Is he drawn slightly differently because Ronnie is really alive now “Misson Accomplished. Life Returned”–as the white lantern states?

Or is just a artistic thing? the face he’s in the white light of the lantern? Or just that my artistic eyes are too bad?

Spinks

Nevermind. I’m dumb.

Or did the Lantern call Jason’s name too?

I also have to disagree on Scott Clark’s art, which I find close to terrible. I liked him from Alpha Flight backwards, but his modern computer enabled stick figures with crosshatching totally turns me off.

The “death” of Stein, and a Gina for that matter, will be subplots for the new series (fingers crossed). I don’t see these characters–ideas or in the flesh–going away here soon.

I will point out that “Salt” is necessary for life.

Perhaps a new hero/villian called “The Salt Shaker”… okay, this idea here is just stupid.

Spinks

I still haven’t provided an update to the third part of the “Hard of Life of Martin Stein” series, and am not yet sure how and when I will. As I note there, Stein’s status was left ambiguous at the end of Countdown. Honestly, I don’t see 1) how he survived at all, 2) how he got back to our Earth from any of the multiple Earths he might have been abandoned on during that series. At any rate, Stein was certainly not rejoined to the Firestorm matrix at that time, and we remained stuck with Jason/Gehenna until Blackest Night. From the beginning of Blackest Night–when we get our first confirmation that the professor is both alive and on the “main” Earth–to his death here, I can’t really tell that he does anything of value other than die again. (He does give us a bit of an info-dump on the current nature of the Firestorm matrix, but this could easily have been accomplished by the Atom on his own, and I still question the reliability of some of Stein’s theories, which strike more as “guesses” based on limited evidence rather than real “conclusions” borne out by the research.)

Back when Jason was paired with Stein, there was such promise. Older mentor with new guy. And so much of that was wasted (Stein was kidnapped and pulled out of the matrix for roughly the first half of that last part of Jason’s series run, and then pulled out again at the end of it). We’ve been left to accept that Stein and Jason bonded during “One Year Later” without ever really getting to see any of it.

As has been said, at this point, it’s best to move on. I’m not really holding out any hope for a Stein resurrection this time. The writers have signaled their clear intention for the future (even if they did so quite sloppily, in my opinion, by saving Jason’s dad off-panel while keeping Stein dead), and it’s too late to fill in the potential that should have happened several years ago at this point.