Green Lantern #3

This issue begins by showing us that Carol Ferris is just as stupid as Hal Jordan. So they probably deserve each other.

Her phone rings. She looks at the screen to see who is calling. And then she answers, "Hal?" And it isn't Hal. Unless this Tom guy has Hal's phone or Hal keeps his number blocked from his girlfriend, I must come to the conclusion that Carol is an idiot. Or that writer Geoff Johns doesn't know how a cell phone works. Or maybe the artist, Mahnke, doesn't know how it works. Maybe the call was being placed from a phone booth or a Chinese restaurant. No, I like believing that she is too dumb to know what the "Tom Kalmaku" meant on the screen on her phone.

And this is the deal Sinestro is giving Hal Jordan:

Does the Power Ring work this way? A new power ring can be formed using the light of an existing power ring? Can this happen ad infinitum? What about the power battery, the lantern? Wouldn't Sinestro need to make one of those as well? Is this how all of those other color rings and corps got started? Just make a new power ring with an old power ring and you've got another freedom fighter!

And why is Hal Jordan trusting Sinestro? I've missed out on a lot of Green Lantern history over the last ten or so years, so I don't know what kind of relationship they have. But since Hal Jordan tried to kill Sinestro immediately upon seeing him, I'm guessing it's not a good one. Except Sinestro tells Jordan that Sinestro knows he can trust Hal Jordan. I'm not so sure it's trust though. I think it might be a bribe to keep Hal in line! Whatever is between them, they join up to become a buddy movie on a comedy road trip across the stars.

Meanwhile, back on Oa, the Guardians of the Universe have cut the old man hippie pony tail off of Ganthet and he has returned to normal.

But it doesn't look like this has cured his need to cosmically interfere with things because he now declares that they must make a Third Corps to replace the Green Lanterns who were made to replace the Manhunters. And since he does this unemotionally, the other Oans are all for it, giddy with excitement and funny lower belly feelings.

Just looking at this picture makes me wonder why the Guardians of the Universe chose such an old timey Earth Lantern as the symbol for their entire corps. I'm sure it was Ganthet's doing. On his Universal Walkabout, he probably spent some time as a train tramp down on Earth and really felt connected to the life, seeing as he was pretty much doing the same thing but on a cosmic scale. He probably rode the rails for awhile and one night, he suddenly found himself awake on a lone boxcar. The sound of the train click-clacking down the tracks had stopped and it woke him suddenly. He rolled over, swiping at the loose straw clinging to his blue face and glanced out the partially open door to his train car. Floating just outside his car with the black night of the sky behind it and the stars barely visible, he saw a Green Lantern. Then the train began to chug on again and he rubbed his eyes but the lantern was gone. It was a vision from the cosmos. At that moment, he knew the Manhunters were junk and a new army was needed.

Green Lantern and Sinestro head off to Korugar to save Sinestro's people. Sinestro tells Hal Jordan the plan and Hal seems to be listening but you know he's going to just do his own thing when the time comes. It seems the Yellow Battery's great flaw is that if a Green Lantern is placed within it, it shuts down and all of the yellow rings stop working. Actually it's a failsafe and not a flaw. But I like to think that failsafes only exist as an excuse to leave a few bugs in the system that the programmers can't figure out how to fix.

See? We can all smell trouble already!

So then that happens. That being that panel above. I don't even have to turn the page to know Hal Jordan isn't going to be able to sit back and watch some Korugarian kid get molested! Sinestro wants them to wait until seven minutes after sunset. Which means Hal has to sit back and watch people be treated badly all that time! And they didn't bring any Ritalin for him! It's never going to happen. Never! We all know what's going to happen next!

See? Sinestro fucks it all up. Wait. Sinestro? Ugh! You idiot! This is why Hal Jordan always defeats you! Because you think you're so rational and above emotional outbursts! But something always breaks you out of your grand plans. And then: defeat! You think you would learn someday. Maybe in the next reboot, you big dumb dumb.

The plan goes off a little early but all seems to be going well. Sinestro is a giant distraction. Hal Jordan blows an enemy's head off with a Green Light Shoulder Mounted Bazooka (Is it okay for Hal Jordan to be killing his enemies? As long as they're aliens, I guess?). And then Hal Jordan flies into the giant yellow battery to make it stop. Except something else happens instead.

Whoops!