Green Lantern #24

Why can't Hal Jordan go more than three months at a time without a huge cosmic crisis that requires a crossover?

Green Lantern really is a stupid name for this hero and what he does. Earth 3 got it right by calling his opposite Power Ring. Sure, Power Ring is a stupid name as well. But at least it makes sense.

Victim: "Help! Help!"
Green Lantern: "Do not worry, sir! Green Lantern will save the day!"
Victim: "I hope he gets here quick! Help!"
Green Lantern: "He is here! I am here! I am Green Lantern!"
Victim: "What? Why? Help! Where's your lantern?"
Green Lantern: "It's at home. It's too bulky to carry. Anyway, look at my power! See this? Green light! I'm like a Green Lantern in the darkness!"
Victim: "Oh. I get it. Help. It's more conceptual than visual."
Green Lantern: "But my emblem looks like a stylized lantern as well!"
Victim: "I would have gone with The Imagineer!"
Green Lantern: "I kind of didn't have a choice. Otherwise I would have chosen the name Better!"
Victim: "That's just...ugh. You know what? I'm good here. I'd rather not be seen with you."

Hal Jordan has suddenly realized how serious a problem it is that the Green Lantern rings have become unreliable. First he had to fly across the vacuum of space and then nearly choke to death on the noxious atmosphere of a far off planet before he could take the problem seriously. But then he's really never been much of a thinker. He's more of a doer. Especially if that doing is destroying his home town or betraying the Corps or acting like a self-righteous prick. But now he's a leader and a leader has to lead! I just came up with that myself. Right off the top of my head. I should be a Writer!

This is why Kilowog should runs things and Hal Jordan should be dead.

Hal, John, Kilowog, and Salaak are all currently realizing that maybe Sinestro's mass murder of the Guardians wasn't such a good idea. Now, if he'd tortured them slowly so that they gave up all the secrets about how the battery and the rings actually worked before offing them, the Green Lanterns might not be in so much trouble right now. But since that didn't happen (Sinestro's slow torture of the Guardians could have been its own series that ran for years!), now they whole battery/power ring/entity system has them flummoxed and other words that mean whatever flummoxed means.

While Salaak is leaned over staring into the battery with his ass crack showing saying "Seems to be okay now!", Kyle and Carol and Saint Walker and the Bohemian Guardians SHKASSSSSHH onto the scene.

Carol, nearly unconscious, still has the presence of mind to say "He's on his way" as opposed to "He's coming" which would have just made the twelve-year old boy that lives in my brain cackle inappropriately. Then Hal would have said, "Who's coming?" And then I wouldn't be able to get out of my head the image of Relic jerking himself off and flinging his semen across the universe.

Oh stop it! It's just Relic's hypothesis! He has no experimental proof to support it!

Hal Jordan refuses to buy into Relic's belief not because Hal Jordan knows a little bit about science but because Hal Jordan refuses to believe that the Green Lantern Corps can ever do anything bad, unknowingly or not. He's such a cheerleader for them. But he only supports them because they've made him powerful enough to match his own ego.

They don't really have a lot of time to discuss the solution to a crazed gigantic scientist from a previous universe going about destroying Lantern Corps before Relic arrives to destroy the Green one.

Relic asks Hal to surrender but Hal says the Green Lanterns don't know the meaning of surrender. So Relic says that he must then teach to them the meaning of the word. But I don't think he was serious about that because he simply attacks. I think he meant to say he would teach them the definition of "defeat" or "annihilation" or "face rape by insectoid alien robot." Unless the attack is merely incentive to internalize the definition more quickly as Relic teaches it to them.

Oh yeah? Well get used to it because you're dealing with Hal Jordan now!

John and Salaak save a bunch of extra Lantern batteries because I guess they maintain some kind of charge for some period of time even after the main battery is exhausted? The rest of the group fill a few pages with some action shots of purple hammers and green bazookas as Relic's insect army drains the main battery dry.

Well, I guess the mini-batteries don't hold any kind of charge and are just portals to the energy of the main battery. So what next?! A race against time before all the rings lose charge? Green Lantern: 24?

Relic's final act before leaving is to completely destroy the battery after which Salaak delivers the good bad news to everybody. Since the battery is so closely tied to the planet, Oa will certainly be exploding soon.

Green Lantern #24 Rating: +1 Ranking. I really hope all of this Green Lantern: Extreme Makeover crap sticks because I, for one, could definitely do with a big shake-up to the normal routine of the Green Lantern Corps. They've already gotten rid of the Guardians (sort of. The Bohemians are still hanging about but I think I can get used to them). Now get rid of Oa. Get rid of the batteries. Stop having universe ending crises happening every few months. I don't mind if big problems arise but does the fate of the universe always have to hinge on every story? Is that the only way comic book writers have of creating tension anymore?