Green Lantern #12

"The hills are alive...with the sounds of blackness!"

Hal Jordan and Sinestro have just recently crashed Black Hand's undead family reunion. They brought him a little present in The Book of the Black.

Tales told about dead people? This book must be exciting!

And now a story by Grunion Guy! (Applause)

The Tales of the Dead: Past. Present. Future. Unless that punctuation should be different.
By Grunion Guy

1,000,000 BCE: Ok lie in hole. Ok dead. Ok not move. Worms eat Ok. Tickle. Ok not think nothing. Ok dead. Ok not never believe in nothing before. Ok learn different! Ok not think this though because Ok dead. Ok hate Shaman Ack for lying about Sky Baker.

800 CE: Svenergin is taking a trip out to sea. "Oh, this is nice," is what Svenergin would have been thinking if he hadn't been dead. But he was dead. So he wasn't thinking anything. There really wasn't even a he there anymore. He was as "he-ish" as a mound of dirt or a pool of water. Svenergin was lucky he wasn't alive to enjoy the trip because he was also on fire.

1660 CE: James Goodfellow was lowered into a hole in the ground. It's a good thing he was dead because he would have been pretty upset to find out his pious life on earth had been wasted by denying himself the bounties of the material world. He probably would have been pretty angry instead of super happy and dancing in Heaven with Glory Windhom who died of the same fever earlier in the week. They probably would have done it if the preacher hadn't kept shouting at them on a nearly constant basis. It's a good thing he was dead.

3000 CE: Zapfirneous Ferolghan lie in a pile of ashes. He was disintegrated by a Stun Laser on the Disintegration Setting. He wasn't disappointed at all because his consciousness was just a side-effect of the evolution of the organic body that was distinct to himself. Eventually the pile of dust blew away when the wind blew because that's what has happened to dust for millenia when the wind blew.

There were many, many, many, many more stories of the Dead but they're all pretty much just variations on the above stories. The end!

Black Hand begins reading the book and judging by his reaction, it was written by Grunion Guy!

"I signed it! To Black Hand: Of my soul. Grunion Guy!"

The real reason Black Hand is upset is that every page of the book now repeats, over and over, "Hal Jordan is not your enemy." And it must be true since the page is also stamped by a Green Lantern Notary Public. If I were Hal Jordan, I would be a bit perturbed that my name was in the Book of the Black which tells the tales of the dead. I don't think Hal Jordan should be looking forward to the Green Lantern Annual.

To destroy a Black Lantern, it takes a blast from a Green Lantern combined with a blast from another color ring. I know that not because I read Blackest Night but because Hal Jordan thankfully decided to recap that plot point. He tries to get in contact with Carol Ferris since she has a Star Sapphire ring but she's busy lying to Amanda Waller.

According to her flag, this story takes place sometime before 1949. And in a dimension where the red stripe sits under the field of stars. The colorist and artist must be communists!

Hal knocks out Black Hand by frying his brain. But he'll heal eventually. In the meantime, they head outside to get better reception on Hal's ring so he can contact Carol. The yard outside Black Hand's house is filled with zombies. Oh, who cares! Fly away! Make a flame thrower. It doesn't really seem like a big deal.

Meanwhile on Oa, the Guardians of the Universe are finally preparing to unleash the Third Army. Their reasoning for needing a new army goes like this: every time the Guardians make a galactic police force, something invariably goes wrong and they need to make a new galactic police force. So they're now making a new galactic police force because they are fucking insane.

Actually, they believe the Green Lanterns failed because they needed the help of the other Lantern Corps to deal with the Black Lanterns. And those other Lantern Corps are pretty stupid ideas. The Guardians believe that the only things standing in their way are the Green Lanterns of Earth and Sinestro. But they also think that they've taken care of most of them. They still think Hal does not have a Green Lantern ring because they're so arrogant they don't have a fact checker. They think John Stewart is broken from the guilt of having killed a fellow Green Lantern. They think Guy is with them due to the obviously fake promotion they granted him. And they're going to let Ganthet deal with Kyle Rayner. These Guardians think if these Lanterns are destroyed, the Green Lantern Corps will fall apart. That's a pretty weak-willed Corps if they're going to give up simply because the Earth Green Lanterns are dealt with.

While the Guardians are discussing this, they're also traveling to the homeworld of the Indigo Lanterns which they located due to tracking Sinestro an issue or two ago.

Everyone who has ever written the Guardians of the Universe have always fallen back on "absolute power corrupts absolutely" as their describing characteristic. Why do they continuously have to fuck everyone? Why does everyone keep trusting them?!

Meanwhile back in Black Hand's yard, Green Lantern and Sinestro take my advice when they realize the zombies aren't Black Lanterns but merely puppets of Black Hand!

I don't know exactly how green light turns into fire but I've lived with the conceit my entire comic book reading life.

But once Black Hand regains unlife, the zombies become more of a threat. Not much more. While Hal and Sinestro are fighting outside, Black Hand consults the Book of the Black and asks who Hal Jordan is if he isn't the enemy. The book tells him, "Hal Jordan will be the greatest..." and then Black Hand flips the fuck out because he apparently was able to read the rest of that sentence.

Let's see. If this is a book that tells the tales of the dead, then my guess is Hal Jordan will be the greatest corpse the universe has ever seen! Or the greatest necrophiliac? The greatest mortician? The greatest crematest?

After battling the zombies for awhile, Hal Jordan takes my other advice! I'm a tactical genius!

I'd be a master at role-playing a Green Lantern!

For some reason, Hal and Sinestro can't destroy zombies with their Green Lantern rings when Black Hand regains consciousness and retakes control. They still need another color to help them. So Sinestro pulls his Yellow Lantern out of the pocket dimension he's attached it to (although his pocket dimension allows him to pull it from his headquarters and not from a planet dependent on its power that would end up hating him later because he took it away from them) and drops it amid the zombies. Together, Sinestro and Hal use the last of their rings' power to blow up the Yellow Lantern and destroy all of the zombies. But they collapse unconscious afterward and only Black Hand is left to stand over them and read his book.

Oh yeah! I guess I was close guessing Hal would be the greatest corpse.

Green Lantern #12 Rating: +1 Ranking. Heck, it foreshadows Hal's death! How can I not enjoy that? But what, exactly, does it take to be a great Black Lantern? What's the point of the Black Lanterns? What are they meant to do? What's their goal? What is it about Hal Jordan that will make him the best zombie ring bearer ever?