Green Lantern #42

Last issue, Larfleeze chopped off Hal Jordan’s hand to get himself a Blue Lantern ring — this issue, it’s revealed that it was all an illusion generated by the blue ring to get Agent Orange to leave Jordan alone. Fatality, now a Star Sapphire, puts the moves on John Stewart. Jordan briefly manages to grab Larfleeze’s lantern, turning him into an Orange Lantern for a few seconds (Yeah, looks like we’re gonna see Hal Jordan wearing every color of ring by the time this is all over.), then finally manages to get rid of the blue ring. At last the Guardians get Larfleeze to stand down by offering him something he really wants — the location of the fledgling Blue Lantern Corps. And finally, we get the official birth of the Black Lanterns.

Verdict: Thumbs up, I think. A few technical quibbles — I caught some errors with the word balloons — but not too bad. Larfleeze is a great deal funnier in this issue, as he becomes a poster child for fanboy entitlement. The bit with the Black Lantern at the end was pretty good, too.

Madame Xanadu #12

Nimue continues her magical investigation into a magical murder and attempts to warn a young socialite that her father’s life may also be in danger. She receives assistance from an unexpected source — Dian Belmont, girlfriend of Wesley Dodds, the Golden Age Sandman. Unfortunately, the nefarious Al Nar and his terrifying dog have already selected their next victim, and there may be no way to save him.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Al Nar is a great villain, so far. We also get some great historical adventure during the Spanish Inquisition, and I loved Nimue’s method of using magical origami to deal with a rude librarian.

Green Lantern #41

Larfleeze, a.k.a. Agent Orange, is the sole possessor of the Orange Lantern. He’s the greediest being in the universe, and he’s taken Hal Jordan prisoner. Why? Hal has a green ring and a blue ring — and Larfleeze desperately wants the blue one. Hal gets him to reveal how he came to have the Orange Lantern — he was once a thief who stole an important item from the Guardians and fled to the planet Okaara. There, he and his fellow crooks found a glowing orange lantern and struggled greedily to possess it. The Guardians and the Manhunter robots tried to stop them, but the orange light was too powerful. In order to get their important box back, the Guardians bargained to let the last surviving thief keep the orange lantern and to never interfere with him, as long as he stayed in the Vega System. Larfleeze ended up having the Orange Lantern all to himself, and now he wants his very own Blue Lantern ring. And he’ll stop at nothing to get it, even if Hal can’t get the ring off his finger…

Verdict: Ehh, kind of a wash. Agent Orange’s story is really less than compelling, and the Guardians’ and the Green Lantern Corps’ battle against Larfleeze’s orange light constructs is fairly pedestrian. But the cliffhanger is pretty good. How the heck is Jordan gonna get out of this one…?

Green Arrow and Black Canary: A League of their Own

A compilation of a lengthy storyline from the “GA/BC” series — this one focuses on the quest to find who shot and then kidnapped Green Arrow’s son, Connor Hawke. With Batman and Plastic Man tagging along to help out, Ollie and Dinah eventually trace the hit to Ra’s al Ghul’s League of Assassins — but Ra’s is dead, so who was masquerading as him? Turns out it was Shado, a Yakuza assassin who is the mother of another of Ollie’s kids — she raped him while he was unconscious. Her son is dying of cancer, and Dr. Sivana offered to cure him, as long as she killed Green Arrow. When the hit went wrong and Connor was injured, Sivana had him and Shado’s son kidnapped and genetically treated with some of Plastic Man’s skin cells. So Connor ends up cured, but he’s completely lost his memory and his ability to shoot a bow. On top of all this, we get Mia Dearden, the new Speedy, out on a date. Will her new beau be able to accept her HIV-positive status?

Verdict: I think I’ll give this a thumbs up, because I was quite entertained by the story. The big problem is that writer Judd Winick put this together from the fragments of two of his signature “Let’s kill a random superhero” storylines — first, he “killed” Green Arrow himself, then after handwaving that one away, he “killed” Connor. One gets the feeling that, even for DC’s notoriously kill-happy editors, they thought Winick needed to be reigned in, so we get this long storyarc trying to get the Green Arrow status quo back to normal. I will say that Winick’s strongest abilities lie in characterization and dialogue, so I very much enjoyed Mia’s date and Connor’s post-coma amnesia, which both felt genuine and charming. And Mike Norton’s art is just grand throughout — nothing real flashy, but solid, beautifully created artwork.

With the Lubbock Comic Book Expo over for another year, it’s time to try to catch up on some of the comics reviews I’ve been neglecting. And lo and behold, there’s been a passel of “Green Lantern” comics piling up.

Green Lantern #39

We get our introduction to Agent Orange, the sole guardian of the Orange Lantern in this issue. The Controllers, old rivals of the Guardians of the Universe who run the Green Lantern Corps, visit the planet Okaara in the Vega system, which is off-limits to the Green Lanterns. The Controllers hope to control the Orange Lantern to power their schemes, but Agent Orange and his minions effortlessly take them apart. Meanwhile, Hal Jordan is still stuck wearing both a Green Lantern ring and a Blue Lantern ring. He has a big argument/discussion with the Blue Lanterns and their guardians, Ganthet and Sayd, about power and/or weaknesses of hope — in other words, hope needs willpower to work, just as the blue rings need green rings to function. The Guardians on Oa aren’t happy that Jordan has two rings, but when the robotic Green Lantern Stel chases a Sinestro Corps member to the Vega system, Larfleeze, the greedy Agent Orange, attacks Stel and the Guardians for breaking their oath to leave Vega alone.

Verdict: Ehh, thumbs down. Mostly boring stuff. Too much talky-talk, which I could excuse if it were interesting talky-talk.

Green Lantern #40

The Guardians decree that the Vega system is no longer off-limits to the GL Corps, and they all go off to invade Okaara and take out Larfleeze. But things don’t go as easily as they’d hoped — when Agent Orange kills someone, he’s able to steal their identity and create an orange-light construct of them to fight on his behalf.

Verdict: I’ll give it a thumbs up for the fairly nifty identity-stealing gimmick of Agent Orange, but other than that, there’s a whole lot of shootin’ and shoutin’ and not a whole lot to show for it.

Free Comic Book Day: Blackest Night #0

Our focus here is on Hal Jordan and Barry Allen as they review some of the high-profile recent deaths in the DCU — Batman, the Martian Manhunter, Aquaman — with the implication that they’ll be some of the zombies rising under the control of the Black Lanterns whenever the “Blackest Night” crossover gets started this summer.

Verdict: Thumbs up, mostly for the great dialogue and interplay between Hal and Barry. Sure, the “Blackest Night” hints are fairly cool, as are the pinups of the seven color-coded corps, but really, it’s just nice to see GL and Flash interacting again.

I’m bored. Booooored. Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored.

And irritated. Just about all of DC’s covers last week looked like somebody ate a bunch of paint in primary colors, then barfed all over the paper. Just loud, loud, clashing, awful covers.

What’s this all about? I’m tired of looking at this horrible, horrible cover for Green Lantern #38. I wanna get it off my desk, but the cover depresses and irritates me enough that I don’t want to review it yet. But I’ve got nothing else of interest to talk about yet. So it’s gotta be a GL review.

But I gotta make it fun for me somehow, right? So. Today’s review of Green Lantern #38 will be in 100%…

…Pig Latin.

Een-Gray Antern-Lay Umber-Nay Irty-Thay Eight-Ay

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Eanwhile-May, Al-Hay Ordan-Jay as-hay ost-lay is-hay emper-tay and-ay oined-jay e-thay ood-blay uking-pay Ed-Ray Anterns-Lay ile-whay e-hay ies-tray o-tay ill-kay Inestro-Say. E-Thay Ue-Blay Anterns-Lay ower-pay ings-ray ave-hay it-quay orking-way, ecause-bay ey-thay actually-ay equire-ray a-ay unctioning-fay Een-Gray Antern-Lay ing-ray o-tay ork-way. O-Say Aint-Say Alker-Way eleases-ray Ordan-Jay y-bay orcing-fay a-ay Ue-Blay Antern-Lay ing-ray onto-ay is-hay inger-fay, eaving-lay Al-Hay ith-way a-ay ulticolored-may ostume-cay. Elsewhere-ay, e-thay Ontrollers-Cay are-ay earching-ay or-fay e-thay Orange-Ay Antern-Lay of-ay Avarice-ay, ut-bay e-thay ole-say ossessor-pay oesn’t-day ant-way o-tay ive-gay it-ay up-ay.

Erdict-Vay: Umbs-Thay Own-Day. E-Thay ew-fay ool-cay its-bay (ike-lay Ordan’s-Jay een-gray/ue-blay/ed-ray ostume-cay) are-ay owned-dray out-ay y-bay e-thay estering-fay ounds-may of-ay onfusing-cay ap-cray iled-pay igh-hay around-ay e-thay est-ray of-ay e-thay ory-stay. Ease-Play urry-hay, Ack-Blay Anterns-Lay, and-ay ill-kay off-ay all-ay ese-thay incompoops-nay!

Pff. Glad that’s over. Next time I get the bright idea to try something like that again, just remind me to post a YouTube video of sci-fi theme songs performed with Tesla coils instead. It’s a lot less irritating for everyone.

Got the car back. Another $350 bucks down the tubes. And actually, I gotta take it to another joint later today for a more minor procedure, but still, here goes another few hours without the car, and another few bucks into the abyss. And on top of all that, I got another couple of job rejections yesterday. So this is what my life is like these days — shovel a few hundred bucks out the window, get turned down for jobs, read the news about another half-million people losing their jobs, and try to find something new to distract myself from thinking about how awful things are.

Luckily, new comics = awesome distraction factor!

Birds of Prey #126

First of all, could I just say that I do not like DC’s “Faces of Evil” covers? Something a tad more colorful, por favor?

Anyway, it’s the next to the last issue of this series. The dastardly but extraordinarily nerdy Calculator has gotten on the bad side of the Kilg%re, a living computer program who’s allied with the Silicon Syndicate. Basically, the Calculator blundered and gave Oracle access to the Syndicate’s secret Internet — the Syndicate is unhappy, but is going to give him three days to kill the Birds of Prey before they kill him. Can Calculator figure out a way to come out on top? Well, yeah, that and more. And with Calc’s newfound power, do Oracle and the rest of the Birds stand any chance against him?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nice focus on the Calculator and the Syndicate, and Calc’s scheme is enjoyably baroque and twisted.

Green Lantern #37

Hal Jordan and the lone two Blue Lanterns are racing to save Sinestro from being executed by the Red Lanterns. The Blue Lanterns want to save Sinestro — Jordan would kinda like to kill him himself. But he gets ambushed by the blood-barfing Red Lanterns and imprisoned with Sinestro. The demonic Atrocitus pronounces prophecies that Hal will eventually rebel against the Corps, but the Sinestro Corps soon attacks, and Hal finds himself in the crossfire between the Red, Blue, and Yellow Lanterns. Hal tries to save Laira, a former Green Lantern turned Red, but Sinestro kills her. Jordan is enraged by her death — and you know how much the Red Lanterns love rage…

Verdict: I think I’m gonna thumbs-down on this one. I’m really tired of the blood-vomiting Red Lanterns. And I’m not that fond of the Blue Lanterns either. And now that Hal has gone from a Green Lantern to a Red Lantern, with the Blues wanting him as their leader… Hey, do ya reckon, Hal is going to be wearing all seven of the power rings by the time this is all over? Aw, gee, did I figure out the big surprise already?

Secret Six #5

The horrific Junior is going to kill Bane by throwing bricks at him. Five hundred bricks. But Bane is not without resources — namely, that even chained up and seemingly helpless, he’s really, really good at killing Junior’s henchmen. Meanwhile, Jeanette, the Last Victim and the owner of the Nocturne casino, forces Cheshire to give the rest of the Six the antidote to the poisons they were exposed to last issue. Then they all beat the snot out of the supervillains stalking them through the casino. Finally, they go to find Bane, and we get the revelation of Junior’s identity.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good stuff going on with Bane, and I really do like Jeanette. Not sure how thrilled I am with Junior’s true identity — I kinda liked the character as a shrouded and mysterious creep. Also, the actual disrobing part of it probably requires brain bleach, which I can no longer afford…

Blue Beetle #34

Uh-oh, Dr. Polaris has killed Blue Beetle! Or has he? Oh, of course he hasn’t. Actually, Jaime’s armor temporarily killed him to avoid getting vaporized by Polaris’ magnetic attacks. The new strategy: flood Polaris’ body with gluons to, well, make him feel really sick. Luckily, Jaime has some allies, like Polaris’ estranged daughter, who stabs him with a plank of wood, and some of his former minions, who also lay a little smackdown on him. Oh, and Jaime’s got a proton cannon, too, so that’ll probably help. On top of all that, Brenda and Paco ponder whether they’re ready to start a relationship together, and Jaime puts some mass-media hurt on an ambitious politician’s political aspirations.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Definitely feels like a return-to-form for this title, with great one-liners, great action, great plot development, great characterization. Final issue coming up soon, but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep showing it some love.

The Goon #31

It’s the final battle against the horrific Labrazio and his minions. Labrazio shoots one of the orphans, and it looks like he’s got the Goon over the barrel, but Franky comes to the rescue. Meanwhile, Buzzard surprises the monstrous woky by figuring out an answer to his question. The Goon and Buzzard know how to stop Labrazio once and for all, but will they be able to enact their plan before the villains hurt more of the Goon’s friends?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good gravy, what a thumbs up. Action galore, Labrazio’s secret revealed, a hopeless battle, a last-minute save, and a bit of last-page heartbreak to carry us home. Eric Powell has turned out one of the best comics of the past year right here. Go get this issue, go get the back issues, go get the collections.

Green Lantern #36

The Red Lanterns have Sinestro, with plans to torture him to death. Meanwhile, Fatality gets converted into the Star Sapphires, and the Green Lanterns get saved by a Blue Lantern, an alien who calls himself Saint Walker, whose ring is able to mega-charge Green Lantern power rings and provide hope and healing to anyone. Walker takes Hal Jordan to his home planet, where he meets Ganthet and Sayd, former Guardians who now run the Blue Lanterns. They tell him that they want him to become the leader of the Blue Lanterns.

Verdict: Thumbs down. The blood-puking Red Lanterns have gotten very tiresome, Saint Walker makes me want to hurt small children and puppies, and I’m no longer sure I can stand the creation of the Orange and Indigo Lanterns, much less the Black Lanterns.

I’m spotlighting the grimmest, bleakest, most unstoppably pessimistic comics I’ve got today.

Green Lantern Corps #31

First, the Guardians pass a new law that bans physical relationships and love between Green Lantern Corps members. That’s gonna be a major bummer for the few Corpsmen who are married, Guardians — like Matoo and Amnee Pree, currently trying to capture the babynapping Sinestro Corps member called Kryb. Amnee is pregnant and due to give birth fairly soon, while Matoo, along with Kyle Rayner and Soranik Natu, take the fight to Kryb. Unfortunately, Kryb releases a substance that turns them into her slaves. Amnee escapes the enslaving pollen, but the fight against Kryb induces labor early. She conjures up a ring-powered mega-fetus to pound on Kryb, but Kryb’s slaves still subdue her.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Just unrelentingly grim stuff. Kryb is a creepy babynapping horror, and she’s got Green Lanterns helping her steal more babies. Heck, she’s even got an enslaved father preparing to kill his wife to give Kryb another baby to steal. Grim, grim, grim. I’d quibble with Kryb’s pollen attack, though — the way we understand the power rings, they have enough consciousness on their own to counteract the ring bearers if they get enslaved.

B.P.R.D.: War on Frogs #2

We follow a small squad of soldiers from the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense as they try to track some “frogs” — powerful supernatural froglike monsters that the Bureau takes a special interest in wiping out. Unfortunately, the squad keeps losing members, one by one, as the frogs use the darkness and cramped quarters aboard a derelict ship, to pick people off when no one’s looking. Will any of the soldiers survive to get rid of the frogs? Spoiler: Probably not.

Verdict: Thumbs up, but still so, so, so grim. And I think this is the last segment of this story, so it just ends on a really, really pessimistic note.

Green Lantern Corps #30

Guy Gardner, Sodam Yat, and Arisia, along with a few of the Guardians, travel to the planet Zamaron, home of the Star Sapphires — also known as the Violet Lanterns. This is a diplomatic mission — but also a spy mission. What are the Star Sapphires up to? Who are they going to ally with? The Star Sapphires have power rings attuned to Capital-L Love, but that doesn’t really make them good guys — they’re ruthless and obsessive and a bit creepy, which actually makes them really similar to the Guardians, come to think of it. Meanwhile, Kyle Rayner and another contingent of GLs are on the trail of a Sinestro Corps member named Kryb — she likes to kill GLs who are parents, kidnap their children, and raise them herself in the biological crib that grows out of her back. Ewww, Kryb is just about the creepiest and most unsettling Sinestro Corps member there is.

Verdict: Despite the presence of Kryb, I’m going to give this a thumbs down. The entire story is a fairly mushy muddle.

Fantastic Four: True Story #4

Nightmare has apparently triumphed — Sue Storm and Ben Grimm are dead, the concept of fiction is dead, and Nightmare controls everything. Luckily, Reed and Johnny figure out a way to use the remnants of fiction to bring Sue, Ben, and the rest of their allies back to life and to conjure up an army of modern-day movie action-heroes and celebrity cheerleaders to beat up Nightmare’s army.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Parts of it are okay and fairly amusing, but wow, this just goes rattling all over the place, seemingly at random. Too weird, too chaotic, and it definitely fails to live up to what it could’ve been.

DC Universe Decisions #4

The assassin targeting the presidential candidates has finally been identified — it’s Jericho, the Teen Titans’ body-possessor, and he’s somehow turned evil yet again. He’s also managed to take over Green Lantern’s body, so he’s got the Most Powerful Weapon in the Universe sitting on his finger. Luckily, Hal is able to expel him before he does too much damage, and the superhero psychic Mento determines that in the process of jumping from one body to the next, Jericho has managed to acquire traces of the personalities of hundreds of people, and it’s turned him into a psychotic loon. As for all the problems with superheroes endorsing politicians, Superman apparently solves it all by speechifying.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Supes comes across as an opinionless weasel, and the stuff with Jericho was just embarrassing. It was just a year or two that DC worked their tails off to redeem him into a non-villainous character, and now they’ve chucked him back down the hole again. This entire series was pushed as an explicitly political story, and in the end, it just ended up being dull, middle-of-the-road, and afraid to express any strong political opinions at all. What a waste.

Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns

Okay, Sinestro is going to be executed by the Green Lantern Corps, so they take him back to his home planet of Korugar because… I really don’t know. Anyway, the new Red Lantern Corps, composed of people who can harness great hatred and rage, is on the rise, and their primary attack appears to be vomiting blood on their enemies. Their members include Atrocitus the demon, Laira, a former Green Lantern, and a pretty blue kitty. The Red Lanterns jump into a fight between the Green Lanterns and the Sinestro Corps, and we get our first glimpse of the Blue Lantern.

Verdict: I think I’m going to give this a thumbs down, too. The blood puking is really pretty silly.

The Family Dynamic #3

Troylus, Terran, and Little Wing swing into action against Monstero and quickly find themselves over their heads. Luckily, their parents show up to help take down the villain. Afterwards, at Sloane’s birthday party, it becomes clear that he’s the only person in the family who doesn’t know that his sister and niece are Blackbird and Little Wing. And before anyone can spill the beans to him, a new villain appears — Replik8, a duplicater with a weird beehive hairdo.

Verdict: Ehh, not bad, but not all that great, either. The back-and-forth between the family members is grand fun, and I’m not sure we need quite so many supervillains anyway, especially when they seem to come and go so quickly.

Green Lantern #35

Well, finally! It’s the end of the storyarc we thought would never end! “Secret Origin” finally wraps up!

Hal Jordan and Sinestro — at this time in the past, he was a Green Lantern in good standing — get dragged back to Oa to answer to the Guardians, who are angry at them for violating one of their rules, that Green Lanterns are not to work together or fraternize outside of Oa. Jordan accuses them of being afraid of the GLs, and Sinestro tells them that it’s wrong to force the GLs to operate in isolation from each other. The Guardians are angry, but they let both of them continue as Green Lanterns. Sinestro returns the demon Atrocitus to the planet Ysmault, where the diabolical Qull predicts that Sinestro’s home planet will be lost to chaos unless Sinestro forces order upon it. Jordan starts a new job at Ferris Aircraft, William Hand continues his very unhealthy infatuation with death, and Hector Hammond continues to mutate.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Partly because I liked Hal’s confrontation with the Guardians, but mostly because I was glad that this way, way too long storyarc is finally finished.

Green Lantern Corps #29

Lots of stuff going on here — Guy Garder and his girlfriend Ice argue because Guy wants Ice to move in with him, but she’s reluctant to become a permanent resident of Oa, because she feels she’s needed more on Earth. Kyle Rayner and a slew of other Green Lanterns are tracking a Sinestro Corps villain called Kryb who kidnaps the infant children of Green Lanterns. And we see the birth of a new member of the Star Sapphires — i.e., the new Violet Lantern Corps — when Mongul kills an alien, causing his mate to be recruited by a Star Sapphire ring that claims she’s capable of showing great love.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Kinda cool the way love ends up being the overarching theme of this issue — the Star Sapphires are powered by love, Guy and Ice’s relationship, the Lanterns’ search for the villain threatening their loved ones.