For an undead villain, William Hand has a hard time staying dead. Villains Month takes time away from the current issues in the Green Lantern Universe in order to let us all know what’s going on with William, aka The Black Hand. GL #23.3 begins with two funeral assistants loading a coffin into a cremator. After turning the body to ashes, the funeral boys dump them outback, not noticing the black ring sitting in the middle of the black ash.
Cue the return of Black Hand, only he’s a little dazed at the moment. Stumbling into the funeral home, BH runs afoul of a couple of cops, who manage to taze the undead and stuff him into a cell. When Hand wakes up, another inmate is nagging him. He wants to be free, and he hears that chaos has erupted outside. Using his powers of zombification, Hand renders a guard and the annoying inmate dead, and yet still helpful. They assist Hand on getting back into the outside world.
Once there, our intrepid villain staggers at the absolute insanity of the world. Apparently, this is just after the Crime Syndicate unleashed hell on earth. Still confused as to what’s going on, Hand manages to make his way to the graveyard where Martin Jordan (Hal’s dad) is buried. Once touching the grave, Black Hand remembers everything and is filled with righteous anger. He brings Jordan’s dad back to life and decides to take him on an insidious rampage. That is where the book ends.
Is it me, or is the Black Hand getting to be annoying? He’s like the undead Energizer Bunny, or the crazy girlfriend you think is gone but suddenly shows up drunk at 2am. Black Hand never goes away but, since the end of Blackest Night, he hasn’t done much outside of raise the dead. Neat trick to be sure, but starting to get repetitive to the point where Hand lacks impact. He brought back Jordan’s dad, so let’s see where that fits in if it at all. Between the Crime Syndicate and Relic, Hal Jordan might not have time to work on his guilt issues.
While the story from Charles Soule is unremarkable, the art from Alberto Ponticelli is very well done. Ponticelli’s slightly surreal pencils add a subtle horror book touch to GL #23.3. While not as directly horror oriented as Creepy, Ponticelli definitely calls on those textures to create the art. Shading, odd color choices for skin, all the details and cityscapes have a certain “rot” to them. It’s all very effective. As good as the art is, it can’t save another unnecessary story from Villains Month.
(2 Story, 4 Art)
