Green Lantern: New Dawn picks up where Emerald Twilight left off. In Emerald Twilight, Hal Jordan, the premier Green Lantern has suffered a huge loss. In the Reign of the Supermen storyline, the villians Cyborg Superman and Mongul destroy Coast City, Hal's hometown. Hal tries using his ring to recreat the city but is chastised by the Guardians for doing so. He ends up losing it and goes off into space to confront them. They send the rest of the Green Lantern Corps after him, he takes them out (killing some), takes out Sinestro (who the Guardians revived or something) and then took out the Guardians, all except for Ganthanet. Hal becomes Parallax and flies off (later to be explained...). Gathanet gathers what's left of the Guardian's power into a new ring and lantern, flies off to Earth sees our young new hero, Kyle Rayner and says "you'll do".

Kyle is suddenly thrown into being a Green Lantern. His first goal: go tell his ex and try to win her back! Alex, Kyle's ex, is a little surprised he is the new Green Lantern as he is a "starving artist", always on the lookout for jobs in the art world. Kyle fights his first villian, with a few issues but slowly begins to get the hang of it. Kyle and Alex go off and train some more, when she encourages him to use his creativity more in making constructs out of the ring and redesigning his uniform. Meanwhile, Mongul breaks out of prison and comes hunting for the Green Lantern since he was the reason Mongul was in jail (no caring that it is a new GL). Superman joins in the fight (have to have the big guy guest star with the "newbie") and together they are able to stop Mongul, though Superman is surprised to learn Kyle knows nothing about the Corps nor is his ring weak against yellow.

Kyle goes back with Alex and they have a nice night on the town. Meanwhile, government agents learn about the new GL and come into possession of a green chunk of something. So they send Major Force to find out what it is from Kyle. Major Force, being the nice guy he is, attacks and kills Alex while Kyle is away and stuffs her into the fridge for Kyle to find. Kyle and Major Force then go at it with the green chunk becoming Kyle's lantern to recharge his ring. The police eventually stop them and Kyle flies off, devestated at his loss. He then meets Alan Scott, the orginal Green Lantern who informs him of what has happened. Kyle thanks him but says he just needs to be alone for a bit.

I felt this was a great new way to introduce Kyle. In the past, a new Green Lantern always had people to turn to, from the Corps to Hal and later Guy Gardner and John Stewart. At the same time, it added a lot of baggage to the character with everything that has gone on before. With Kyle, it is almost a fresh start - no other Green Lanterns, no Corps, no Guardians. Kyle is also an interesting character. At first, he is a Green Lantern because it's hip, cool, and wins him points with the ex. After her death though, he finds a new reason to be a hero, his inner drive, to not let anything like that happen again.

All of this occured while DC was doing major things with their heroes. Superman had died and come back. Batman's back was broken. However, by the end of the story, both those characters were back to normal. With Green Lantern, Hal wasn't seen again till the Zero Hour crossover and he was quite different, which would last throughout the 90's until the "Rebirth" storyline form a few years ago. Kyle was new. Kyle was inexperienced. Kyle was creative. So we, the readers, got to explore everything all over again with Kyle. Gone were the big bubbles to hold villians or boxing gloves to know them out. Since Kyle is an artist, we get truly inspired and detailed constructs from the rings, from jet packs, to planes, to big guns and trains!

The artwork is great, especially for an early 90's title, when many artists were trying new things (like less details and overly buff characters). The details to the towns, shops, and people is really good. And with Kyle's own artistic ability, the artists were able to do a lot of details into his constructs.

Green Lantern: A New Dawn laid the ground work for the next 15 years of Green Lantern stories and beyond! It introduced a great new character, Kyle Rayner, and a new spin onto the Green Lantern mythos. This story is recommended for comic fans on how to do a "reboot" of a title correctly.

Recommended: Yes