Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Green Lantern #21 (February 1992)


I am partial towards low hanging fruits.

Last issue ended with Hal Jordan and Gerard Jones both making big mistakes. Jones' mistake was naming a comic book character Flicker. Jordan's mistake was being captured by Fucker. I mean Flicker. According to Flicker, he's the LinkedIn of space. You need to find somebody trained to do a specific job? Flicker will find, capture, and kidnap that person for you! Unless he's already kidnapped them and holding them in his Temp Agency Dungeon. Then it's just a matter of filling out a few forms, transferring an egregious amount of funds, and waiting for your new employee to arrive via slave ship!

Apparently the first thing to be done after Flicker captures somebody is to interview them. Flicker and his employees need to find out the kidnapped person's skills so they know exactly what company to sell them to later.


I'm not sure if they drug them first or if Hal Jordan just loves being interviewed because he's being real fucking calm about this.

Hal has no idea how he got here or who the person interviewing him is. But when he begins to question the set-up, the interviewer changes their appearance a little and asks some more questions and Hal gets really excited to tell stories about the way he loves to fuck another man.


Maybe there's a simpler explanation as to why Hal doesn't want women in the Green Lantern Corps?

I don't want to accuse Pat Broderick of being lazy but pages 2-5 are composed of 36 panels but only 11 panels of original art. I'm not counting as "original art" any panels that repeat the art of other panels but with the slightest variations, like focusing closer on Hal's face, changing the color of the interviewer's hair, or combining images from two separately repeated panels. Perhaps Broderick was going for a bit of a Gertrude Stein feel with his visuals. The images are boring and cliché, repeated over and over again to simulate the repetitive, exasperating mundanity of a corporate interview. It totally works because I got bored immediately and flipped ahead to see how many pages this was going to go on.


I feel like I should have received a discount on the cover price.

What I believe Broderick is actually doing is highlighting Green Lantern's awareness of the situation. By repeating all of the images for the reader, the glaring changes in reality stand out while also highlighting how Hal Jordan can't perceive them the way the reader does. In that regard, it's actually much closer to my "this is like Gertrude Stein's work" theory than my initial and well-written hypothesis that "Pat Broderick is a lazy jerk." But that's what makes me a great critic! No matter how intelligent and well-formed my initial arguments and gut instincts against some piece of art, I'm still willing to work out how the art might be doing the opposite of what I first thought. Most people would hear what I first thought and think, "Pat is lazy! That Tess or Grunion or whatever the fuck their name is fucking knows what's what! What a genius!" I hope when I change my argument, they think, "Wow, this is exactly like every Gertrude Stein story I've never read (thank God!). Tess or Grunion or whatever really fucking knows what's what! What a super-duper mega-genius!", instead of "Why would this idiot back off from their initial, emotional, angry, GamerGate reaction? Why would they calm down and try to suss out what's really going on? What a fucking [insert whatever slur slides easily off their big jerk tongues]?"

While discussing all the myriad ways in which women don't bother him at all, Hal mentions Carol Ferris and the interviewer freaks out, revealing they're some kind of automaton. The stage hands hurry it off stage and replace it with a new robot before Hal can figure out what's going on and the interview starts over. Hal doesn't realize anything's wrong because apparently Flicker not only flicks and kidnaps, he injects people with a shit-ton of ketamine and valium as well.


Flicker looks like a rejected Firestorm villain from 1986. And his boss looks like an old Spider-man foe.

Oh boy! I hope Gerard Jones is about to serve up some really cutting satire on business people and corporations! It's about time somebody brought them down a peg! I know this was written in 1991 but, really, the best time to serve up cutting satire on business people and corporations is thirty years ago. The next best time is now. I think that's an old Chinese saying.

Flicker has captured Brik, Kworri, and AA as well as Hal Jordan. Kworri was Brik's recruit from the Obsidian Folk and AA was her recruit from the Pumice People. Thanks to Brik's recommendation, Flicker decided to capture them as well. But his boss isn't exactly chuffed at the quality of these hunted heads. Especially the guy with the repeated vowel first name.


Did he call him "fucker" because this guy is Space J. Jonah Jameson?

I'm still surprised editorial allowed Gerard Jones to name a character Flicker. His argument was probably that Marvel had a character named Clint for years and nobody seemed to give a shit no matter how many innocent kids learned a new swear word due to poor kerning on newsprint comics.

Flicker's boss approves of Hal Jordan's qualities, especially when Hal tries to break free and beats the shit out of all of Space J. Jonah Jameson's employees. But only because during the interview, the slavers . . . I mean, headhunters put switches in their new employees' brains so they can force them into unconsciousness any time they want. When Hal loses consciousness, he collapses and begins dreaming about Carol Ferris. I hope he doesn't get an embarrassing erection in front of all of his co-slaves. I mean co-workers. Green Lantern Corps space spandex won't hide a thing if he does. At least I hope it doesn't.


Oh boy. Welcome to boner city, Hal!

I'm assuming Hal's willpower is so great that he can resist getting a boner even while dreaming otherwise the panel after he wakes up, he'd find Brik slobbering all over his dong. You know, because she wants him so badly. Also if you're wearing a Green Lantern ring and somebody is able to suck your dick without your consent, it's actually implied consent because otherwise the Green Lantern ring would have protected you from the surprise oral. Sometimes it knows better than you do what will keep you alive and/or make you cum buckets.

When I first saw Jaws, I thought the shark (you know, Jaws the shark) was attracted to teenagers because sharks love cum. You can see how I could easily have made that mistake being that chum and cum sound so similar and also I was a really fucking stupid kid.

Hal's dream continues to get sexier and sexier.


I've had this wet dream at least three times.

I once had a wet dream where I was fucking a vampire as the sun was coming up and I held her down as the sun hit her and disintegrated her and I finished in my underwear. Don't read too much into that, like misogyny or perversion. Apparently my subconscious just loves fucking female vampires to death.

In Twin Peaks, the character of Major Briggs describes a vision he had to his son Bobby. He begins by differentiating a vision with a dream by defining a dream as a "mere sorting and cataloguing of the day's events." But I've never actually fucked a vampire to death so that wasn't a sorting or a cataloguing of any of my days' events. So was that a vision?! If so, what did it mean?! Will I become Blade?

Hal wakes up mid-interview where his interviewer is once again haranguing him about his issue with women, especially that one issue where his lover killed John Stewart's lover and then Hal never allowed John to talk it over with him.

Flicker's company seem to be the ones who kidnapped Star Sapphire way back in Action Comics Weekly whatever number it was that she was kidnapped in. Oh, #605. Thanks, editor's note! Hal realizes that the interviewer is trying to find out how to control Star Sapphire through Hal's knowledge of her. If they think Hal could ever "control" Carol Ferris, these guy's don't know Hal. Or Carol! When Hal realizes the interviewer's new tack, he comes out of his ketamine-induced stupor and attacks the woman interviewer. Space J. Jonah Jameson yells, "This interview is over!" Hal Jordan once more falls unconscious and begins hallucinating again. Flicker's got his hands on a really strong space ketamine source. I bet it's Lobo.

This wet dream doesn't last very long before Hal Jordan cums out all the windows on the spaceship.


"Clean up on Aisle All-of-Them."

Space J. Jonah Jameson doesn't take kindly to his spaceship being vandalized and orders Flicker to get them out of his office. Flicker decides to teleport them off the ship and then warp the ship across the universe. Space J. Jonah Jameson, always angry because he's, you know, Space J. Jonah Jameson, screams at Flicker that he didn't want to lose Hal! He just didn't want his shit broken anymore. Hal, Brik, Kworri, and AA have escaped Flicker's clutches for the moment. And AA took a prisoner as they were being ejected from the ship, one of Flicker's underlings. Hal decides to use him to find Star Sapphire. AA, a real wet blanket of a recruit, doesn't think that's a noble, honorable, and just use of raping the prisoner's memories. But Hal tells him to shut the fuck up and do what he's told if he wants to be part of the crew. So AA shuts the fuck up (but with reservations!). Kworri doesn't shut the fuck up at all because he's totally into abusing prisoners for Hal's personal business. The issue ends with the crew on the hunt for Star Sapphire.

Green Lantern #21 Rating: B+. This might present itself as a story about Hal trying to find Star Sapphire and put some of the demons of his past (and John's!) to rest. But it's really a story about the competition between Kworri of the Obsidian Folk and AA of the Pumice People for one spot in the Green Lantern Corps. Again, Hal has the opportunity to just take two more recruits to fill up his quota as quickly as possible. But like every barely competent middle manager in any business across the country, he feels like he's got to exert some sort of control over the situation and flex his power when he absolutely doesn't need to. Why reject one of the potential recruits? Why pit them against each other? It seems like sadistic inter-office bullshit to me! Just do as little as possible, Hal! You've already been guaranteed the promotion back to Earth! Why cause strife for other people when it's absolutely not needed?! Go back and hire Boodika. And also apologize to her! Hire both of these idiots! Christ, hire Flicker if it'll get you back to Earth sooner!

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