I’m not a fan of Green Lantern or DC comic characters in general, but my husband is, so every time a new animated feature comes out we watch it. I don’t know a lot about Green Lantern, just the basics, and what I saw in the first GL animated feature, First Flight. So, I found this new feature to be enlightening and very entertaining.

Green Lantern: Emerald Knights is a collection of stories about the Green Lantern Corps The stories are told mostly by Hal Jordan to his new apprentice Lantern Arisia as the Corps prepares to battle an old enemy Krona, who is trying to break back into our universe from the anti-matter universe he has been trapped in. The first story tells of the creation of the Green Lantern Corps and of the first Lantern, Avra. An encounter with Kilowog leads to a story about when he was a rookie and his drill sgt Deegan. While waiting on a platform over the sun that Krona is trying to come through, the story of Laira and her first solo mission is told, as  is the story of Mogo, a Lantern like you’ve never seen. After a battle with the Shadow Demons, Arisia is told a story of Abin Sur, Jordan’s predecessor, by Sinestro. The feature ends with the Green Lantern Corps fighting against Krona.

I really enjoyed this anthology. Most of the stories first appeared in the comics and were adapted into this feature. They were woven well together, and moved logically from one to the next. There is a lot of fighting and action, with swords and martial arts, and death (mostly red-shirt GLs from what I could tell), as well as drama and some fun humor. There isn’t a lot of emotional depth, but just enough to make you care about the characters and survive. I don’t think there’s one that I really liked more than the others. They all had their moments that I really enjoyed, as well as their “called it” moments. But overall, the good outweighed the obvious.

The voice acting was superb. I loved Nathan Fillian as Hal Jordan. I really enjoyed the other voices, but I’m not real big on actors, so I don’t know a lot of them by name along. I know Nathan because of Castle. The animation was well done. I saw no flaws in it. As I haven’t read the comics stories, I can’t speak for the adaptations. But as a non-comic fan, I found the stories entertaining and well within my grasp, so I would say it was successfully done.

If you are mildly interested in superheroes and/or comic book movies, this is well worth watching. It gives some good background on a character not well-known outside of comic book circles, and with a major release of the same character coming out, getting the un-initiated interested can only be a good thing.