Red Lanterns #22

Who are "they"? The fans? The editors? The residents of Lodi, California?

Obviously the cover means The Red Lanterns! I'm not as stupid as I've led you all to believe! I once even got a C+ on a Calculus test without even studying! And after having taken Calculus in high school and in college! Yep. Proud moment for the parents spending money on my continuing education that I wasn't giving a shit about! I think I listened to Skid Row on my walkman more than I listened to the teacher droning on and on about finding the volume of an irregularly shaped reservoir so you could understand how much lateral pressure the water exerts and build a dam that could withstand that pressure. I can't do derivatives anymore but I still know all the lyrics to 18 and Life!

That last statement is actually a lie. I think I might actually be able to work out a simple derivative problem before I could recall the words to 18 and Life! Even back then, I think I was singing the chorus as "Eighteen and life retarded! 18 and life OH NOES! Your criminy time is eighteen and life, let's go!"

The Non-Certified Spouse likes to point out that I enjoy music with good lyrics but "18 and Life" proves that theory wrong! Since I couldn't remember the lyrics to anything but the chorus, I decided to look them up on the internet. I should pass on some of my years of wisdom and experience to the readers, so here's a pro tip for everybody that looks up lyrics on the internet! Sites with lyrics are the worst script traps on the internet with roving adverts and pop ups and scroll over make a noises! So whenever I load up a Lyric site, I hover over the stop button until the lyrics appear and then bam! Stop the site from loading anymore. This time, the site didn't even have time to load it's columns correctly and half the lyrics are in the middle and half the lyrics off to the left. But at least my CPU isn't dragging its fucking ass trying to keep up with all that shit that litters the pages of the typical lyrics site.

Actual Lyric from "18 and Life": "Fought like a switchblade so no one could take him down." Because if you were in a gang fight in 1989, a switchblade was the top weapon on the street! Unless some broadly horizoned asshole came along with a Butterfly Knife! That's what the lyric should be! "Fought like a butterfly knife so no one could figure him out." It's also strange that nobody could take down switchblade Ricky. This song must have been set in 1956.

It would probably take a calculus problem to figure out how many blow jobs this man received from teenage girls in 1989.

Actual Lyric from "18 and Life": "Tequila in his heartbeat; his veins burned gasoline." The semicolon punctuation is mine and not Sebastian Bach's. Was Ricky some kind of X-men Mutant? "What's your superpower?" "Oh, you know. Typical alcohol instead of blood syndrome. It, you know, keeps my motor running but I never really keep it clean." "Perhaps you should try out for the Brotherhood of Mutants then." Oh! Ricky was a Red Lantern! Man, I can't believe I switched up universes there when the answer was staring me right in the puss!

Actual Lyric from "18 and Life": "They say he loved adventure." Well, he may have been about ten years too late for the real thrill of Crowther and Wood's Adventure but I was really into text adventure games in 1989 as well.

Actual Lyric from "18 and Life": "He married trouble, had a courtship with a gun." Fucking adulterer. How pissed off must trouble have been when he went off with the gun? Hey, who likes digressions! So today on Facebook, my cousin Jennifer shared an image that said, "Karma cleanse: be grateful, act with love, check your motives, watch your attitude, forgive." I was tempted to add, "Don't cheat on your husband." Because, yes, she did in fact do that. Those are the kinds of things I was speaking of when I made the Facebook Status Update: "If I were to reply to friends' Status Updates with the first thing to pop into my head, I'd probably lose half of my friends."

That's probably enough about Ricky's story. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I wasn't that off topic discussing this song about some raging kid! I just ramble and sometimes things all fall into place. The secret of writing well is not planning ahead but being able to organize everything that falls out of your brain into a somewhat coherent mess that kind of looks like maybe one actually put some thought into it.

As the issue begins, Guy Gardner seems to be having a spot of trouble dealing with the tequila in his heartbeat.

Is it too soon for another digression? I have a feeling that the people who read this blog aren't fans of comic books at all; they're fans of digressions! That wasn't the actual digression I was digressing into; it was me digressing out of a digression. The original digression was that my original, first-time-ever online screen name was The Red King. I'm sure I've mentioned this before but since this comic book is called "The King is Red", it seems an apt place to repeat myself. I chose The Red King because I'm the biggest fan of Alice in Wonderland and whatever the fuck the sequel was called, something about a fucking mirror. Anyway, I chose the name because logging off of the internet was akin to The Red King waking. Poof! Everybody on the internet went out like a candle. I may, according to my sources (which are me), have come up with the single best online name ever. EVER! Now because I love digressions and derivatives (oh fuck! I tied it back to Calculus! GENIUS!), my online name is Grunion Guy The Red Lizard due to The Lizard King thing and I was The Red Lizard King for awhile and then Xbox Live only accepts fifteen or so characters in the name, so I shortened it to The Red Lizard. Grunion Guy is, in fact, another of my online personae, and if you see something on the internet by Grunion Guy, it was probably done by me, with a very slight chance it may have been by Doom Bunny or Upright, my bestest friends in the whole worlds!

Getting back to the comic book and the first page, so far I really love the art. It's got a kind of Simon Bisley quality to it. And who doesn't like a character covered in bloody vomit. No? Just me?

"No? Just me?" is going to become my catch phrase. I'm going to be as popular as Steve Urkel and whatever his catch phrase was. I think it was "What? Me Worry?"

Here's the rest of the first page because I feel like I'm failing loyal readers having blathered on for so long with just a picture of Guy Gardner in vomit and Sebastian Bach. Also there was a kiss which I feel compelled to document.

The Red Lanterns argue for a bit trying to figure out what to do with Guy Gardner. During their arguing, Zilius Zox explains to Rankorr what it feels like to put on the Red Ring. Hey, you stupid tennis ball looking mother fucker! Everybody on the planet knows what that feels like!

Now I feel shame for resorting to name calling based on physique. I should have just called him mentally deficient. I think it's okay to harp on someone about how stupid they are but not how tennis ball shaped they are! Unless you can't point out that someone is stupid because it makes people who can't help but be stupid, due to their physiology and brain chemistry, feel bad. "Don't compare that idiot to me!" says the idiot.

Hey, anybody want to help me dig this hole I'm in a little bit deeper? Maybe we can piss off a couple of groups at once by pointing out how gay fraternities are! I don't think either side of that slight wants to be compared to the other. Although homosexuals don't often go around date raping women, so the analogy isn't exact. Frat boys put the "anal" in analogy!

Have any of you turned into Red Lanterns yet from reading my commentary? No, I know all y'all reading this on Blogspot haven't changed. Your probably wondering who the hell I could have offended with any of that, you bunch of insensitive beasts! That question was just directed at the Tumblrites. Lately my Followers have hovered around the same amount because I lose as many as I gain. I like to think that means I'm doing something right!

While Bleez is busy telling everybody what they're going to do with Guy Gardner, Rankorr does the opposite.

Because humans got to protect their own kind! Go humans! Down with xenomorphs! And, um, all other non H.R. Gigerstuff aliens! Humans rule! Humans rule!

Guess what happens after those panels? A fight breaks out! Oh, Red Lanterns. You are just like Tumblr.

Tumblrite #1: "I said something!"
Tumblrite #2: "Insensitive asshole piece of shit fucked up racist fuck."
Tumblrite #3: "dead!"

I don't spend as much time on blogspot because it's for oldies and uptights as opposed to youngies and oversensitives but here's my impression of Blogspot:

Blogger #1: "I have a blog!"
Blogger #1, three years later: "Oh yeah! I forgot I started this blog!"

Fuck you, Zilius Zox! Don't compare me to Rankorr!

I'm surprised at how much Zilius Zox knows about royalty! I guess Tennis Ball Monsters from Space know about all the different methods of government.

But I guess he's not quite as learned when it comes to biology.

Okay, Guy. Let's stop one-upping me on the descriptions of Zilius. Jerk. Although now that I get a good look at Zilius Zox, he looks quite a bit like my cousin Jennifer's ex-husband!

While I was admiring the wrinkly goodness of Zilius, The Red Lanterns broke out into another fucking fight. What is wrong with these guys? It's like they're motiv...oh yeah. Anyway, Gardner decides to use the old double loop-de-loop reverse kick-flip psychology on them and asks them why they want a leader? "What are we," he says, "Green Lanterns?" Oh! What's that thing the kids that used to be kids last decade say? Oh! Snap!

Guy suggests they run everything through a sort of vague anarchical kind of democratic system of punching and voting and vomiting blood. He doesn't really seem to care who leads or how they make decisions. His main concern is the lack of lodging and fast food restaurants on Ysmault. The Red Lanterns first vote is whether or not they should build a shelter.

Hmm. That involved far less blood letting than I've come to expect with these jerks. I suppose the real conflict will kick in when they try to decide the pizza toppings.

Instead of building a shelter, Guy decides to steel the Kaalvar, the flagship light cruiser of Barg! That's seems like a totally reasonable idea. And he's also tricked the Red Lanterns into following his lead without ever taking the command position! Oh, he's so sly.

A few pages of Guy and Zilius fighting pirates and vomiting follow. Whoever thought I would be describing the action of a comic book with so many instances of vomiting without reading an underground comic book? And also not lying like I sometimes do. Don't judge me for lying, that's Jesus's job. Jesus is going to judge you for judging, asshole.

While Guy heads toward the bridge to take command of the vessel, he finds a storage room full of crystal corpses, members of his old Green Lantern buddy Chaselon's homeworld. Apparently they are the space equivalent of tiger penises. The discovery sets Guy's rage dial to eleven and he flips the fuck out.

I think my three catch phrases are "No? Just me?", "Whoops!", and "Flips the Fuck Out." I probably have many, many more that I repeat all of the time and just don't notice because I'm like a grandfather in his recliner telling the same story over and over. I guess some people like that sort of thing.

Guy smashes Captain Barg through the cockpit window and out into deep space and then sits back to bask in the feeling of rageohol.

Or the after effects of a bloody, burning orgasm.

Red Lanterns #22 Rating: +5 Ranking! Homesteading has never been so much fun! If the building of the American Democracy had been this interesting, I probably would have completed my minor in American History! Although True American History did include Gouverneur Morris, one legged sex maniac who died from sticking a whale bone up his penis! Oh, he also wrote the Preamble to the Constitution.

Oh yeah! And lastly, Dex-Starr is out in space reanimating Atrocitus. I'm not sure if I hope it goes better than the reanimation in Re-animator or just exactly the same!