Emerald Dawn II #1 (April 1991)

Six issues of Hal Jordan in prison with Keith Giffen writing. I suspect some wacky hijinks may ensue!

At the end of Emerald Dawn [I], Hal Jordan had decided to do his jail time for drunk driving. Imagine the privilege of getting to feel proud of doing the right thing because you could have chosen not to do the time for the crime you committed which paralyzed one of your best friends. "What a hero Hal Jordan is! He accepted his punishment! So responsible after the fact of being recklessly irresponsible!" I guess if I were forced at gunpoint and threatened by a cop who was ready to drop me because he didn't like my attitude and I just mumbled something about his mother's luscious butthole and he believes killing civilians is his right if they disrespect him, I might say, "Sure, sure. Fine. At least Hal did the right thing when he could have just erased everybody's minds with his ring or simply murdered everybody who knew about his DUI." But in reality, my last words would probably be, "The Wicker Man was the greatest movie ever written!" Although, let's face it: the cop wouldn't know what the fuck I was talking about having spent most of his youth getting Nazi tattoos and repeating racist jokes to his stupid friends.

The issue begins with Hal Jordan receiving the judge's sentence for doing that right thing and immediately regretting his choice when the judge points out that the DUI sentencing in this country is a fucking joke.

"But I turned myself in! I'm doing the right thing! I should be lauded!"

Look at how steep the steps are to the courthouse! In 1991, America's attitude was still "Fuck the disabled! If they wanted to enter every building, they shouldn't have gotten disabled, amirite?!" Or maybe the artist just didn't give a shit. It's probably one of those!

Sentencing for Driving Under the Influence gives away the justice game more than almost anything else in law. You can basically run over four or five people while drunk and if it's the first time you've done it, you'll basically plea deal down to probation and court-mandated Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. That's because the most powerful people in the country, those who make our laws and the sentencing parameters for breaking them, know that, one day, they could easily get arrested for this crime. So many people drink and drive in such a casual manner that making the sentencing harsher would probably affect the economy. Partly because the blood-alcohol limit for Drink Driving (as they call it in the UK and which is way better) is low enough that everybody drinking on a night out and then driving home are probably over it. But everybody thinks Drink Driving is when you get behind the wheel smashed out of your fucking mind. If a sitting Congressperson believes they could easily run afoul of a law, the sentencing is going to be extremely lax. But if they think only poors and minorities will run afoul of the law, the sentencing will be the harshest fucking sentence you've ever seen, after "Your mom put a finger in my ass while sucking my dick and showing me your baby pictures."

I thought about changing that sentence because it sounds too pedo-like but doesn't that make it harsher? Also, I'm not interested in the baby pictures. Your mom was just really proud of you!

This is some of the whitest shit I've ever read. And I grew up reading Piers Anthony's Xanth novels!

Carol actually said, to console the guy being punished correctly for a crime that ruined (and ultimately, kind of, ended) a friend's life, "There's some public feeling against drunk drivers lately." First off, "lately"?! Like it's a change in the weather that doesn't make any sense and we're all just trying to do our best until it passes! But also, "Some public feeling"? Could that be rage? And anger? And fucking outrage that nobody treats this shit seriously?! Look at this woman trying to console her whinging mate who, as I pointed out earlier, thought he'd be celebrated and rewarded for doing the right thing. Doing the right thing after doing a truly fucking horrible and irresponsible thing doesn't make you a fucking saint. It might make you contrite or remorseful. But you're still the prick who crippled your friend, you dumb asshole.

So much whine coming out of this guy I'm gonna start calling him Decanter Jordan.

This fucker is crying about spending 90 days in jail for driving under the influence that resulted in a catastrophic injury of another person. He should be praising Lord Baby Jesus's name in holy supplication for that sentence! It's basically a free pass. At the very least, he should stop blaming authorities and the law and blame himself for not hiring a fucking lawyer. Has this idiot never paid attention to how are justice system works? He's probably never needed to! But people who plead guilty don't get lighter sentences. They get the worst sentences! And often, they're not even actually guilty! I hope all six of these issues are just Hal Jordan sitting behind bars every panel, weeping like a lost schoolboy. I have zero sympathy for this piece of shit!

For transparency's sake: my dad was an alcoholic which caused him to not be in my life from pretty much 2 to 18. Yes, occasional visits to go bowling or some shit. Maybe fly out to visit him where he tried to act like a father by disciplining me when I wouldn't do things he wanted me to do that were so different from my life with my mom that I was like, "Fuck that. I'm not doing that." I might have a slight beef with drunks. And later, when he got sober through AA, he wanted a relationship with me. Many things soured that attempt across the years but one thorn in my side that I could never fucking remove was the bit in Alcoholics Anonymous where they treat alcoholism like a disease but then it's a disease that you can cure once your life has gotten so fucked up that you bottom out and decide to cure yourself. And his bottom wasn't that he lost touch with his children for nearly two decades. No, no. That was cool beans to this motherfucker (literal?)! It was when he realized he was driving around in blackouts and probably some other shit that had to do with his new family and the possibility of losing them (or maybe a DUI and some time in a drunk tank? I can't fucking remember) that he was all, "I'm ready to cure myself now by not drinking anymore! Wow! What great medicine! Willpower!"

Look, I know AA helps. It should be obvious. Community fucking helps. Community is a good thing. But it's weird that he can recognize a communal organization where people look out for each other and then wind up an old man Fox News watcher as well.

Anyway, you probably shouldn't read those two previous paragraphs. Can you rewind time to stop yourself from reading those? I'd really appreciate it.

While being hauled off to jail, Hal hears a message about a bank robbery and he makes a decision. "I have power and the Guardians want me to use that power so I should be able to abuse the power to escape this unfair jail sentence any time I want."

I'd say Hal's found a line he won't cross in that last panel but here he's only contemplating if it's actually any kind of line at all.

Green Lantern leaves his ring energy image of himself in the back of the van as he flies off to stop the robbery. When he makes an image of himself, I guess it's how he sees himself and not how he actually looks. Does Hal think he has blond hair?

Green Lantern beats the police to the robbery where he discovers a two-person gang I'm going to dub The Dick Sucker Duo.

That's certainly a unique way of de-escalating the situation.

Hal refuses the offer of a blow job via a visual metaphor.

So many other ways to disarm them, this was definitely meant to be a statement on their masculinity.

One of the Duo smack Green Lantern in the face with a bronze velvet rope stand so that he can remember that he's vulnerable to yellow objects. Luckily Hal doesn't have a glass jaw like some other Green Lantern I don't want to name and he jumps right back up to beat the shit out of the robbers. Also there was a third robber but he was barely in the scene so I'll continue to think of them as The Dick Sucker Duo. I just wanted to mention it before somebody corrected me like I'm some ignorant jackass who can't count. I hate being accurately criticized on the Internet.

Green Lantern takes off as the cops arrive so he can go back to prison and feel like he's doing time the way he's supposed to be doing time. But before he makes it back, he has a few thoughts that prove my critique wasn't as facetious as it seemed.

"Cocky idiot." "Overestimated my potency." "Got suckered." The obsession with masculinity and dick sucking ain't all on me!

Hal Jordan hasn't even spent his first day in prison and he's already dealing with confinement homosexuality and challenges to his masculinity. To top it all off, he forgets to initially hide his ring from the cops so when he suddenly doesn't have a ring to turn over with his possessions, they decide to penetrate all of his cavities to find it.

I suppose having a Black cop march him off to root around in his ass was probably supposed to make it even more threatening? This is 1991, remember.

I say "This was 1991, remember" as if things have changed much in the last thirty years. People still use Black men as a symbol of intimidation and threat. And every time somebody does, even if they think it's a joke or some kind of shared referent in our culture, it makes the world a more dangerous place for Black men. Mostly because cops seem to buy into it and have become so fearful of Black men that they shoot them at the drop of anything at all.

Hal hasn't even made it into prison yet and he's already been assaulted by some guys trying to blow him and had another man straight up his asshole. Do you think Gerard Jones remembered all of this weird-ass shit he and Keith wrote when Jones was being marched into prison? He was probably thinking, "Oh my God! I'm just like Hal Jordan! I, too, am being persecuted unfairly for a crime I totally committed and should be punished for. But not this punished!"

Meanwhile, the Guardians realize their new recruit, Hal Jordan of Earth, lacks discipline. He's too wild, rebellious, and stubborn for their liking. So they decide to send his fellow Corps member, Sinestro, to help train him. Sinestro is the model of order, law, and fascism. He'll straighten Hal out in, um, 90 days, probably!

After the cavity search (which the Comics Code Authority probably insisted be changed to "strip search"), Hal Jordan endures more threats of sexual assault.

He's immediately stabbed in the back before he can say, "A piece of ass." Or whatever language prison-gay prisoners use for sexual assault.

It's fucking weird that everybody understands this common trope that prisoners are going to have to deal with constant sexual assault while in prison and most of the population just shrugs their shoulders over it. As if it's just a legal part of the system and an expected consequence. "Well, if Tom didn't want to be anally raped in the shower, maybe he shouldn't have forgotten to pay those parking tickets resulting in a warrant for his arrest, you know?" I'm not suggesting that people who do worse crimes should be assaulted! I'm just pointing out that loads of people don't think twice about prison rape because they perceive everybody in prison as being violent criminals whom they have no sympathy for. But I'm suggesting even those violent criminals shouldn't be subject to sexual assault while confined. I'd go as far as to say prison libraries should have adult sections and they should provide masturbation cubicles for inmates to get these urges out. Maybe part of the prison uniform system should be a pocket pussy? I don't know. I'm just spitballing here!

Is spitballing one of those prison-gay prison terms for sexual assault?!

Hal winds up in solitary for the suspected murder of the guy who was about to make Hal his bitch. Is that language too harsh? Maybe I should have said, "Prison wife"? No, that makes it sound consensual! Maybe I should just state it plainly: his prison rape victim.

Hal continues to suspect that all of this is the fault of the system and not his own fault for drink driving and then not hiring a lawyer. But he hopes to meet up with a lawyer now that he's suspected of prison murder. And that lawyer winds up being not a lawyer at all but some case worker named Guy Gardner!

Guy suggests a little quid pro quo. That's Latin for "I'll help you if you give me a hand job," right?

Hal recognizes Guy's name as a star college athlete and Guy tells his story about how he was drafted to the Cleveland Browns but then tore up his knee which caused him to tear up the locker room which caused him to be sent to anger management classes and to find a non-football related job. I guess according to Keith and Gerard, Guy's rage doesn't stem from his brain damage at all! He was always an angry guy. But perhaps, as he's showing here, he had the ability to better himself and to temper his aggressive attitude. It was probably the subsequent brain damage that caused him to lose the ability to calm down and think things through.

Look at me! Shitting all over Hal at every chance and instantly trying to make excuses for Guy Gardner! No wonder Anonymous commenters on the Internet fucking hate my reviews. I mean, sure, those guys usually hate my reviews because I say shit like "Trump is a stupid asshole" and "Cops should be burnt alive in giant wicker men" and "Neo-liberals fighting to retain the GOP as their main rivals instead of Progressives just points to how they know they're ultimately the next bad guys!" Maybe I should keep my opinions to myself? Like my opinion that all gun owners are ultimately cowards? And the way to tell if a person is a truly pathetic needy creature is if they smoke, own a dog, and play acoustic guitar?

The last few pages deal with Sinestro and how he runs his sector. He's a blatant fascist who keeps order through fear. He thinks the people of Korugar love him but they fear his wrath. Sinestro suffers from every little thing he can't control that he must trust others to do for him. He doesn't allow the people of his home planet to engage in space travel. And he desperately wants to close the borders of his sector from other spacefaring aliens. But he knows he can only go so far before the Guardians realize the most orderly sector in the universe isn't orderly in the correct way! People constantly shitting themselves when Sinestro appears probably wind up making more chaos than the order imposed on the system by Sinestro. The Guardians would see this as a flaw to their plan! Entropy wins out over their energy saving order when a Green Lantern uses fear and threats and intimidation to instill order.

But for now, they see Sinestro as the most orderly of their Corps. And because he's doing the best job, he's punished just like every other person who does the best work at a job. He's given another task! This one is to teach Hal Jordan to be less messy. Too bad Hal is currently in jail. I don't see Sinestro being the kind of guy to regard the laws on a planet not totally in his control.

Emerald Dawn II Rating: A. Keith and Gerard really go hard on showing how Hal doesn't trust the system because he thinks he's being victimized by it. I feel like that's a move so that by the end, Hal will appreciate it more, realize that doing his time was what he needed to temper his lust for abusing the ring's power, and to build his compassion and empathy towards the criminals he'll be dealing with in the future. I can't imagine Keith and Gerard were all, "You know who Hal is? A whiny, unlikeable douche! This is totally the hero people want to read about! A white privileged asshole!" Hmm, you know what? I think maybe comic book readers do want to mostly read about white privileged assholes. At least those in Comicsgate. What I mean to say is that they want to read about white privileged assholes after they read about big tittied women in skimpy outfits with perfect, barely-covered asses! Obviously.