New Guardians #23

It would be so much easier to just read these comics without commenting on them. Stupid internet.

If I can just get through this issue and Red Hood and the Outlaws, I'll be able to finish The Trinity War tonight before somebody spoils it for me and tells me everybody dies! Oh wait! DC already spoiled it for me with their advertisements for Villains Month! I'm sure there will be more to it than just "everybody on Earth Prime dies." I'm fairly certain it will involve a Villains Earth which is where Pandora's Box Portal leads. Which is why The Purple People Leader is probably an evil Alfred. Because everybody is a jerk on Earth Asshole.

Last issue ended with Kyle unsure whether or not the Lanterns could stop Relic from destroying the universe. Which means he needs some Hope! So it's time to visit The Blue Lanterns on their new, non-Reach destroyed Homeworld.

Are these the only ones that survived The Reach attack? Shit.

If these three are the only ones that are left, I suppose it makes sense. Not just because The Reach are murderous, near-immortal bastards. But because if a Blue Lantern ever doubts that there is any hope, he just drops dead and the ring abandons him. What a great fucking job! If I were to organize a Blue Lantern Corps, they'd all have Williams Syndrome. Just try to make my army lose hope, bitches! I suppose you could go a number of ways raising an army that has an everlasting abundance of hope. But the one thing you should avoid is a high degree of intelligence. You don't want anybody calculating odds or rationalizing reality or bringing up philosophical quandaries about what is hope and how particularly useful is it actually? At least the Blue Lanterns aren't based on faith (although, really, it's practically semantics when you get down to debating "hope" and "faith") or else all of their battles would end up like this: "Let us pray to overcome The Reach, my fellow Lanterns!" Pray! Pray! Pray! Die!

The Blue Lantern Corps currently consists of a Rag Doll's Penis, an Elephant, and a Giraffe. So the Corps is practically identical to Christopher Robin's unloved stuffed animals. A. A. Milne's editors refused to publish the chapters with those characters because it was just too dark. Instead, they decided to go with the bushel of psychiatric loonies that ended up in the book every child knows and loves. The Glutton. The Depressive. The Megalomaniac. The Obsessive Compulsive. The Paranoid. I'm fairly certain that the story behind the story of Winnie the Pooh was a patient at an asylum named Christopher Robin who was completely delusional and believed that all the other inmates were his stuffed animals. Kanga was probably the nurse.

While the Blue Lanterns meditate, their Lantern Pokemon escapes and flies away. Immediately afterward, Relic arrives in his new battle ship. I hope he kills them all!

Is that an appropriate usage of Hope? Can I be a Blue Lantern now?

But you'd be so much better at your job if you were, Saint Walker!

The Blue Lantern Corps, of course, contains a few more than the menagerie shown at the beginning. They also have a Lizard and a Sentient Turd, a Slug and a Nun, and a fairly sexy albino alien. But since Hope alone is nothing, Saint Walker is really just a lot of bluster and empty threats until Kyle and Carol and the Bohemian Guardians arrive.

Relic has an irrational hatred for Light Users because some being called The Lightsmith and his army of Lightswitches destroyed the universe which Relic came from. Perhaps they've destroyed even more than that one universe because it would make more sense that Relic was called Relic in his last universe if he were a Relic from a universe even further in the past. Perhaps at the end of every universe, he creates a cocoon which allows him to survive into the next universe. Is Relic from Pre-Infinite Crisis? I bet he is! I'm going to go draw him into all of my issues of Crisis on Infinite Earths now because it totally makes sense.

The Bohemian Guardians try to stop him but he just shows them an old newsreel of what happened in his old Universe. The current DC Universe began with a gigantic hand masturbating a gigantic phallus which Krona observed. This caused the original Guardians to create an army of robots to stop all masturbation in the universe. In Relic's universe, a gigantic hand stimulated a huge clitoris which brought everything into being. But in his universe, the Lightswitches weren't created to stop all female masturbation.

There job was to create a multitude of sex toys.

How this wound up destroying his universe has yet to be revealed. But he's definitely got a problem with the creatures of this universe having the capability of once again creating universe destroying sexual artifacts. So he's going to stop them all and save everybody from masturbation. Not because he sees it as wrong as The Guardians of this Universe saw it; he seems to see it as a separation of each from the other. He believes orgasms should be brought on by other beings, weaving an intimate interconnectedness across the Universe. It's something he believes the Bohemian Guardians will understand. I don't think he's wrong about that! His plan also confuses Carol though when she goes to attack him with her Passion Power.

Especially black holes. Holy fuck does Relic love a nice, tight black hole.

It's at this point that I think everybody should just sit down with a nice cup of tea and have a lovely chat. Once Carol realizes he's doing what he's doing out of love, I would expect somebody to say, "Really? Love? Maybe we should figure out what he's trying to do to save our universe." But I suppose if your identity were completely wrapped up in one little universally powerful object, you'd probably be a little too miffed to discuss it rationally when some gigantic oaf came along informing you that it was too dangerous to keep around.

And then Relic steals the Blue Light which is apparently a metaphor for killing hope because Rayner is convinced by The Bohemian Guardians that they can't win this fight. He teleports back to Oa with Saint Walker and Carol Ferris and The Bohemian Guardians while the Blue Light drains away and relic kills the rest of the Blue Lantern Corps. Good riddance!

New Guardians #23 Rating: No change. Well that's one central battery down and however many more to go to go! Larfleeze has already ditched his need for a battery, so I suppose the rest of the Lantern Corps will go the same way. Although the entity that powered the battery left to go join the other lantern entities on their Homeward Bound journey to the Lantern Entity Graveyard. It's the saddest kid's movie ever.

New Guardians #15

Do crossovers ever crossover? Can't we have a Death of the rise of the Hawkman:Rotworld:Wanted Third Army Family moment? It wasn't an accident that I left out H'el on Earth.

My gut instinct was that learning Selfishness should be the easiest lesson for Kyle Rayner to learn. It's easy to want what you want and be led by your desires. After all, Kyle Rayner is an American. He should have this down. But then I realized the guy that is going to teach him how to harness the power of Selfishness is the biggest, most selfish bastard around. He isn't going to want to share. So maybe that's how Kyle will eventually gain the power. He'll realize he simply has to take it and make it his own.

I can't wait to hear the wisdom bombs Larfleeze drops on Kyle Rayner! "Selfishness can't exist without selfishness!" "The heart wants what the heart wants but the hand takes it away and punches the heart in the throat!" "The secret of life, the universe, and everything is mine!" All of his nuggets of wisdom must end with an exclamation point.

Kyle, Carol, and Arkillo are currently descending on Larfleeze's home planet of Okaara. Unbeknownst to them, the Borg Lanterns are not far behind.

Why is Carol telling Kyle not to be cocky immediately as he's going in to learn avarice? I'm pretty sure you have to be an arrogant, cocky bastard to believe everything in the universe is yours!

When they land, Sayd, Larfleeze's pet Guardian, greets them and bitches about how love is such a pain in the ass. This sends Kyle into a memory of two years ago when he first came to Oa and observed the way Ganthet and Sayd treated each other.

Oh Kyle. He didn't mean the misunderstanding was about how he and Sayd feel about each other. He meant the misunderstanding was the "girl" in girlfriend.

As I figured, Larfleeze is less than willing to share his power with Kyle. Carol uses her Blazing Love Chain Power to uncover something that Larfleeze doesn't even know that he wants in the hopes of striking up some kind of trade. Her discovery turns New Guardians into a sappy after-school special in which Larfleeze lost the one thing that ever meant anything to him a billion years ago: his family. Sniff! Sniff! Carol promises him he can find them for him! I guess it just isn't the power of the ring that makes Larfleeze so long-lived. He must come from an immortal race of Goat Gods (the third best kind after Kitten Gods and Raccoon Gods). Larfleeze decides the deal is a good one and begins Kyle's training.

I think I should just stop wasting time reading these comics and just guessing at where the story is going. I'd probably get about 60% right and the 40% I got wrong would be better than the truth.

Larfleeze and Kyle Rayner fight amongst themselves for a bit until their battle is interrupted by the Borg Lanterns. Larfleeze sends his Orange Lantern Corps against them since they can't be assimilated. Probably. And Sayd keeps them at bay with whatever crazy powers Guardians have. I always forget they can do things other than acting self-righteous and judgmental.

The Borg Lanterns grab Carol and begin trying to rip her ring off so they can ungender her. She calls for Kyle to help but then Sayd offers some of those words of wisdom that I expected Larfleeze to bestow.

Eww! How could I have missed this one?! It's such obvious wisdom for avarice! Although my nuggets are still better.

Kyle gains the power of Selfishness and has a bit of a temporary meltdown. But once things are under control, he uses the Indigo Teleport Power and VOOOORPS Larfleeze, Carol, Arkillo, and himself elsewhere. I don't know where because that's the end of the comic book! He leaves Sayd with the Borg Lanterns since they can't assimilate a Guardian of the Universe.

But they can kill Sayd! Sayd dies as the other Guardians of the Universe watch on via satellite television. Ganthet watched Sayd die and the other Guardians are worried. But Ganthet remains unemotional and decides to go take take of Kyle Rayner himself. How many comics in a row has there been a "shoot your own dog" theme now?!

Green Lanterns: New Guardians #15 Rating: +1 Ranking. I still think this is the best of the Green Lantern books. It's been more of a Kyle Rayner book than a New Guardians book for awhile but at least four different colored lanterns are now traveling together. So it's getting back to the whole New Guardians theme.