhunters.  An emerald glow bathed the otherwise darkened passageway, cast by the energy auras of the four Green Lanterns who had penetrated the sanctuary’s defenses.  Kilowog led the strike team, consisting of himself, Medphyll, Hollika Rahn, and Chaselon.  Together they were a quartet of renowned champions of the Corps.  They were also Earth’s best hope of surviving the annihilation planned by the Guardians’ robotic former servants.

                Ahead of the Green Lanterns, a steel blue panel in the stone ceiling slid aside, and hundreds of small automatons dropped through the gap.  The mechanical drones had small spherical bodies and long segmented legs, and skittered towards the ring wielders in a cacophony of metallic claws. 

Medphyll reacted first, thrusting his ring hand forward and projecting a wall of thorny cacti stretching across the corridor.  The long-legged automatons threw themselves into the green barrier of energy constructs.  The first in their ranks impaled themselves on the glowing spines, and those behind smashed into the leaders while trampling them beneath armored phalanges. Sparks and smoke filled the air, then dissipated in silence.

“The Manhunters’ defenses are failing them rapidly,” Hollika Rahn observed.

“Something must be wrong with the system programming,” Chaselon ventured, his own robotic appendages undulating smoothly as he hovered.

“Something’s been wrong with the Manhunters for a long time,” Kilowog answered in a low rumble.  “Only question now is how bad it’s gonna get before it’s over.”  With that, he led his team further into the Sanctuary.

The Valley of the Sanctuary of the Manhunters

As if some kind of dreamlike thunderstorm had erupted on the roof of the world, scarlet and jade flashes of lightning illuminated the ice-covered vale, originating form the weapons of the Green Lantern Corps and the Manhunter androids.  The accompanying peals of fulmination shook the mountainsides.  The Green Lanterns were vastly outnumbered by the flying robotic army and their human minions below, but were holding positions in the sky and on the ground.  Insanity ruled the Manhunter cult, an electronic decay of the artificial lifeforms’ programming mirrored by a psychological disquiet in the minds of their biological followers.  The Manhunters attacked without strategy, a wild and unpredictable assault of madness.

Hal Jordan marshaled his fellow Green Lanterns as best he could amidst the chaos.  Behind him, Tuebeen, Adam and Umburu hovered shoulder to shoulder in the thin Himalayan air, alternately erecting emerald walls against Manhunter offensives and blasting scarlet and sapphire robots out of the sky.  Jordan signaled for the other airborne members of the Corps to regroup with him and the three Lanterns watching his back. 

Brik flew directly toward her mentor, a verdant plow of energy clearing her path, while Xax hopped nimbly through the air in a cocoon of green light.  The orthopterous Green Lantern skimmed across the back of a Manhunter android curled in a mid-air fetal position, and caromed off the arm of another robotic combatant.  The Manhunter looked down at the limb that Xax had touched, and began scratching it furiously with the opposite hand, a look of terror twisting its faceplate.  The Manhunter continued abrading the armor, finally sinking its fingers into the circuitry beneath and then tearing off its own arm at the shoulder.

On the opposite side of the valley, Galius Zed and Voz began to make their way back to the Corps’ rallying point.  Titanic mangler gears projected from Galius Zed’s power ring to crush a pair of Manhunter androids between their blunt jade teeth.  Voz swung a colossal viridian femur, smashing a Manhunter’s head with the bone-shaped construct of solid light.

Closer to the battlements of the Manhunters’ Sanctuary, farthest from the other Lanterns, Larvox and M’Dahna began to fight through the swarm of renegade androids with their own energy-form weapons.  Gigantic pale green spirochetes emerged from the ring of the Green Lantern from Sputa, entangling nearby Manhunters in their fimbriae.  Dark aquamarine piranhas gave chase to nearby Manhunters to clear a path for M’Dahna, until a power baton fusillade sheared off much of her left fin.

Voz spotted M’Dahna as she reeled from her injury, and doubled back to help her, roaring savagely.  The ursine Green Lantern attracted the attention of numerous Manhunters, who began to throng around the would-be rescuer.  Soon Voz was completely engulfed by a murderous press of androids.

On the permafrost below, a madwoman in cult robes clung to Kyle Rayner’s back.  He screamed in pain as the wickedly curved knife in the hand of Haven Donovan bit into the flesh of his left shoulder.  His power ring, depleted of its charge, rested inertly on the middle finger of his right hand, unable to protect its wearer from the injury.  Haven shifted to bring more strength to bear on twisting the knife, and Rayner reacted instinctively, dropping to his knees and flipping Haven over his head.

As Rayner yanked the knife out of his arm, Haven clambered to her feet, murder shining in her eyes.  “Don’t want to cuddle anymore, Kyle?” she leered, then tore off her robe to reveal the form-fitting red and blue carapace of Manhunter armor beneath.  Rayner dropped the knife as Haven lunged at him, her long blond hair streaming behind her, the fingers of her gauntlets curled into sapphire talons that were soon wrapped around Rayner’s throat.

Rayner grabbed Haven’s wrists and tried to pull her hands away from his neck, but the pressure on his windpipe did not abate.  He fell onto his back, and Haven straddled him, thumbs digging into his trachea savagely.  He twisted his head to one side, and could see Torquemada fending off a pack of spasmodic and partially ruptured robot dogs; he strained to the other side, spying Apros beset on all sides by berserker androids.  Nowhere could he see help.

 Within the Manhunters’ Sanctuary

                Ggraandur stood awkwardly before his ersatz throne, seemingly frozen in the posture he had assumed when lurching upwards.  A monitor screen showed the lingering evidence of the event that driven the leader of the Manhunters from his seat of power: the smoldering wreckage of green and gray metal that had once been Stel, the Green Lantern of Grenda.*

(*Stel sacrificed himself to save the life of Apros last issue – TJB and DG)

                “::How : could : this : happen::?” Ggraandur demanded, his electronic voice wavering in disbelief.  “::The : robot : Green : Lantern : was : destined : to : betray : the : Guardians : and : elevate : the : Manhunters::!”

                “Because Stel didn’t believe in destiny,” John Stewart answered weakly from his shackles across the room.  “But he believed in the Corps.  Every Green Lantern does.”

                Ggraandur finally moved, wheeling furiously on Stewart and thrusting one cobalt gauntlet at the restrained human Guardian.  The manacles on Stewart’s ankles and wrists buzzed like a colossal swarm of enraged insects, and excruciating vibrations wracked Stewart’s body.  “::NO : MAN : ESCAPES : THE : MANHUNTERS ::!!!” the Manhunter’s mechanized bellow proclaimed.  John Stewart writhed in agony, contorting himself so violently he threatened to tear himself apart.  On either side of him, N’Lasa and Poggepgee Pego Pau thrashed in torment of their own.

                A huge section of the curved wall exploded into the chamber, a crystalline storm of interlocking green polygons battering the structure apart.  Ggraandur took a single step backwards, as Ubseeqwius cowered away from the explosion and Brooht turned dumbly toward it.  The emerald matrices dissipated to reveal the Green Lanterns behind Chaselon’s assault.

                “::Unit : Brooht, : dispatch : the : intruders::!” Ggraandur commanded, returning his attention to John Stewart.  The towering android lumbered toward the Green Lanterns.

                “Chas, help John and the others!  Medphyll, get the battery!” Kilowog barked.  “Holl …”  The rest of the brawny Bolivax Vikian’s words were cut off as Brooht’s stout blue gauntlet slammed into Kilowog’s midsection.  Hollika Rahn responded with a projection of a beryl dragon’s head from her power ring, breathing verdant flame on the Herculean android.

                Chaselon alighted between John Stewart and Poggepgee Pego Pau and laid a gray metal appendage on each of their shackles, as Ggraandur continued to direct energy into the restraints.  “::Your : mendacious : masters : will : soon : be : dead, : Lantern::!” the imposing Manhunter proclaimed.

                “These vibrations … are very similar … to the universal harmonic,” Chaselon mused aloud.  “How … interesting.”  The convulsions of Stewart, Poggepgee Pego Pau and N’Lasa ceased as the spherical Green Lantern absorbed the vibrations directly into his transparent gem-like body.  A moment later a compressed modulation beam pierced the air, emanating from Chaselon’s eyes and severing Ggraandur’s head from his neck.

                Immediately the sanctuary was filled with a buzzing klaxon.  A computerized voice, coming from everywhere at once, began to blare, “::UNIT : GGRAANDUR : OFFLINE::.  ::CATASTROPHIC : DEVIATION : FROM : CALCULATED : SCENARIOS::.  ::INITIATING : EXTREMIS : PROTOCOLS::.  ::UNIT : GGRAANDUR : OFFLINE::.  ::CATASTROPHIC : DEVIATION : FROM : CALCULATED : SCENARIOS::.  ::INITIATING : EXTREMIS : PROTOCOLS::.”  The wire-wreathed column supporting Kyle Rayner’s power battery began to glow with a dark red malevolence.

                “::NOOOOOOO!::” the Manhunter Ubseeqwius squawked, as the decapitated leader of the Manhunters slumped to the floor with a metallic thud.  .  From a hidden cache on the far side of the chamber, the stunted android had retrieved a massive yellow rifle of alien design.  Ubseeqwius began firing wildly, yellow slashes of plasma blasting masonry and circuitry at random.

                Hollika Rahn flew closer to the ceiling to avoid the deadly yellow incoming fire.  A bright burst glanced off Kilowog’s hip, sizzling through the Lantern’s emerald forcefield and causing Kilowog to stumble into a cobalt-knuckled clouting at the hands of Brooht.  Another golden zigzag of energy collided with Chaselon, knocking the Green Lantern backwards.

                Medphyll stood before the glowing column near the dais, trying to determine the best way to disentangle Rayner’s power battery from the clutch of pulsing cables.  The yellow salvo hit the Green Lantern of J586 full force in the back and exploded through the Corps emblem on his chest.  Smoldering chunks of blighted vegetable matter sprayed everywhere as Medphyll fell to the floor, the upper and lower halves of his botanical form landing on either side of the column, which continued to build its lethal charge for the stolen power battery.

The Valley of the Sanctuary of the Manhunters

Black stars began to wobble across Kyle Rayner’s field of vision as Haven Donovan slowly strangled him.  She held her face close enough to his to kiss him, but her eyes were those of an executioner, seeking to behead Rayner with her own blue gauntleted hands.  Rayner’s eyes began to close.

Dimly, Rayner saw a dark and furry form appear beside him.  It lashed out at Haven’s head, sending her flying with a sharp crack and a sizzle of energy.  Rayner rolled to his side and drew a desperate, deep breath, coughing the cold mountain air back out of his lungs again almost immediately.  As oxygen returned him to his senses, he realized that the furry form was Mark Shaw, clad in heavy Sherpa attire.  Shaw had struck Haven with a power baton.

“You all right?” Shaw asked, helping Rayner to his feet.

Rayner said nothing, looking at Haven Donovan lying sprawled on the ground a few feet away.  He approached her motionless form slowly; the red and blue armor made it difficult to tell if Haven was still breathing.  Rayner squatted beside Haven and stared at her face, the cover girl features on one side marred with an angry red bloom from the charged end of the power baton.  Her eyes were open but unfocused, lifeless.  Rayner hung his head.

“Rayner, I … it was her or you,” Shaw explained.

“I know,” Rayner answered.  “The last time I saw her before today, I thought she had the hots for me, or let myself think that because I was on the outs with Jenny.  And when I thought Haven was gonna kill me, all I could think about was how I hadn’t made things right with Jenny yet, and I never would.  And I hated myself for that.”

“And now?”

Rayner stood and faced Shaw.  He nodded at Haven’s body and said “That could have been me, if you had been five seconds later.  But it’s not.  Now let’s end this and get the hell home so I can get on with my life.”

“You’re unarmed,” Shaw pointed out.

“And you look like a yak,” Rayner shrugged.  “But I can improvise.”  He looked around and soon spied Haven’s knife.  Picking it up, he loped across the battlefield, picking his way through ice, rock, shattered remains of Manhunter androids and wounded cultists.  He soon found Salakk in the midst of four Manhunter devotees, each one trying to wrench one of Salakk’s slender arms from the Green Lantern of Slyggia’s thorax.  Rayner brought his blade down on the wrists of the cultist holding Salakk’s ring hand, as Shaw arrived a half-second later and blasted the knees of another cultist with a power baton discharge.  Salakk aimed his power ring at his two remaining attackers and repulsed them with a glowing green wall of blunt force.

Within the Manhunters’ Sanctuary

Hollika Rahn speared Ubseeqwius with a lance of green light.  The toadying Manhunter android twitched and spasmed as sparks flew from both the entrance and exit point of the emerald energy weapon.  In that moment, Brooht slammed Hollika into the ceiling with an upward-driving fist, stunning the Green Lantern of Rhoon.  Kilowog, lying on his side in tremendous pain, grappled Brooht to the ground with a gigantic three-fingered hand projected from his ring.  “Stay down, poozer,” the massive Green Lantern rumbled.

Near the pulsating column bearing Kyle Rayner’s power battery, Medphyll pulled the upper half of his body upright, ignoring the sap leaking from exposed xylem.  His single, large black eye was nearly closed as his right hand strained for the top of the column.  Small, leafy tendrils of verdant energy crept from the Green Lantern’s ring, propagating toward the stolen power battery.  Medphyll’s central stoma moved feebly, forming words all but drowned out by the blaring electronic voice of the central Manhunter computer.  But the energy tendrils continued to grow as the words were spoken:

“In forest dark or glade beferned,
no blade of grass shall go unturned.
Let those that have the daylight spurned,
tread not where this green lamp has burned.”

                As Medphyll completed his oath, the shoots of solid light corkscrewed into the power battery, piercing it to its core and triggering an energy paroxysm that rattled the entire Manhunter Sanctuary.  The central command room was inundated with a supernova of green photons as Kyle Rayner’s unique power battery was explosively obliterated.

The Valley of the Sanctuary of the Manhunters

                Ganthet gestured toward two Manhunter cultists, and each disappeared in a blink of green Oan energy.  Slowly but surely the Guardian had been working his way across the battlefield, reaching out with cosmic awareness to identify the homeland of each of the human devotees of the Manhunter cult.  As soon as he knew the country or city from which a particular cultist originated, Ganthet teleported the cultist home.

                Suddenly, Ganthet’s hands dropped to his side.  He peered toward the Manhunter Sanctuary, as its walls buckled and a large turret cannon toppled from its moorings.  He turned his gaze back to the battlefield and his wizened eyes found Kyle Rayner, fighting hand to hand with robed fanatics alongside Salakk and Mark Shaw.  A look of satiety overcame the Guardian, as if he had reached the conclusion of a long journey and was vindicated by what he found at the road’s end.  As he looked toward the sky, his body had already begun to shimmer in a halo of deepest green.  A moment later, his body fell backwards, while the halo propelled itself forwards, streaking towards Rayner.

                The viridian bolt homed in on Rayner’s power ring, making contact with the young Lantern’s hand in a brilliant emerald burst that enveloped Rayner’s entire body.  His ring hand rose as if of its own accord, forming a fist over his head.  Rayner skyrocketed, his green corona burning brightly enough to bathe the entire valley in its monochrome light.  Rayner rose high enough to become a small dark point against the icy roof of the hidden valley, and was blotted out by the subsuming green glow.  For a moment, all combat in the valley stopped, as Green Lanterns shielded their eyes from the emerald glare and Manhunter androids recoiled instinctively.

                The all-encompassing green light disappeared as if a cosmic switch had been thrown.  For a moment, all was eerily still in the frozen vale.

                A misshapen Manhunter android with four arms and no legs was knocked out of the sky by a fast-moving jade object from above.  A split-second later the red and blue robot had been smashed against the rocky mountainside by the object, a glowing green TRS-80.  Another high-velocity shape rammed into a Manhunter from overhead, this one a radiant emerald CRAY.  The results were the same, as the light construct of the supercomputer drove the android into the ground, pulverizing the Manhunter into shrapnel, sparks and smoke. 

Four more computers formed of solid green light blasted into the Manhunter androids’ ranks, three first-generation Macintoshes and a G4.  Then a dozen emerald simulacra of PCs plummeted down, then dozens more, until hundreds of verdantly shimmering computers rained down on the robotic army.  Green laptops spinning through the air decapitated Manhunters.  Green server racks dragged Manhunters out of the sky.  Green PDAs punched gaping holes through metallic Manhunter torsos.  A massive green version of the central JLA Watchtower computer knocked twenty androids to the valley floor, crushing them utterly under its photonic weight.

Hal Jordan was the first of the Corps to recover from entranced amazement at the shower of CPUs.  “Green Lanterns, don’t let up!  The Manhunters are on the ropes, let’s end this!” he advocated at the top of his lungs.

The rest of the Corps rallied behind him.  Flying in formation, the Lanterns advanced on the Manhunters, energy rings coruscating.  The renegade androids slowly gave ground, edging backwards toward their Sanctuary.  The Manhunters continued to be felled by the shower of glowing computers, all of which seemed to zero in unerringly on the robots, like boxy guided missiles. 

On the ground below, the green incandescent replica of the JLA computer began to extend hundreds of whiplike cables across the valley floor.  Each cable in turn snaked between the feet of a Manhunter cultist and generated a teleporter pod around the robed figures.  In flashes of pale green the human fanataics were systematically removed from the battlefield.  Salakk, Apros and Torquemada joined their fellow Green Lanterns in the air assault.  Mark Shaw and Rudlen, the oddly-shaped magenta alien from the Pharon Empire, took on the few stragglers not caught up by the teleporters.

Emerald weapons flashed and emerald defenses gleamed as the last, desperate scarlet smolderings of the Manhunter androids beat against the Green Lanterns’ renewed offensive.  Hal Jordan projected a jade Sherman tank which fired volley after volley at the retreating robots.  To his left, Voz’s power ring added a stampede of giant carnivorous beetles from his homeworld; the mammoth Green Lantern was bloodied from the besieging throng of Manhunters, but the computer storm had won his freedom.  At Hal Jordan’s right side, Brik swung a titanic solid light pickaxe, impaling Manhunters who flew too close.  Kyle Rayner descended between Jordan and Brik, his stylized Green Lantern uniform restored, his power ring continuing to produce a deluge of computers.

“Welcome back,” Jordan said approvingly.

“Glad to be here,” Rayner nodded.

The Green Lantern Corps continued to drive the Manhunters back, but the insane robots refused to surrender.  As their numbers dwindled, the remaining androids fought even more savagely.  The Green Lanterns had backed the mechanical renegades up against their own battlements, but the Manhunters threatened to combat them to a standstill.  The living, breathing Corps was beginning to fatigue, while the Manhunters never would.

Behind the android army, the walls of the Sanctuary fractured with green light, then detonated outward.  Kilowog, Hollika Rahn and John Stewart flew into the midst of the Manhunters, dividing them further.  Behind them appeared Chaselon, missing a bionic arm and his black Mohawk.  The spherical Green Lantern still possessed his ring, however, and projected an emerald flower pot which contained the gravely injured Medphyll.  N’Lasa clambered over the rubble as well, carrying the weakened Poggepgee Pego Pau in his arms.

The devastation to the Manhunters’ Sanctuary activated emergency repair systems, which were violently overridden by the recursively spiraling failure of the Extremis Protocols programming.  Threadlike wires flailed outward from ports throughout the crumbling structure and attached themselves to all electronic components within reach: disassembled robotic dogs, amputated Manhunter limbs, ruined auto-defense weapons, toppled sensory arrays.  The system wove chaotic circuits and the agitated wires multiplied exponentially.  The wires began to entangle functioning Manhunter androids and pull the deranged robots into the superstructure, while the Manhunters struggled like red and blue flies in a steel web.

“I don’t like the looks of this,” Jordan averred.

“Yeah, it’s a bit too much like the end of an anime movie, right before everything goes all mushroom cloud,” Rayner acknowledged.

“All right, Tuebeen, get the people who can’t fly clear of the area,” Jordan ordered.  As the quartz-skinned Lantern flew off to comply, Jordan asked, “You want to go high or low?”

“Oh, I’ll go low,” Rayner answered.  He gestured for Xax, Umburu and Galius Zed to follow him and dove for the Sanctuary.  The four Green Lanterns unleashed fiery beams of pure Oan energy, aimed at the foundations of the fortress.  The emerald lightrays cut into the Himalayan mountain, disintegrating the rock beneath the Sanctuary.

The auto-repair wires continued to thrash and slap for purchase against anything mechanized as the superstructure began to sink into the pit excavated by Rayner and the others.  At the same time, Jordan led the remaining members of the Corps in shoveling thousands of tons of mountain rock on top of the Manhunters and their Sanctuary.  As if geological time had been accelerated, the mountainside parted and reformed with a deafening rumble that nearly drowned electronic shrieks of protest.  The last the Green Lanterns saw of their adversaries were the final two Manhunter androids, the broad furious face of Rager and the narrow nervous visage of Anx, exerting themselves hopelessly against the electronic embrace of their malfunctioning Sanctuary.  Then they, too, were buried under the gigantic shards of earth cast down by the Corps.

Epilogue 1 – Guardians Citadel, Coast City Memorial Park, California

 On the grounds of Memorial Park stood an energy sculpture, honoring fallen members of the Corps.  Abin Sur, Ch’p, Eddore, Tomar-Re, Katma Tui and Arisia had all been represented in the shining green testimonial since the new Guardian Citadel had been erected over a year earlier.  Now new heroes had joined them.  Zghithii flew forever beside his fellow Lanterns.  Tomar-Tu, although not technically a member of the Corps, had also been incorporated into the sculpture, standing at the base as if supporting the other Green Lanterns on his shoulders.

To the side of the Green Lantern memorial was a much smaller remembrance, an alabaster likeness of Ganthet.  Hal Jordan found Kyle Rayner standing before the Guardian’s resting place.  The statue of Ganthet seemed to be admiring the Green Lantern memorial with a look of paternal pride on his small face.

“It’s funny,” Rayner said as Jordan came up beside him.  “He lived for millions of years, which is so far beyond a full life it boggles the mind, but he’s the one I feel the worst about losing.”

“I hear you,” Jordan nodded.  “You and Ganthet had a special connection.”

Rayner raised his ring hand and rubbed his ring with his opposite thumb.  “I think … we still do.”

Neither man said a word for a minute, until Rayner asked, “How’re things in the infirmary?”

“Good,” Jordan assured him.  “Medphyll,Voz … they’re going to be fine.  And Kilowog is reasonably sure he can even get Stel back in working order again.”

“Awesome,” Rayner smiled.  “So what’s next?”

Epilogue 2 – the Himalayas

 On a small outcropping overlooking the valley once dominated by the Manhunter Sanctuary stood the last survivor of the war.  Somehow, the cataclysmic barrage of green computer components had spared one Manhunter android.  Somehow, the impaired and distorted repair protocols of the Sanctuary had not ensnared the android, either.  The Manhunter unit called Oblige suspected it was due to the trophy which Unit Spyte had given to him: the power ring of the slain serpentine Green Lantern.  The power ring that now sat in the palm of Oblige’s cobalt blue gauntlet.

Oblige had waited days for the other Manhunters to show themselves, but they had not.  The Manhunters wereno more.  Oblige was under no compulsion to follow the erratic and obviously suicidal path of his fellow renegades.  Oblige could forge his own destiny.

Oblige slid the power ring onto the second digit of the right gauntlet.  The green glow emanating from it changed the color of the android’s armor, the crimson body darkening to black, the sapphire boots and gauntlets shifting to emerald.  The green and white symbol of the Corps burned brightly on Oblige’s chest.  In a jade halo, Oblige rose from the mountainside and flew across the roof of the world.

Below the footprints left behind by the last Manhunter android, far below the peak of the mountain, deep, deep below the surface of the Earth, in the darkness of the heart of stone, sickly green lights flickered.

“::un … un … Unit : Ra … Rager …::”

“::uni … Anx … An … : Unit : Anx …::”

The auto-repair drones had little room to work within the press of rock all around, but the drones would continue to make imperceptible progress, and would never fatigue.

“::Anx … : Anx …::”

“::Rag … : Rager : Ra …::”

The central computer core would slowly draw power from the earth itself.  The construction would proceed, as quickly as the mountain could be eroded by continuously scratching wires.

“::Ra …::”

 “::Anx …::”

“::Ra …::”

The programming would manifest in not one unit, not one structure, but a series of structures.  A complex of structures, not simply inhabited with intelligent life but invested with intelligence itself.  An electronic urban center … a thinking capital … an all-knowing megalopolis …

“::Ra … : Anx …::”

“::Ranx …::”

“::RANX :: RANX :: RANX :: RANX::”

Ranx the Sentient City would yet live … for revenge.

AUTHORS’ NOTES: The second epilogue is obviously a shout out to all the Alan Moore fans out there.  If you haven’t read “Across the DC Universe: The DC Universe Stories of Alan Moore”, do yourself a favor and pick it up.  You’ll thank us.

 It is with bittersweet regret that I announce that this is the last issue of Green Lantern which TJ Burns and I will collaborate on for the foreseeable future.  It’s been an awesome ride through the past couple years’ worth of FDC continuity, lit by our power rings’ green glow, but all good things must come to an end.  I must give much thanks to Clay “Mighty Miry” Arceneaux for originally hooking me up with TJ back in the day.  Mad props to Dave Marshall, who has been dying to tell certain stories in the FDC universe but has been patiently waiting for the Manhunter War to finally reach its conclusion.  Most of all, I bow reverently toward my writing partner TJ, whose bottomless wellspring of ideas and boundless enthusiasm for the title and love for the Corps informed just about every word I ever typed under the Green Lantern title. 

 For the fans, whoever and wherever you may be, I certainly hope you’ve enjoyed the series, and join me in looking forward to what comes next.

In brightest day,
DWG
9/20/2006