Red Lanterns #39

A baby?! Now I bet Guy's really pissed off!

I am not a fan of babies. Their incessant crying to have their needs met. Their inability to control their bowel movements. Their smug demeanor as they just sit basking in the glow of endless opportunity not yet wasted and free from the weight of a past full of poor decisions, burned bridges, and failed intimacies. Fuck you, baby. I hope you wind up loving an incompetent dreamer with little ambition who is incapable of getting emotionally close!

Damn it. I just hurt my own feelings. It's also possible that curse fell through a wormhole and attached itself to the Non-Certified Spouse. Ugh. I'm the worst. I have nothing to offer anybody. I should just drive off and hide away in the Badlands living off flashlight corn and mashed potatoes. I can't even get my pop culture references right or apply them appropriately to this situation! Why did my father ever stick his dirty penis in my mother's nasty vagina? I wish I knew a Doc Brown so I could reenact the first half of Back to the Future and then watch pleasantly as I slowly fade out of existence. Except I don't think I could accidentally make my teenaged mother fall in love with me. I'm sure after spending ten minutes with her, she'd push every button I have and I'd wind up screaming at her until I was hauled away by some burly teenagers with duck tails and beaten in an alley.

Stupid baby! See what you've done?! Now I'm a fucking spiraling out of control mess. This is why I hate babies!

Hunh. This baby seems alright.

What does a baby have to be angry about? You need to have some years behind you before you can be truly angry! You need a past. You need a language. You need an awareness of yourself within your environment and amongst other people. All this baby needs is food and somebody to lick its ass clean. I may have been raised by cats. A baby can't be angry. It's impossible. They might be able to feel some of the things that would make an older human angry after ruminating on their feelings in a darkened room with a freshly opened pack of razor blades and plenty of unscarred skin on their left forearm. But they can't be angry about those things! Sure, it'll be hungry and crying and desperate for food. But its brain just can't put the pieces together enough to be mad at the fat asshole that's busy watching Jerry Springer and can't be bothered to feed it yet. Although I wish babies could get angry! That would make people think twice about producing so many of these fucking bundles of joy.

Guy Gardner has been busy pulling a David Banner wandering the country trying to get his head straight and dealing with his anger. Everybody who just corrected me by thinking "That's Bruce Banner, Tess you gigantic fucking idiot" can go shove their heads in the toilet and take a deep breath. Stop thinking you're right all of the time simply because you're working with incomplete information.

I know most people reading this know the whole David/Bruce thing because the internet brings us all closer together by overwhelming us with outdated information about things nobody would fucking care about if they weren't easily accessible in an entertaining way. But I figure I have to have at least one reader out there who immediately assumed I made a mistake and called me an idiot! That paragraph was for that one person. If you drop me a message, I'll go back and edit the paragraph to include your name.

Guy Gardner begins the story at a point where the baby wasn't kicking his ass and he was actually just trying to save it.

Don't worry about saving the baby, Guy. You can have another one just like it in about fourteen months.

Here's a philosophical question that I already know everybody's answer to because you're all soft and weak: what's worse? The death of a baby or the death of a middle aged person? Is the loss of potential worse than the loss of experience? If a monster were heading toward me and a baby, fuck the baby! It should have worked on developing a sense of self-preservation! I wouldn't throw the baby in the monster's way or anything to give me an advantage. But I know the baby isn't going to try to save me so why should I try to save it! The baby doesn't even know enough to understand its mortality! And anyway, it's not like much of a distinct personality is being lost. And it potentially could have been the next Hitler! Everybody would agree to let the Hitler baby get eaten, right? No? Really?! You're all just a bunch of Dick Graysons. I'm a fucking Midnighter, bitches!

That was an insult to you readers and a compliment to myself in my eyes. It may have seemed like the opposite to all the baby lovers infected with baby rabies but I assure you that wasn't the intent.

Guy gets his ass kicked by the monster and blacks out just as the monster picks up the baby. I understand that Larry Q. Walker really liked his first page introduction and, I admit, it was a nice way to pull people into the story. "A baby kicking Guy Gardner's ass?! This I gotta have somebody else read to me!" But it would actually have been nice to read this story without knowing that the baby was behind it. I suppose Larry weighed out the two different ways of telling the story and decided the current incarnation was more effective. It's probable that even without that first page, most people reading it would have seen the baby on the corpse and thought, "The fucking baby did it. What an asshole. Babies are dicks!" But it might have been interesting to read this story about Guy trying to save a baby and failing only to find out the baby was creating the monster.

Because you're feeling that guilty sense of relief that the baby is gone and you won't be saddled with raising it to adulthood?

Guy Gardner learns that the baby feeds on people's anger. The baby is living with the monster and feeding it anger. Or they're one and the same. Or...well, whatever they are, they're going to battle Guy. And this time instead of the monster taking Guy on, the monster enters the baby and the baby does the fighting.

If I had a nickel...!

Guy defeats the baby by sitting it down in front of a television. Ha ha! Take that, baby! Easily distracted by moving images and comforting sounds! Also the images are of its mother. I don't know how that doesn't make the baby angrier. Maybe it gets so mad that the rage entity explodes out of the top of its head and dissipates in the atmosphere. I think that's what happened in my mid to late thirties. I just finally let all of my anger about our past dissipate so that I could look at the relationship between me and my mother differently and just appreciate my mother for all of the things she sacrificed for me and my sister while having to raise us alone. And I matured enough to not give a shit when she tried pushing my buttons. And the funny thing? When I stopped reacting, she stopped pushing. So weird how that works, right? You can be so angry at another person that you can't see the part of the problem that you own. Which, funny enough, is the only part you actually have any control over. I dealt with my part and, lo and behold, that was all that fucking mattered. I still like to write as if I can't stand my mother but our relationship is probably better than it's ever been (discounting the under twelve years. I'm sure she resents that I didn't remain that kid that actually didn't mind being touched). And even though it's not true in the truest sense of true things, I still say I love her when I get off the phone with her because I'm sure it's true in some manner of speaking. And besides, she needs to hear it and it makes her happy. Unless she's thinking that I need to hear it and that it makes me happy? Eww! She better not be thinking that! How embarrassing!

Wait. He's keeping the baby?! Now I'm angry!

Red Lanterns #39 Rating: No change. Guy Gardner is lucky I didn't drop the rank on this book by twenty positions just because he's become friends with a smelly, stupid baby. And why is he walking across America? Because it's romantic? Is it just because he's a fan of Kung-fu? Can he not afford train fare? And now he's dragging a baby on these long walks? All that's missing is Midnighter tagging along asking if it's time to eat the baby's heart.

Oh! Here's my critical review: "You probably liked this comic because you're a dirty rotten baby lover."

Red Lanterns #27

Yes! Fuck that slut's brains out, Ice!

I just finished reading my commentary of Red Lanterns #26 where I speculate who might get Ratchet's Red Ring. Last month, I settled on it probably going to a gerbil. But now that all the advertisements for the Green Lantern/Red Lanterns Double Backed Flip Book Extraordinaire have spoiled it for me, I know it's going to go to Supergirl. Which also explains why Doctor Veritas the Omniologist couldn't stop commenting on how angry Kara was. LeGrouch was trying to drop clues as to the ring's new bearer by saying it will go to a blonde with a nice butt although that just made me think Booster Gold was going to get it. That probably won't happen until the end of this issue though, so I'm getting ahead of myself. I can't wait to see how Guy and Tora's first date in a long time goes. I wonder if Black Hand will be there again?

The Red Lanterns have a bit of downtime now that they've just saved an entire race of enslaved beings. Those beings have come to Ysmault to carve huge statues honoring the Red Lanterns. But they're going to need a new statue soon because Ratchet's ring is out there looking for a new finger (remember! It's going to be Supergirl's finger!). Bleez thinks the new Red Lantern might need a little bit of help, so she organizes a Welcome to the Fucking Club party.

Rankorr is going to be so disappointed with this trip. Maybe if he's lucky, they can stop at Andersen's for some Split Pea Soup.

Rankorr declares he's going to find out "ten secrets of the universe" as he and Bleez head off on their trip. Like where does poetry come from? And why is his head on fire? And how come Bleez is the only Red Lantern whose suit decided to go full g-string? Those are all the secrets of the universe that I can come up with.

Guy decides to take a trip to Earth (where he'll probably run into Bleez and Rankorr!) and he invites Skallox and Zilius Zox along with him. So prepare to be terrified, Earthlings!

I guess in a Teen Plus comic book, you can refer to yourself as a penis. I guess if Catwoman can toss around double-headed dildos, Rankorr calling himself a bell-end is mild in comparison. Not that I have a problem with any of it! I'm just constantly aware of how stodgy and easily offended the American People are. Why should I expect anything more from a culture that has grown-ass people actually refusing to say certain words when having normal discussions about them. You know, when you're discussing the negative connotations of a word like "nigger" or "retard," you don't have to couch them in "n-word" and "r-word." We are adults. We can survive hearing those words. It's how these words might be used that should cause anger or offense, not simply hearing the fucking things.

Guy arrives at Earth and quickly ditches Skallox and Zilius Zox. He does give them directions for a walking tour of the best places to see on Earth. I don't know where Guy would send them. Pyramids? Um. Pyramids? It doesn't really matter though because Zox has his own agenda. There's something he's dying to find out. I think he's going to get Skallox in trouble.

Gardner arrives first in Baltimore, his home, but that must be to throw off Zox and Skallox because he didn't really want them hanging around anyway since his main point in visiting is to see Tora Olafsdotter. Ice.

Come on, Tora! Give in! He's a charmer! I mean, he's not. But I like him and I like you so fuckity fuck already.

Speaking of ice and snow, I had a big winter adventure here in Portland yesterday! My work vehicle was in the shop and I got the call to pick it up at two in the afternoon. Just as a dusting of snow was beginning to cover the streets. So the Non-Certified Spouse took me to pick it up. It took an hour to get there and two hours to get back. Because of the snowstorm and the slow, slow, horrendously slow traffic that it caused. I love the snow but hate traffic. Anyway, the cars are home and parked nicely and today Portland expects more snow, so I'll be heading out in it later. On foot. I have to pick up a copy of Ms. Marvel #1 at the comic shop and find a place to eat where I can look out of a window at the snow. Also this morning, I headed out to get some coffee. I was the first to walk down the driveway this morning and this is what I saw:

Either a Raccoon came by or a Sumatran Rat Monkey is on the loose.

The tracks were right beneath my neighor's kitchen window and he was there making breakfast or something. So he probably heard me squeal in delight as I came upon the raccoon footprints. Here's another shot of more of the raccoon's trail in the backyard.

I couldn't tell what creature had made the prints in the foreground of this picture because the snow was so deep.

Anyway, back to Guy and Tora's first meeting in quite a long time. I like that Ice is not happy about the fucking cold puns. That has got to get old. I, myself, get tired of all the mentions of my fabulous lovemaking whenever I go home for the holidays. Knock it off, cousin! You're embarrassing me!

Meanwhile, Skallox and Zilius are finding their tour of the world boring. They give up just before they're about to check out Las Vegas! Which could be fun. Maybe. Probably not since they know nothing of drinking earth booze and gambling and all you can eat buffets. And they probably wouldn't be allowed in any casinos, so what would they do there? Neon Sign Graveyard? Anyway, it doesn't matter since they're eventually approached by Shadow Thief. She's not very big on aliens on her planet, so this might wind up in that fight Zilius was looking forward to.

Best moment of Red Lanterns so far? Unless Dex-Starr and Midnighter's battle took place in this comic instead of Stormwatch. Then this is the second best moment.

For some reason, the question enrages Shadow Thief. Perhaps in Israel, it's bad form to mention testicles. Especially when the creature mentioning them looks like a gigantic one with lots of teeth. So the battle begins because Shadow Thief threw the first punch and Guy's only rule was that they couldn't throw the first punch. You know, the rule that Supergirl completely fucking ignores!

Guy has to go deal with Skallox and Zox's fuck up, but he invites Ice along to watch and see how he's changed. He will solve a problem without punching it in the face! He will use words! And good words! Not bad words! He will show Gus Tora that words can be used for good! Good words for good! Not bad words for bad!

Meanwhile in space, Ratchet's ring has not yet found Supergirl's fantastic bum. Instead, it found a fish thing. And that fish thing was found by some other guys you might recognize.

Whoops!

Red Lanterns #27 Rating: +2 Ranking. Some great moments in this issue. Charles Soule is doing a good job with pacing this comic. I like the beats. I like the interactions. I likey like like. Maybe you likey like like too?

Red Lanterns #26

If the Red Lanterns were drawn to irrational anger wherever it occurs in the universe, they'd spend all of their time at fast food drive-thrus.

Do Red Lanterns need to recharge their rings if they don't make light constructs? And if they don't make light constructs, does that mean they're not tapping the emotional spectrum? If that's the case then they're the only Lantern Corps that is fit to serve as Guardians of the Universe (if you buy into Relic's hypothesis and if they give up trying to replicate Rankorr's abilities). I suppose their rings work somewhat differently and tap straight into the emotional spectrum, pumping Red Light into the bodies of the Red Lanterns on a continual basis. Which would probably make them the worst wasters of emotional spectrum energy! Perhaps energy from the emotional spectrum is simply used up whenever anybody has strong emotions of any kind. Which would make Hal Jordan the worst waster of emotional energy as he willfully disregards the right, just, and non-selfish path to be taken in every single circumstance in his life.

That has nothing to do with this comic book because what the fuck do the Red Lanterns care about wasting emotional energy? And anyways, Peak Emotion is a myth at best and a huge con job at worst, perpetrated by arrogant, know-it-all scientists that are obviously making up everything just to get their hands on government grant money. If we're so low on emotional energy, how come I got so mad at my neighbor's kid yesterday that I stole his soccer ball, drew his face on it with a permanent marker, and fucked it straight in the eye? If we were running out of emotional energy, I probably would have just rolled my eyes and kept watching Judge Judy. Fucking scientists.

It is telling, though, that the people who blame scientists for being greedy, selfish narcissists are themselves greedy, selfish narcissists. People tend to live in a world where they automatically assume that everybody ultimately reacts the same way as they do and have the same needs and desires as they have. That's why I tend to believe that everybody hates Scott Lobdell, that they're all gorgeous geniuses, and that they all frequently engage in frank discussions about masturbation. The Non-Certified Spouse says that I give people the benefit of the doubt way too often. That's because I'm projecting my own superior being onto everyone I meet! Whenever I greet somebody, I say, "So, you must be an amazing lover." Then I glance down to see how strong their forearms look.

No wonder I always fall behind on my comic book reading. Why can't I stay on topic?

So, as you can see by the cover, The Red Lanterns had been captured by some jerk named Gensui. Except the cover shows Zilius Zox also captured (if you squint just right, you'll see him right behind Bleez!) and he isn't at all captured! He's upgrading the Red Lantern's ship with some super special upgrade that I bet is some kind of remote control doodad so that the ship can fly in to rescue them right before the firing squad kills them!

The Red Lanterns are captured in a Chill Field which gives Gensui a moment to explain to them the tricks of his trade.

If it was the fancy mustaches, 85% of the population in Portland would be dictators.

I have now taken some night-time sleepy time cough medicine so I hope I can make it through the entire issue before nodding off.

Zilius Zox skedaddles in Pirate Barg's ship, probably to go off and do it to his horse. But Gensui decides to go Full Empire on Zilius Zox's ass and demonstrate his Cosmic Death Weapon on Zox and Barg's ship. Barg is not very happy about this turn of events. But what can he do? He isn't going to betray his best friend just for some ship, right? He's no leader of a cloud mining colony that has gambling debts he needs to pay off! He'll probably just sit back and accept that he's Gensui's little bitch.

Gensui blasts Zilius Zox's teeny, tiny pub-shaped ship but not before Zox fists it with his ring hand. I bet that will get it moving!

Meanwhile on Goswam, Atrocitus fucks a giant in the ear.

After supposedly killing Zilus Zox, Gensui gives the command to kill the rest of the Red Lanterns. Except for Ratchet, they all take death in stride. Ratchet's ring seems to be wanting to abandon him, probably because he's been having kind and altruistic thoughts. Now it's going to leave him for sure because he's sacrificed himself to save the rest of the Red Lanterns as he blocks all the gunfire with his tentacles and his face. And that's when Zilius Zox returns with his fist up the ass of a star ship, blasting away at Gensui's army and saving the day! After Ratchet saved the day, of course. But Ratchet's Day Save didn't fully take because the guards still had more ammunition in their gun and Ratchet only has so much surface area with which to block bullets.

If I were writing this comic book, the ship would eventually gain Artificial Intelligence and it would have a huge crush on Zilius Zox.

Zox destroys the weapon that was producing the Happy Go Lucky Field around the Red Lanterns so that they can return to flipping the fuck out. Pirate Barg runs away because he probably has some secret means to reboard his ship so that he can cause trouble later. And Bleez kills Gensui because he's a weak-willed jerko that would rather not kill all the slaves on the planet and die quickly than kill them all and be tortured by the Red Lanterns for as long as their attention span holds out.

Speaking of attention spans which may or may not have anything to do with the next bit (depending on how you perceive shit), whatever happened to the female Czarnian Red Lantern? She just stopped being drawn in the background and then all the Red Lanterns died from Poisoned Red Energy and/or Relic and/or The Insatiables or whatever the fuck the creatures living under Ysmault's surface were called. How the fuck am I supposed to remember fucked up on cough medicine? Not that I'd remember anyway.

Ratchet dies from his wounds and he gives a really heart-felt and touching speech which I considered scanning but he speaks it in a much smaller font than the rest of the comic book and he makes sure to place his speech bubbles as far apart as he can in a panel that stretches the entire length of a page. That means even if I scan it, it would probably be really hard to read. So I'll just summarize what he said here:

"Never gonna give you up! Never gonna let you down! Never gonna run around and desert you! Never gonna make you cry! Never gonna say goodbye! Never gonna tell a lie and hurt..KKKKTT!"

That "KKKKTT" noise at the end was the death rattle sound effect of a brainy blob of tentacles. So sad.

Back on Goswam, Atrocitus comes inside the giant's head and the giant dies.

Red Lanterns #26 Rating: +1 Ranking. I can't wait to see who Ratchet's ring chooses as the new Red Lantern! I bet it'll be some super villain from Earth because that would be exciting and the Red Lanterns could use more people from Earth, right? Maybe it'll choose a puppy! No, puppies don't have rage. Perhaps a Gerbil?

Red Lanterns #23

Come on! I need my Dex-Starr/Midnighter rematch already! Give the cat another chance!

Atrocitus has fully recovered by the time this issue begins because a cat is the best kind of friend you can have. If you collapse with a dog around, the dog will just go, "Throw the ball! Throw the ball! Throw the ball!" And then when you don't throw the ball, the dog will go find somebody else to throw the ball and love that person just as much. Oh, I know you dog lovers are denying the fuck out of that. But it's true! Dogs love everybody! But if you collapse with a cat around, well now you're in for a treat. Actually, the cat is in for a treat because it will eat your face.

But still! Cats are so much better! Sure, they're better in ways that if you don't like cats, you'd see their attributes as flaws. Like my cat Judas, just a few days ago, began jumping up on my printer to kick back while I was napping. Jumping up on my printer makes a lot of noise because the cat's weight also sets off the printer and it starts to make all those printer pre-print noises they make. I hate to get all technical on my readers, but that's what happens. So he wakes me up from my nap and I say, "No! Get down from there!" I get up, gently push him on to the desk where he's allowed to be, and try to go back to sleep. Well, he gets back on two or three more times and I get up to push him off so that he'll learn he's not allowed to go up there.

At least that's what dog people would think an animal has learned. You say no. You show them the correct behaviour. Repeat. Lesson learned. Not for a cat. All Judas has learned is now he knows how to wake up the monkey and get it out of bed when he's hungry. "A-ha! Look at how fast he gets up when I get up on this contraption!" And he files it away for later use when he needs food. Or water. Or a clean litter box. Or some chin scratches. Or if he's feeling too lazy to hop on the bed and see if I'm ready to eat yet, he can now hop on the printer and see if I move.

But because cats are so standoffish and solitary, there's nothing like having one for a best friend. Some cats are brought into homes and the cat just never connects to anybody. He's more like an unemployed roommate or a foreign exchange student. I don't know that a dog has ever moved into a house with a person and not instantly fallen in love with whatever face it saw day after day. It's just happy to be part of the pack and getting to bond. Although there are so many different types of dogs and dog personalities due to human tinkering, any generality said about one type of dog is bound to have nothing in common with other dogs. But they do generally like to bond and chase sticks while cats like to lick their assholes.

The preceding was supposed to somehow explain why Dex-Starr was able to make an artificial heart for Atrocitus to keep Atrocitus alive whereas G'nort would have completely fucked it all up. But I don't think I made my point at all.

In fact, if this scene were realistic, Dex-Starr would be chowing the fuck down right now.

Atrocitus considers taking Dex-Starr's ring but only for a second and only because he really craves the power that will enable him to destroy Guy Gardner. Obviously he would give up many years of his life to keep his buddy Dex-Starr by his side for many, many more. I would happily give up years of my life in exchange for keeping my cat with me for as long as possible. Do they have Life Force Transfusions yet? I bet they have them from person to person but the religious right probably thinks it goes against God to transfer Life Force to animals.

Atrocitus and Dex-Starr travel across space looking for one of the Red Rings that Atrocitus sent out to build up the Red Lantern Army. And Dex-Starr must have created an artificial voice box for himself since he now has some rudimentary speech. Man, I'm glad my cat can't speak. "FEED ME! FEED ME! FEED ME! FEED ME! HAVE YOU FED ME? FEED ME!"

Back on Ysmault, Zilius Zox makes a penis joke.

"How many penises does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Depends on how many vaginas are in there!" I know, I know. That joke is awfully sexist and doesn't take into account the sexual identity of the penises in the joke at all! Well I assure you that every penis in that joke was a heterosexual penis. Or else the answer would have been, "Depends on how many assholes are in there!"

As Guy watches Zilius fix up the ship, he thinks about what the Red Ring is doing to him and how it's already enabled him to kill the Pirate Leader of the ship they stole. He's losing his humanity! And his Green Ring only has 0.003*% charge left on it. If he doesn't charge it soon, he'll become a rage-fueled killing machine and his only hope of ever gaining his humanity back is if Batman can punch him square in the nose. Guy calls up Hal to pull the plug on this entire mission before he becomes a total monster with no Hope at all. And since the only Hope left is Saint Walker, he might be in a bit of trouble.

Back on Styge Prime where Dex-Starr and Atrocitus have tracked some Red Energy, they discover Skallox's old boss has a secret.

Think up your own fucking Red Bull joke.

I suppose The Butcher is the Red Lantern Mascot that is supposed to live inside the Power Battery on Ysmault? It just wants to get away so it can go die in peace! Atrocitus approaches it and sticks his hand into its face and subsumes its power. Or something. Whatever happens, Atrocitus becomes vaguely bull-shaped in a Satyr-like way and immensely powerful. I suppose he's ingested or become possessed by The Butcher but having no previous knowledge of the Lantern Corps Mascots or the things they can do, I'm just not sure. Oh! Unless it's like how Hal Jordan became Parallax and Kyle Rayner became Ion! Well now Atrocitus has become The Butcher! Although it really can't last for very long since all the mascots are on their last legs and trying desperately to return to the Lantern Corps Graveyard for a forever nap.

Anyway, now Atrocitus is ready to go smash Guy Gardner's stupid face in.

I probably shouldn't use stupid so much. It's probably an ablest word that intelligent people use to perpetuate a kind of intellectual warfare amongst those who can think rationally and those that find Wheel of Fortune the height of brainteasers.

Back on Ysmault, Guy Gardner finds out from Hal Jordan via his Ring's Skype function that the Blue Lanterns have been destroyed and Guy Gardner is in big trouble. And since Bleez wasn't in this issue at all, it's no surprise when she turns up having heard Guy speaking with Hal. Now he's going to have to promise to give her his blood so she can make constructs or else she'll tell everybody else that he's a Green Lantern plant! Or maybe she'll just try to kill him. Except she's too smart for that; how could she kill the man who "killed" Atrocitus, right? She'll probably just seduce him. I think they'd make a great couple.

Red Lanterns #23 Rating: No change. I enjoyed this issue but nowhere near as much as last issue. I also read it quickly (as well as the previous five or so comics!) because I just wanted to catch up and read Forever Evil. Which is next on my stack! Yay!

New Guardians #18

Carol Ferris, this is your lucky day! A life without Hal Jordan!

Go ahead, Volthoom! Remove Hal Jordan from Carol Ferris's life! You'll be doing her a favor! He's never given her anything but a broken heart and a bladder infection! You were a strong, independent woman running your own company and then he came along to fill you with false hopes of romantic nights and a happy family. And he got you tangled up in all of this cosmic bullshit. Good riddance!

Although the fact that you're about to get raped by Volthoom probably makes a life with pathetic Hal Jordan seem palatable. Sorry.

In Volthoom's version of reality, Carol Ferris's father has killed himself and his company has been taken over by Leviathan Defense Systems. On the plus side, she's a pilot and she gets to yell at and criticize Hal Jordan all day!

Hey DC! Give this artist, Hendry Prasetyo, more work on New 52 titles!

Volthoom believes that if Carol was aware of her "real" life, she'd choose this one instead. But isn't that just like a control freak to think they know better than you? I mean, I did it in a previous paragraph! But even if Volthoom or I can point out dozens of reasons why her life would be better without Hal Jordan, she'd never choose to live differently. Heroes never regret anything because their egos won't allow them to believe they've ever made a mistake. Look at John Stewart over in Green Lantern Corps rationalizing all of the murders he's committed! And Superman not wanting Ms. Nyxly to use her wish to alter his life to the way it originally was before Vyndktvx screwed it up. Which is a really interesting thought because Superman knows his life was supposed to be another way and yet he chooses to keep the fucked up version of his life. Now I know Superman made that sacrifice to help save other lives, so that's what makes him a hero. But even if he didn't have a promise to keep to save Noah and his family, I have a feeling he couldn't choose to change things back if he wanted to. There's a certain amount of self-preservation in the choice. Changing things means killing the person that chooses to have things changed. That person ceases to exist. In essence, once you choose to have a moment in the past changed, you are killing yourself to let some other person (even if it is another version of you) live. I think I'm saying Superman's choice is less noble and more cowardly than it would appear.

After feeding on Carol's emotions and letting her go back to her normal life since Volthoom is still powerless to change everything completely, Volthoom heads off to mess with Larfleeze. Volthoom gives Larfleeze his greatest wish and places him back with his family. The first thing Larfleeze does is steal his son's birthday present. I have a feeling a few billion years of being a greedy son of a bitch is hard to filter out of a person's essence.

Hey! I used "palatable" earlier! We're word twinsies, Volthoom!

Volthoom also torments Saint Walker. Then he torments Carol some more. Then he changes some other things in Larfleeze's life around the time of Green Lantern: Agent Orange. Woah woah woah. Wait a second. This Volthoom IS all-powerful!

He just changed reality in such a way that editorial was allowed to reference a Preboot Trade Paperback!

Well now. This is an interesting turn of events. While DC has allowed many, many story elements to remain from Preboot History to New 52 History, I believe this is the first time that editorial has been allowed to reference a Preboot Comic Book. Is this a mistake on editor Wil Moss's part? Or is this a step to try to sell Preboot books to new fans that jumped on board with The New 52? Is DC going to start labeling Preboot Trade Paperbacks as "New 52 Continuity Friendly"?

Although forgetting about the weird mention of a Preboot Trade, let me take a moment to reread that final Narration Box a dozen more times. "...allowing him the focus to slay the hated Guardians." So good! Can this reality be permanently instituted? I'm pretty sure with the Guardians killed, 75% of DC Comic Books are never written. Or they just have heroes sitting around playing board games because the universe is a much safer place.

Volthoom finally gives up trying to make Larfleeze feel more than avarice because Larfleeze is too fucking awesome. That seemed like a perfectly reasonable reason when it was still inside my head.

Meanwhile Carol Ferris sees through Volthoom's ruse because she's too fucking awesome. I never really thought she was but since I used the same reasoning for Larfleeze, I figured I should use the same reasoning for Carol. But then I've never read any stories with her as a Star Sapphire. Maybe I owe Carol Ferris another look.

Obviously Larfleeze is still much cooler.

In this fake reality, Carol flies off to find Kyle Rayner. I'm not sure how that works since Volthoom is only fucking with her mind. He lacks the power to make this a persistent world. Perhaps she simply flies off in the "real" world to find Rayner and compare notes. In the meantime, Volthoom needs to go suck out Atrocitus's rage (unless he goes after Rankorr or Bleez or someone).

New Guardians #18 Rating: No change. I think mentioning a Preboot Trade Paperback may have been a huge mistake on DC's part. The facade has cracked. They've now permanently linked not just shared history between the Preboot and the Reboot but the physical comics themselves. The boundary between the old universe and the new universe has just been blurred even more. Pretty soon it won't even matter and everything will become more confusing than being The Silver Scarab after Crisis on Infinite Earths.