Dark Knight Meets Emerald Knight

Batman: The Brave and the Bold #19

Hal Jordan hates to wait for Batman’s intricate plans, so he ends up getting captured by the Cyborg Superman, who wants access to the technology of the Green Lantern power ring. When the power ring detects the cyborg’s tampering, it immediately leaves Hal to find someone else who can help — and it ends up settling on Batman’s finger, making him the newest member of the Green Lantern Corps. But Batman isn’t a fan of power rings — he’d rather rely on himself and his less-flashy weapons. He and the other Corps members fly to the planet Ranx to rescue Hal, but the Cyborg activates the Manhunters, robots that specialize in draining power rings. For Hal and Batman to stand a chance against the Cyborg Superman, Hal is going to have to learn to plan, and Batman is going to have to learn to use a power ring.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It was kinda cool seeing the old-school Cyborg Superman again, and it’s always fun to see Batman wearing a modified Green Lantern costume.

The Flash #4

Captain Boomerang is out of prison again, and he’s now able to throw black-energy boomerangs like he did when he was a Black Lantern zombie. After Boomerang tries to blow up a police helicopter, Flash uses some super-fast footwork to rescue everyone aboard. Flash also saves the Rogue-inspired future-cops from Boomerang’s assault, inspiring the Top to risk his own life by telling Flash about the future — Mirror Master is going to open a gateway into the Mirror Worlds in an effort to beat the Flash, and one of the villains inside is going to take over Flash’s wife and turn her into a supervillain. The only way to free her will be to kill the person who opened the gateway, which will lead to Flash accidentally killing the future cop analogue of Mirror Master. Where does that leave the Flash?

Verdict: Thumbs up, mostly for that great speed stunt where Flash rescues the cops in the helicopter. The rest of it, I’m not so fond of. There are some serious time travel logic problems in this story — if the future cops arrest Barry Allen prior to the point where he kills the Mirror Monarch, then no one actually kills Mirror Monarch, so there’s no reason to arrest Flash, and they’re doing more damage to the space-time continuum than they are by revealing the truth to him. And I don’t much like the way the mirror gateway part of the story is developing either. It’s either going to be needlessly cruel or a complete anticlimax…

Today’s Cool Links:

  • Jack Kirby’s depictions of God.
  • The article is about the latest round in the legal battles between Neil Gaiman and Todd MacFarlane, but the judge’s ruling leads me to believe we’ve just found the best nerd judge ever.
  • So apparently, when you’re faced with an epidemic of people videotaping crooked/violent/racist cops, the solution isn’t to train cops not to be crooked, violent, or racist, it’s to arrest the people who expose the crooked/violent/racist cops. I’ll, as they say, retire to Bedlam.

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