New Guardians #4 Update

I should apologize to Tony Bedard. I've been reading the Green Lantern comics fairly quickly because I've got such a backlog of comics to get through and haven't been giving them the focus I should. For the most part, I've been reading the comics while writing a stream of consciousness blog. As questions come up in my mind, I spit them out on the blog. I speculate about where the story is going and how it's going to resolve. But I completely failed to do this with New Guardians. Because this morning as I was waking up, I realized I, like the Lanterns, have been looking at the situation in completely the wrong way.

Maybe I shouldn't apologize to Tony Bedard! Maybe I should congratulate him on writing the comic in the way that he did so that even the reader is lost in the confusion. But one of the main reasons I missed what was so obvious and what ties the whole thing together is that I wasn't writing out the things that were bothering me. Like how the rings seemed to consciously be leaving their hosts to choose Kyle Raynor. It's so obvious once I stopped looking at the rings as being 'stolen' like everyone else in the comic book.

Just like all of the interstellar ships that sensed something coming into the universe and were waiting outside the White Hole and just like Sayd who sensed something terrible coming, the Rings also sensed this great cosmic threat. The rings leaving their hosts was a reaction to this thing coming to our Universe. They left their hosts, in many cases to die, because the need of the whole universe comes before the hosts individual lives. And they went to Kyle Raynor because he is the only one capable of wearing all of the rings at one time. One of the Guardians mentioned that someone named Krona had done it once for a meager amount of time but he was immortal. Kyle does it for a bit and seems to fail. But he also retains a bit of all the colors powers.

So does it all make sense now? Yes. It works. And it works well! Especially with the Red Herring that makes no sense: the ring thief. There isn't one and I was snowed just like the rest of the characters in the comic book.

But this brings about a complication to Kyle saving the universe! If the rings joined like this to give Kyle the power to save the Universe, what does it mean that he never actually wore the Orange Ring? That was one question I had that never made it to the blog because I assumed I was missing something about the Orange Corps and the fact it has one ring. When Kyle wore all of the rings, the Orange one never said anything. Turns out this is because it wasn't a ring at all but a construct.
Either Larfleeze (Agent Orange) and Kyle are going to have to work closely to stop this threat (I'm sure all the Lanterns are going to have to help. This is the NEW GUARDIANS, after all!) or Kyle is going to have to don the Orange Ring at some point to get its power as well.

And about the Oans getting their asses kicked by the Lanterns? It makes sense as well. I was just being grumpy and internetty and yelling, "You suck!" at Tony Bedard because I could. The Oans had just put down all the Lanterns before the Orange Lantern gives them a chance to regroup! And after the Lanterns get the upper hand, Kyle has everybody retreat. Possibly because the Guardians will eventually kick their asses. But maybe also because Kyle didn't want to hurt them. He just wanted to get away and deal with the problems at hand.

So, yeah. I really like this comic. And I apologize to Tony Bedard. Hmm, no. I'll apologize if this all works out the way I said. I'm sure it will. It makes sense. So I think I need to start filling out an envelope with DC's address and stuffing a nice dollar into it.