Yeah, THAT’S a title guaranteed to send the pussy fleeing!

So, part of the next Violent Aggression podcast is going to feature a discussion about comics. Part of that discussion will center on Green Lantern, specifically a series called ‘Blackest Night’, which also features some side stories involving other DC comic characters. Since James wanted someone else to have a damn clue what that’s all about, he loaned me a bag of comics to read and catch up on.

My thoughts so far…

I knew absolutely nothing about Green Lantern, but had assumed it was a singular guy. You know, Green Lantern sort of makes you think there’s one. Not so much.

There is an entire Corps of Green Lanterns, yet one particular dude is apparently THE Green Lantern. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Even keeping in mind that the Corps covers the universe, it makes no sense. If all the other Green Lantern dudes were aliens, sure, but a good portion of them are people. So is the Hal Jordan Green Lantern just a conceited tool? Is he actually a blind dude who doesn’t even know about the dozens of others wearing green spandex and flying through space? What the Hell is the deal with that?

And there are multiple Corps of lanterns out there, each with their own corresponding color. I’m pretty sure that officially makes this the single gayest comic book series of all time (forgetting the fact that Batman and Robin are totally butt slamming one another for a moment). It sort of reminds me of American Ninja, where he fights a massive band of ninja warrior trainees at the end, each in a different color.

Now, this is where things take a serious turn towards the lame for me. Every one of these Corps has an over-riding emotion that controls them. So the Blue Lantern Corps are all about Hope. I mean, in every single goddamn panel, it’s up with the hope. Hippies talk less about hope than these bastards, one of whom is an elephant.

I defy you to tell me that you don’t want to punch those two right in the fucking face. Perhaps it might be time to drop the ganja and fight some intergalactic evildoers, gentlemen? Never before have I seen comic heroes who most definitely reek of bong water, peyote, body odour and Doritos cheez. Are we just not supposed to like them, is that it? Mission accomplished.

Then we reach the wonder of the Red Lantern Corps. They’re angry. That’s the extent of their character range. They’re the ultimate one trick pony, but that trick consists of standing in a field and taking shit.

Welcome to every single appearance these guys ever make. Then again, when your main leader dude is named Atrocitus, it doesn’t exactly give you a bunch of range with which to work. So they vomit blood/rage like some steroid shooting version of the 28 Days Later ‘rage virus’ victims and do a lot of yelling and screaming. It’s as subtle as being shot in the face. It gets old. It doesn’t take long for it to happen. Never before did I think anger could become yawn inducing.

Yet next to the goddamn Pink chick people known as the Star Sapphires, Atrocitus may as well be a work of Shakespearean prose. You thought the Barbie aisle in a Toys R Us store was obnoxious? That has nothing on this. Shield your eyes.

You probably want to vomit now. I understand. That love conquers all shit is basically their entire shtick. The dialogue for these chicks might possibly have been written by a 13 year old girl in her diary, somewhere between the entry about her first period, and the three pages she spent writing her first name with the last name of some buy she likes from home room. I cannot describe how singularly horrid it is adequately enough without using words like holocaust. Every page with these mistresses of the awful is probably equal to the pain Tom Arnold felt every single day he woke up next to Roseanne Barr. Sure he’s a terrible person, but that’s a fate worse than death. I desperately want every turn of the page to begin with detailed vignettes of the Sapphires taking a wonderful wrong turn directly in to a black hole.

And really, the whole Corps thing is really breaking down the whole universe for me. Every time one of them shows up, you immediately know what they’re going to say and do based on their ring. It’s entirely too predictable. The whole thing strikes me as starting off with decent intentions…hey, let’s add some new groups to the Green Lantern universe…but it’s just resulted in a collection of one note characters who all basically act like clones of one another. It just doesn’t work.

Every now and then one of them changes teams by simply getting angry or hoping for something, but then they quickly just become entirely assimilated by their new group and that’s that. The one time I THOUGHT it might go somewhere interesting, Hal Jordan Green Lantern ended up wearing a green AND blue ring. Yet the result seemed to just be the two ring emotions taking polite turns over who was in charge from panel to panel. Weeeee.

So I’m struggling with it a bit at the moment, though I’m determined to finish simply because I refuse to be beaten down by a bunch of comics.