Red Lanterns #40

Stop being so dramatic, Guy, and just change your stinky baby.

Last issue, Guy Gardner defeated a baby. He then decided to make the baby his sidekick. Now he and the angriest baby in the world are hitchhiking across America in a piss poor mood.

Oh! One of my relatives posted a picture of my father's parents and two of my cousins from an Easter in the mid-70s! I thought I'd post it here without permission because obviously one of my grandparents had dangerous sex and now It is Following them! It must have been my grandfather because he probably died about six or seven years after this photo was taken. My grandmother lived until a few years ago! I think she only had sex five times in her life.

The It in the white hat kind of looks like she's making a Throw Momma From the Train face. You know. Anne Ramsey, I think her name was? I could look it up but I'm busy laughing at her scowl! "Fucking loving families! How dare they flaunt their joy! I hate Easter!"

My father's parents' names were Doil and Eupha. Seriously.

This issue begins with Guy Gardner and his sidekick, Baby Rabies, searching a dark warehouse and being ambushed by slavering angry dudes. It took a Green Lantern amount of will to not follow "slavering" with "Grues."

Bullshit! You can introduce new aspects to characters but suddenly making Guy Gardner color blind is 99.9% unbelievable.

I don't know a lot about being colorblind but I do know there are different kinds. But aren't they all usually some type of "can't tell the difference between two colors" kind of colorblind? Is there a kind of colorblindness where the colors are all nearly the same but different enough that a person can "barely tell them apart"?

Hey, have you seen that thing that everybody is constantly reblogging about those glasses that let colorblind people see colors they've never seen before? I want a pair of glasses that make me colorblind so I can know what it's like to be colorblind! Is being colorblind like seeing the world as if you were viewing everything on an old Apple IIe color monitor? Where everything is just blue, green, purple, or orange?

Guy Gardner has decided it's time to get all philosophical because Landry Q. Walker doesn't want to be known as one of them stupid comic book writers what gots no education or nothin'! Guy is gonna ponder all the shit that changes in a person when they put on a ring! You may think you're angry without a ring and then you're the same angry person with a red ring but Guy is here to say that's wrong! The ring changes you! I mean, sure, it gives you hot lava breath and makes you an incoherent asshole! But it changes you in other ways that people don't often acknowledge. I don't know what those ways are yet because Guy Gardner doesn't elaborate.

Well he stole a baby! Did he tell you about the baby he stole? You're holding it right now!

What Guy has been up to is killing all of the people that Atrocitus filled with rage. Although he probably tries to think of it less as killing them and more as freeing them. Although he's not buying that for a second which is why Guy is so exhausted. He might also have accidentally killed a few people who weren't possessed by Atrocitus's red rage but were just pissed off over being cut off in traffic or because somebody was talking on their cell phone in a movie theater.

Guy also might just be absorbing the rage from the people that are killing other people and none of the deaths have actually been Guy's fault. I mean, he didn't kill the baby, right? And if he had to kill just one human, I think he'd take his own life at this point. He's just trying to clean up what he sees as his mess, and I'm certain he doesn't want to permanently harm anybody.

If she thinks Guy is being pretentious, I hope she never runs into Oliver Queen. He's saving his city, you know! Because everybody in his city? They're too stupid to save themselves. Bunch of idiots up there in Seattle. I should know! Some of them are my friends.

Guy sends his sister (and his sidekick) to an emergency life pod orbiting the Earth where she'll be safe while he battles all of humanity's rage. I guess things are going to get a little messy down on Earth while this happens? Although it can't get too messy. This series only has seven pages left!

Guy's sister manages to figure out the intercom and tells Guy that he's a hero and that he always sees the best in everybody and that he's colorblind but she loves him anyway. Then Guy is all, "You know, Simon tried to tell me that shit too but I didn't buy it. But now I buy it because you're my sister and I love you and junk! I am a hero!" Then he saves the world by turning anger into hope! Just like Gandhi!

Jesus! Have some sensitivity! Guy has no idea those lights were all different colors!

Red Lanterns #40 Rating: -2 Ranking. I just didn't like the whole color blind revelation. I guess some color blind readers out there are coming in their pants about finally having some representation but it made no Goddamned sense. Unless he's always been colorblind! How should I know? I was away from comics for years! And I barely remember the comics I read before that. But the way Guy reveals it, it sounds like something Walker just made up for this story. Anyway, it was so stupid that now I hate Guy Gardner. Thanks a lot, Landry Q. Walker! Jerko!

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 #38

Goodbye Charles Soule! We loved you! And by "we" I mean "me" but I'm blushing and embarrassed and covering my face and kicking my foot awkwardly and trying not to stare too hard as you zoom around the roller rink.

Landry Q. Walker is the new writer. He's twenty-five days older than I am which is good because I hate to see people younger than me being all successful and shit. He's also from my neck of the woods having, apparently, gone to De Anza High School which I didn't go to but, like I said, it's in my hometown neck of the woods. And by "woods" I guess I just mean a fairly large chunk of area around the Bay Area. He's from the north bay further on in to central California toward Sacramento while I grew up down in the south bay just outside San Jose. Neither of the places we actually grew up would normally be referred to as being anywhere near a bay but fuck you. Here's another boring sentence full of shit you don't care about just in case you're into that kind of stuff. Here's one more (but shorter!).

This issue begins with Guy Gardner back on Earth to take care of some of the devastation caused by Atrocitus when he gathered up an army of angry Earthlings to battle the Red Lanterns. Apparently all the naive, happy-go-lucky bullshit spouted by Simon Baz on New Genesis was just baby's tears off a Gardner's back. It's hard to tell a guy wearing a ring that amplifies your anger that he's a hero. I mean, it's easy to tell him! It's hard to make him believe you. Maybe Guy was believing it a little bit there for a second. Maybe his heart was beginning to grow three sizes that day. But then Charles Soule gave up on him and went to write stupid dumb Marvel characters that are probably super stupid and dumb because if I didn't convince myself of that, I'd wind up spending $3.99 or more for their comic books. Who wants to do that? Why are comic books so expensive?! I'm already buying Moon Knight and Inhumans and Ms. Marvel! What more does Marvel want from me? I have boxes and boxes of their comics from around the year 2000! Do I have to keep proving to them that I don't hate them? Why does Marvel have such low self-esteem?! Okay, fine! I'm sorry I called your characters stupid and dumb! They're good characters if you're into that sort of thing. And by "that sort of thing," I mean paying $3.99 or more per comic book.

Guy has been using his ring to read the minds of raging citizens of Calvin City. They're all sharing the same angry thoughts and Guy is looking for the source of the rage which spreads easily from one citizen to another. Oh! I bet it's some form of social media!

The anger might be coming from the FEMA Deathcamps! So, yeah, the rage started on Facebook from your old high school friends that believe in Project Cloverleaf, Obamacare Death Panels, and everything David Icke has ever written about.

The dead people are still angry and they're infecting other people that aren't dead or something. It's very American Scream-like from the early days of Peter Milligan's Shade the Changing Man. In those early issues, the American Scream would infect one person and amplify their insanity, thus changing the reality around them. In some cases, it was localized to a building or small area. And in one case, it was as extreme as what Guy seems to be dealing with here. In that case, San Francisco had to be wiped off the map by the military.

People begin attacking Guy and he thinks about killing them because he thinks they're already dead but then he also thinks that killing them won't solve the problem. Because they're already dead? Anyway, Guy sure is doing a lot of thinking! Who does he think he is? The World's Greatest Detective? Pshaw! Hardly!

Guy comes to the conclusion that he's the problem and the solution! I hope Supergirl saves him!

The people beating up Guy Gardner burn up from their anger leaving Guy alone to feel angrier and saddier and self-pitier than ever before! Now I'm angry!

Red Lanterns #38 Rating: No change. I want to give this a minus one ranking because I don't want Guy to be this sad and angry but how can I? The story is doing what I'm constantly asking comic book stories to do: acknowledging the consequences of the way the heroes go about their business. Guy may not have been the direct cause of these people's death and suffering but he knows that this never would have happened if he hadn't gone to Ysmault in the first place and humiliated Atrocitus. And as a hero, he can't help but feel that this is all on him. And it is, I guess. These people are the casualties in his war to make the universe a better place. At least Guy is fucking acknowledging the collateral damage caused by his attempt to do good. That's more than a lot of other heroes ever do (*cough* Batman *cough*).

Red Lanterns #37

Three issues of Godhead and a Tie-In in my immediate comic book reading future. *sob*

Time for Guy Gardner and Simon Baz to save the universe! Don't let that smarmy Hal Jordan manage it! Or that arrogant Sinestro! Or that weak-willed weaselly Kyle Rayner!

Here is a short list of things that have not been touched on since Godhead began but probably should have caused waves somewhere:

1. Larfleeze lost his stuff.
2. Mogo lost the protection of his Lantern Ring and is now adrift in space, far from any warming sun because the Lanterns don't even care enough to share one of their rings with him.
3. What does Darkseid think about Highfather gearing up for war? Is he just too busy razing Earths, collecting Supermen, and fending off Bat-invasions?
4. Guy ditched Ice in Dubai to go beat shit up.

That last one is probably the most important. Although it's possible Ice left on her own when she realized Guy was more interested in the dictator across the sea than in her bikini.

Now on New Genesis, it's about time Malhedron made up with Guy and Simon so they can put an end to Highfather's bullshit.

Right on time. Well, actually a little late since Guy and Simon had to mostly break out of the Miracle Prison all by themselves.

Guy and Simon learn from Malhedron where the stolen rings are being kept. Guy's interest is mostly in the Blue Ring. Probably because it boosts the Green Lantern's power. At normal power, they've had no luck defeating any of the New Gods. But with a Blue Ring backing them, they might have a chance. And Guy will probably be the person that will have to wear the Blue Ring because Saint Walker is being a big baby, pouting about the death of all of his friends and worried about the Spectrum Light destroying the universe.

After Malhedron leads Guy and Simon to the rings, he skins out for the territories. Simon Baz goes full frontal assault on Hyalt because he doesn't want Guy Gardner trying to sacrifice his life in this fight. So Guy heads on in and discovers the rings. He slips on an extra Red Ring and throws the fabled Double Red Punch of Death on Hyalt's robot sentry.

Guy should have put all the rings on! If Kyle can handle it, he can too! And then he'd be unstoppable!

I guess two Red Rings increases a person's vomit levels.

The Star Sapphire Ring flies off on its own to create a new Lantern. Maybe it's John's Violet Ring and it wants him back. After Simon gives Guy a pep talk about how awesome Guy Gardner is, Guy decides that maybe the world wouldn't be better off without him. It's no It's A Wonderful Life. Unless it is? I've never seen it so maybe this is exactly like that movie? Was Jimmy Stewart taught the lesson that his life meant something by a Muslim?

Finally the Bohemian Guardians meet up with Kyle, Stewart, Ferris, and Walker who weren't killed by Highfather like every reader reading New Guardians #37 thought had actually happened. They were just teleported out of Highfather's range of smell. The Bohemian Guardians let them know that they have a plan to end this war but they can't tell them about it until Sinestro #8. So I guess that's next!

Red Lanterns #37 Rating: No change. Ugh! Get Guy out of this Godhead bullshit before his time is up! Not many issues left of Red Lanterns now. And then where will Guy wind up? Since New Guardians and Green Lantern Corps are also ending, I bet a new series begins where the Lanterns create some kind of universal crew that responds to emergencies. It will be composed of Lanterns of all different Spectrums because every emergency in space will need a different response team. Or maybe DC has decided it's time to calm down with all of this Lantern shit. Everybody is burnt out on cosmic crises!

Red Lanterns #36

Guy Gardner should be the next DC character to get a television show.

This would be my pitch for a Guy Gardner television show. Each episode would be two interweaving stories of equal length. One would be about Guy Gardner as a preteen kid growing up in Boston living with his drunk cop father that loves him less than the other kids. The theme of that story will tie in to the theme of the story of Guy Gardner as an adult as he deals with becoming a Green Lantern. The adult Guy Gardner will come off as a complete dick so that if you only had access to the adult part of the story, you couldn't find any reason to like him at all. But the childhood story would reveal why he's acting so angry or cocky or bitter in the face of the current episodic problem he's dealing with as an adult. I think it would be a tough show to write because I'd really want Guy as an adult to be completely unlikable on his own yet his younger self would be irresistibly charming and innocent as he tries to navigate his harsh world. The audience couldn't help but root for his younger self which would, unless they're total monsters, lead them to eventually feel sympathy towards, and maybe even learn to understand and actually like, adult Guy Gardner. And I don't mean some trite shit like showing Guy abused and then we have to realize Guy is abusive because of his childhood trauma. I mean shit like young Guy sees his father constantly take it in the ass (figuratively) by some officious jerks in the department driving his father to drink too much and run over the family dog. So then adult Guy meets up with an officious, bureaucratic alien race which drives him to drink every time he has to deal with them and then purposefully running speeding through one of the alien races dog parks and squashing a bunch of their furry friends. See? You'd hate that Guy! But maybe you'd understand him a little bit through the childhood story!

Guy Gardner has always been one of those characters I've always felt particularly close to. I love that he's got the heart of a true hero and realizes that the bottom line when saving the day isn't that you're well liked. He's got a lot of rough edges that keep people from being close to him and, tragically or not, he seems to be most comfortable within those rough edges. Why else would he be growing out that mustache?

I've been unconsciously wanting a buddy comic with these two guys. Probably! It was unconscious so I can't be totally sure of it.

Simon Baz, peacemaker, and Guy Gardner, Bar Room Brawl Starter, have a short discussion about what to do next. Guy feels like he should die battling gods and Simon Baz thinks Guy should not die battling people that just think they're gods but cannot compare to Allah, true light of mercy and redemption. They'll probably compromise and either not die battling gods, or die battling people that think they're gods.

Over on New Genesis, Malhedron brings up a good point about the cosmic cold war between New Genesis and Apokolips.

Somebody get Highfather a copy of Wargames pronto!

Simon and Guy (they should open a business together. "Simon and Guy's Bagels." Or, um, something) visit Cyborg because Cyborg has the technology to transport them to New Genesis. But Cyborg, being young, is still holding a grudge against Simon Baz for trying to save the world by beating up the Justice League when Superman and Wonder Woman were first starting to get freaky. But he doesn't even know Guy!

How can you not like Guy's response to this?! I hate people that hate Guy Gardner! Hate is a strong word but I think it's called for in this instance.

Hal is a douche, Vic. Don't trust that idiot! Trust Simon and Guy! They're the lanterns you're going to have to deal with on a semi-regular basis from now on. Anyway, when was the last time Hal was around to help the Justice League? That asshole completely abandoned you guys!

Victor wants no part in sending Simon and Guy to New Genesis via his BOOM Tube technology. I think maybe they need to make a call to Alfred Pennyworth! Is this issue going to end with Victor waking up on the floor woozy from the cyber-drugs and thinking, "Not again!"

Simon Baz threatens to shut down STAR Labs and put Vic's dad out on the street. And instead of Vic saying, "Good! Fuck that asshole!" he says, "*grumble mumble rumble* Fine."

Simon and Guy (I can't not type that without picturing them flying down the streets of San Francisco in a gold Chevy Nova) don't trust the Justice League to take care of the Earth while they're gone, so they bring in some outside Lantern help.

Someday, B'dg is going to snap, gather up all the Green Lanterns in his cheeks, and look cute as all hell!

Simon and Guy request that Cyborg BOOM Tube them somewhere out of the way on New Genesis. I think that's the kind of request you make to people that you haven't just threatened. So I don't think it's a mistake or a miscalculation or an accident on Victor's part that he BOOM Tubes Simon and Guy directly on top of Malhedron and Dia. The fact that Mal and Dia were currently naked and about to BOOM Tube their own selves is just a happy coincidence.

The good thing, which Simon and Guy don't realize at the time, is that Malhedron, originally from Apokolips, is beginning to question Highfather's need to defeat Darkseid at the cost of everything else in the universe. I still think a copy of Wargames would help him understand what he's doing is wrong.

In the moment (because Malhedron needs time to recognize allies!), Mal and Dia try to kill Simon and Guy. But Highfather stops them. I guess Highfather likes to watch Mal and Dia fuck so he was alerted to the Lantern invasion as soon as it happened. He orders Mal to put Simon and Guy in a Miracle Prison where they shall be interrogated by Malhedron. That's when he'll realize these guys are his allies!

Red Lanterns #36 Rating: This is one of my favorite comics but it only became so after Charles Soule began writing it. Or after Guy Gardner joined. It's hard to separate the two, really! This comic book had such a hard time finding its voice that I'm nervous about what's going to happen to it once Soule leaves DC for good to go be a stupid dumb dumb head over at Marvel. I like to embrace my bitter, wounded, oft betrayed inner child!

Red Lanterns #35

Hepburn's Guy Gardner has become my favorite version of Guy Gardner after just two covers (this one and the Futures End cover).

Futures End: Red Lanterns #1 was possibly the best Futures End book I read. I still have eight or nine more to go but since none of them are written by Charles Soule, I'll assume none of them will be as good as Red Lanterns was. It's crazy to think that Charles Soule has only recently entered the ring at the Big Two Comic Book companies and he shot right to the top of DC's best writers. I think that says a lot about DC's hiring policy. How about doing whatever you can to attract great writers so that your beloved characters stay interesting and, well, beloved? I understand it must be attractive to hire somebody like Scott Lobdell whom you don't have to worry about because he always makes his deadlines. But if that's all he has going for him (and, believe me, that's all he has going for him), I'm fairly certain you can find dozens of people that can make deadlines who also write better than Lobdell.

But you know what? I'm not in the comic book business! I'll stop backseat quarterbacking your business decisions and just fume silently behind the scenes as you continue to write checks to Ann Nocenti and Scott Lobdell instead of seeking out talented writers. Who am I, anyway? Just a venomous little troll whose opinions don't matter because I put them on the internet for free, right? I mean, according to just about every comic book writer who decides to throw a tantrum by putting dialogue in their comics lambasting critics and pointing out how lazy and worthless critics are whenever their work is criticized. So I'll just climb back into my hole and continue to live my worthless life that's obviously worthless because I haven't pursued a life that is identical to the life you pursued therefore indicating that I'm a complete and utter failure and not worthy enough to have any kind of opinion that matters at all.

What do we call this ship? Guyce? Gardotter? I need to know for reasons.

I'm not exactly clear on what was happening to the Red Lanterns at the end of the last issue. I think Guy was giving up the ring while Rankorr and Bleez take over? Except Guy can't leave the team because then this book will be incredibly boring. Maybe the entire book is just going to be about Guy and Tora dating. I'd enjoy that.

Tora seems to believe...no, she knows that Guy only wanted to take this particular vacation in Dubai so he could keep an eye on Qurac just across the sea. Or river. Or ocean. Or imaginary body of water that borders the imaginary supremely terrorist nation of Qurac. It's always nice in comic books to have at least one nation that you always know is up to no good. Who needs complexity in comic books, right? Just tell me who is good and who is bad so that I know who to root for without weird thoughts creeping into the corners of my mind, such as "What if America didn't have so many sanctions against Qurac?" or "It's not the people of Qurac's fault that their leader is a megalomaniac looking to become a super powered monster!" or "How do we now the terrorist group known simply as The Jihad isn't really a revolutionary group trying to wake up a sleeping world to horrors which their so-called freedom loving leaders have committed?!" It's so relaxing to just be able to read the word "Qurac" and think, "Those fucking bastards! Get 'em, Guy!"

Fucking dick! You're going down, you monster!

Guy Gardner appears and vomits all over Shahkavat's face. That's, most likely, a huge breach of etiquette in Qurac. Also the destroying the great leader's statue part. Most shameful display of manners, that.

Ice is probably going to be pretty peeved that Guy has put the ring back on. She might also be a little bit hurt that Guy has chosen the ring and the rage over her friendship and love. She's kind of overly dramatic that way. I hope Ice gets so mad at Guy choosing this ring over her that she gets a red ring as well! And they all lived happily ever after and covered in burning vomit.

Oh. I guess Guy has not chosen the rage or the ring. He's chosen the loss of hope.

Before Guy can commit suicide by super powered terrorist leader, a new group of New Gods BOOM Tubes into the middle of the battle. I don't know who they are but they look like New God Lanterns. Did I miss a chapter or something? They call themselves The Wheel and are named Malhedron, Kor, Rad, and Dia. So is Rad like the radius of The Wheel and Dia is the diameter of The Wheel and Malhedron is the, uh, bad shape of The Wheel and Kor is the, um, uh, chord of The Wheel?

The Wheel have come to relieve Gardner of his ring because that was one of the plot points of Godhead that I'd already forgotten. Highfather thinks the rings are too powerful to be left in the hands of mortals. Guy doesn't put up much of a fight since his whole reason for visiting Qurac was to end his life.

Simon Baz arrives on the scene to save Guy's life which, I guess, Guy actually wanted saved. Guy's never been the type to give up. He just came to Qurac to get out some of his frustrations with the shit that the universe keeps dumping on his head. Also, Tora probably got fed up with him fingering the ring and not the thing he should have been fingering, so she went back home.

Oh, you probably don't know who Simon Baz is! See, he's this guy who became a Green Lantern but then never really got a shot to do anything as a Green Lantern because nobody at DC really seemed to give a shit about him? Although I kind of liked him and think he has some potential, especially to star in a Green Lantern comic based on Earth that ignores every fucking cosmic crisis that comes along every few weeks. He can just stop bank robberies and all that boring stuff that Hal Jordan used to deal with so long ago. Also, he carries a gun. Sometimes.

Simon Baz explains the current Cosmic Crisis to Guy.

Guy and Simon get their asses handed to them in about one panel. But The Wheel are called back to New Genesis for more pressing concerns because deus ex machina. That leaves Guy and Simon with some crucial information about the New Gods: they're from New Genesis. I don't know if anybody else had that information yet. Probably. Anyway, now Guy and Simon have a reason to join the gigantic cosmic fray.

Red Lanterns #35 Rating: No change. What happened to Tora? Was she just visiting for the day? Why can't this comic book be about her and Guy instead of about Guy and his anger issues?! More Tora, DC! Pronto!

Futures End: Red Lanterns #1

Five years ago, the world as we know it ceased to be. Luckily, the world as we know it from The Road Warrior came into being. Many people were prepared for this turn of events. Too bad those people were geeks and nerds without any real survival skills. Tragically, they were all rape-murdered by corporate CEOs who, it turned out, were the biggest sociopaths on the planet. Some nerds and geeks survived longer than others due to their proficiency at oral sex. But even these desperate, shameless nerds could not last for long. Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea gave and gave and gave but eventually, as he knew deep down would happen, he used a little too much teeth. He was thrown into Lightning Dome, a more terrifying version of Thunder Dome, where twenty combatants entered and nineteen left. Mostly because the nineteen were working together to fightfuck the lone other. Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea lasted thirteen minutes, a good showing but not good enough to be remembered for more than the long weekend.

As it turned out, some of the most depraved and richest CEOs were the biggest fans of Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea. When the updates stopped (for, you see, DC Comics continued to publish during these post-apocalyptic times although their market share was now worse than Dynamite. In their defense, Gail Simone was being forced to write all of the titles deep within Dynamite headquarters, and all of the titles featured naked lesbians as every character), the CEOs grew desperate for the only written entertainment they could stomach. A new Tess was needed. And who better to take over the job than the monster that delivered the death thrust to Tess, Goggles McDeathhurt.

And now, five years later, as Goggles McDeathhurt and her lost tribe continue to wander the Dusty Stretches (We'll get back to Goggles soon!), a sinister, calm voice fills the airwaves. Tuning and scanning can't seem to get rid of it, only turning the radio off spares one from the slow, methodical toneless drone. Many ears hear the broadcast even though it meant for just a single pair.

I know you're out there, Girly. I've got some things to say to you. Maybe they won't seem to make sense. Maybe they won't seem appropriate to this...situation that's cropped up between us. But you listen well. You fuckin' listen.

I've been having this recurring dream. In it, I'm an old man. I'm bent over and white haired. I'm in the backyard of some suburban house in the years before what you have labeled The Dusty Stretches. I'm searching for something, desperately. I can feel the panic building as I push bushes out of the way and knock over cans of yard debris. I'm heading deeper into this backyard which is now full of old, decaying wood furniture and rusty tin sheds. I see a flash out of the corner of my eye...blue fur? The fear lifts as I realize he's okay. Samson is okay. He's just lost and hungry and alone. I call out to him.

"Samson! Samson! Come here, kitty. Come here!" He responds. A short, loud cry. But he doesn't appear. He stays hidden. Something has him frightened and he's not going to come out. I glance over my shoulder, suddenly fearful myself. But it's only me reacting to Samson's fear. Right? My old eyes are blurry and I see only dim shapes and darkness behind me. A cloud passes over and everything in my field of vision dims even more. That's when I see it. A large, tall shape fifteen feet behind me, mostly hidden in the darkness of a large oak. I think I hear it snort. My knees buckle slightly.

"Now...now Samson. Come on out, Samson," I say, my voice shaking, cracking, barely audible. The clouds move on and the yard brightens. I now cannot see anything in the shadows by the tree and I convince myself I never did anyway. These old eyes see more blur than reality anyway, I think.

Something rubs against my leg and my chest seizes up. Pain flares across my chest from my left arm up through my sternum, settling tightly around everything. My legs fail to let me jump but I hear Samson's curious meow before I can even glance down at him rubbing up on my shin. His tail shakes at a frenetic pace as he curls around and between my legs. He yowls once more and I reach down to stroke him. My good kitty. Good, good kitty. But my hand never touches his fur. He's gone like a shot and I hear another snort, directly above the back of my head. I feel a blast of hot breath, causing condensation and goose pimples to spring up all along my neck and back.

I fall to my knees and hear one of them crack. I don't feel the pain. I'm only thinking of Samson and how he'll never see me again. He'll never feel secure in my lap. He'll never rub his head urgently up against my hand, or grab greedily at it as I stop petting him. Will he wonder where I've gone? Will he think his best friend deserted him? Will he be hurt, confused, heartbroken?

I think I feel a rough, hairy hand grasp my neck but, at this point, I cannot tell reality from fantasy. I have gone as far through the labyrinth as I was able, lucky enough to have as much time as I did, and now the monster has finally caught me. What it is, I do not know. Does it matter? When this life ebbs from what was once a brimming, biological community to transform us into a decaying bag of bones...does it matter how or why? I fall forward and hear more bones crack...ribs, an arm, maybe my spine. I'm staring out ahead and think I see...I don't know for sure...I can't tell anything for sure...Samson's eyes. Two golden eyes shining out from a dark window under one of the rusting sheds. The vision quickly disappears in a swirl of joyful tears and I wake.

That's the first thing I wanted to share with you, Goggles. Maybe you'll understand why. I can't fucking tell with you, you know. Are you as smart as I think you are? Just lucky? Charismatic? What the fuck are you, hunh?

Times...times like these, a man doesn't need this kind of shit, you know? I've got shit upon shit upon shit to deal with and I do not need your shit as well. You might think you've been successful when you hear me say that but I assure you, you have done nothing but harm yourself. You don't go poking sticks into a nest of hornets, Girl. You don't fucking poke me or mine. You know what you should do? And I'm giving you this advice for when you meet my men on the road soon...here's what you do: you fucking get down on your knees and you grovel and you fucking say "sir" as many fucking times as you can think to say it. You know what you don't do to someone like me, or them that are my own? You don't fucking spit on us, Goggles. You just...you just fucking don't do that.

So. Anyway. You've got me all riled up and I swore I wasn't going to get all riled up over a fucking corpse but, well, here we fucking are. Now I'm probably going to fuck up this second thing I wanted to tell you because I've lost my fucking calm and I'm losing my fucking shit and it's because of you and your stupid pull over these stupid fucking drug-addled peasants. But I'm going to try to say this nicely. I'm going to calm down here...take a few breaths...and I'm going to say this second thing I've been wanting to say to you.

Okay. Deep breaths. Calming breaths. A few sips of warm tea. And, here we go. I truly hope you'll listen.

It's not too late, Goggles. Walk away. Sneak away from your life under the cover of darkness and go find a fucking hole to crawl into and never stick your head out of it again. I don't fucking care about you, see? You're a fucking gnat and I don't care if you wind up smashed against a rolled up newspaper or somehow find your way out of an open window. I just want you fucking gone. And I know you know this third thing I'm going to tell you. You've lived your entire Dusty Streches Life living by this bit of philosophy: living is better than dying. The people who surround you now will fall back into the day to day monotony of life at the bottom of the food chain. Archivist Melville will go back to collecting books and magazines and video games. And you...well, I've already told you this...you, I don't fucking care what you go back to. Just fucking go.

Goddamn. My stomach is just doing cartwheels here. You might not think it...not after what happened between us in St. Louis...but I truly, truly despise conflict. It's unseemly. It upsets digestion. It causes...palpitations. So please. When my men meet your little group on the road, do not be there. If you are not there, everybody goes free. Everybody goes back to the city. Everybody forgets this little revolution ever fucking happened. If they find you, well...I have a lot of bullets, Goggles. So think on it. You've probably got a day or two to make your decision.

Before I go, I have one final thing for you, Goggles. It's a gift. A courier will bring it to soon. After you get the gift, realize you have very little time left to make your choice. But please, stick around for the gift. I went to a lot of trouble getting it for you. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

I truly hope you like the gift, but iff you don't like it, well, at least don't be angry.

Good night, Goggles. Good night.

Red Lanterns #34

If only one Red Lantern will survive, I hope it's Dex-Starr.

I don't think I was very successful in my attempt at brevity while doing my Harley Quinn #10 commentary. I'll just have to redouble my efforts with Red Lanterns #34! Or halve my efforts? Whichever one is briefier!

Last issue (which was the Annual because DC heard the fans resounding yell of "More Essential Annuals!" and made it happen. Unless they just hallucinated the fans yelling that which seems more probable actually), a whole mess of Earthlings became Red Lanterns and joined Atrocitus's army. Now Guy Gardner (with the help of Supergirl and a handful of his own Reds) must stop them without killing anybody. I don't think that's going to be possible. He might as well just start out killing for the greater good.

Guy plans on making a last stand on Ysmault while Rankorr, Skallox, and The Shadow Thief (now a Red Lantern as well) hide out on Styge Prime. Is Atrocitus really needed as a main character in Red Lanterns? I mean, I understand he's the whole reason the Red Lanterns exist. But now the team has Guy Gardner! I think it's time for Atrocitus to just lay down and die and let Dex-Starr eat him. Then Dex can kind of hang around Ysmault accepting handouts but not really wanting anybody to touch or look at him too much. Until after a few months of this kind of hard to get lifestyle, he'll eventually allow Bleez or Guy to give him a little scratch behind the ears. But after a few seconds, he'll hiss and run off. It'll take another few months before he begins rubbing on legs and enjoying the company of the other Reds. And then I never have to read another story with that whining, pseudo-philosophical asshole Atrocitus!

Now if this were a Hollywood movie, they'd realize that their irritation of the other's personality was actually love, somehow. Then they'd fuck.

I think that's the plot of all Hollywood romances. Two people are irritated by each other. The two people are too lazy to find somebody that they actually get along with and like. The two people fuck. The two people spend the rest of the movie pretending that they're going to spend the rest of their lives together. The movie ends before either one can come to their senses, leaving the audience believing in true love! Also in the belief that if somebody doesn't like you, you have to just keep bothering them until they finally get naked with you.

Guy Gardner truly thinks Atrocitus is going to slaughter him and Bleez so he gives his last words to John Stewart. His last words are all about making Hal Jordan feel better. I hope you're happy, Hal Jordan! Everything always has to be all about you, doesn't it? Guy should have said, with a smirk, that Hal is to blame for Guy's upcoming death. Let Hal choke on that one for awhile.

Rankorr, Skallox, and Shadow Thief arrive just in time to stop Guy and Bleez from being overwhelmed. If Atrocitus was just about to slaughter two Red Lanterns, why would three Red Lanterns be able to rescue the other two?

Whoops. Make that two Red Lanterns to rescue the other two.

So now Skallox and Zilius Zox are dead. I'm sensing a pattern! Good thing Guy's last name isn't Gardnerox.

Yeah! No fair! He's not Dex-Starrox!

I'm sure Dex-Starr is going to be all right. Charles Soule can't kill a cat. Although he is a lawyer and I've heard lawyers have no souls or hearts or feelings or emotions or anything. I've never met a lawyer in my life so I don't know if there is any truth to the rumors. But I do tend to believe things that I want to believe, so that's really all the veracity I need.

Judge Red, who was probably a lawyer before becoming a Judge, has finally reached a verdict concerning Guy Gardner. I guess this was one of those non-jury trials that are probably decided by back room cash hand outs. Luckily, Guy is judged not guilty. But Judge Red judges herself as guilty and explodes. Fucking lunatic. She also takes all the humans with her. Not to the Realm of the Dead! To the Realm of the Probably Comatose and, Quite Possibly, Worse. Guy gathers them all up so he can figure out a way to get the rings off of them without killing him. I suppose he either has to stick them in the sun or convince Saint Walker to come out of retirement.

And then Guy Gardner battles Atrocitus. Not like a normal comic book where two characters punch each other until the one that punches the best wins. No, Guy battles Atrocitus in a Charles Souleian manner.

What kind of comic books did Charles Soule read that he now thinks this kind of confrontation is acceptable?! Where are all the punches?!

Look. I've read a lot of comic books in my time. I've read a lot of Guy Gardner comic books in my time as well. And there's always been something about Guy that I really love, especially when a writer gets it right and doesn't just portray him as an egotistical asshole that has to be in charge. Charles Soule gets Guy. He gets that Guy wants to do good. He gets that Guy needs approval and it hurts deeply when he doesn't get it. Guy wants to be recognized. That's why the Guardians knew they could manipulate him by promoting him to, what was it, Captain of the Everything or something. Anyway, Guy wants to be the best person he can be but he's got some anger issues that he's never been able to deal with very well. And now when Guy gives up the Red Ring, he's doing it because he knows the ring will choose him again. And seeing the ring choose him again, seeing ten rings choose him because of the anger he has, at the world, at his father, at himself...that fucking hurts to read.

This motherfucker is in some serious emotional pain.

Earlier I made that facetious comment about Guy's last words when I said they were all about Hal. The part of that I liked which I didn't mention because it didn't fit in with my rant about Hal being a jerko was when Guy admitted that he probably wasn't the best Green Lantern simply because he needed to be recognized as the best so badly. Everybody in the DC Universe has daddy issues but I like to see them manifest in intelligent and realistic ways. Like a guy needing his father's love so badly that he becomes the leader of an angry alien police force to prove to some other guy leading another cosmic police force that he can do the job too. It doesn't get more realistic than that.

Anygarden, Guy removes the Red Rings from all the Earthlings and Atrocitus and Dex-Starr and Atrocitus's Reds without anybody dying. He uses the rings to restore the Red Lantern Battery and the Blood Ocean. And then he gives the Red Lantern Corps to Rankorr. As for Guy, he returns to Earth wearing the Red Ring on a chain around his neck. Is it time to be Warrior again?!

Red Lanterns #34 Rating: +2 Ranking. Well, Mogo is getting more prisoners! I wonder if Mogo has any ethical issues with becoming a prison planet for the Green Lanterns. I don't really know what direction this book is going to go after all this. Will it follow Guy Gardner a bit on Earth? Or is it going to become a romance with Rankorr and Bleez honeymooning all over the place while they vomit lava on bad guys' faces? And what's going to become of Shadow Thief?! Or is it Shadow-Thief? Once she takes a dip in the Blood Ocean, she's really going to hate what she's become. But most of all, what is going to happen to Dex-Starr now that he's free of the Red Ring? I hope he becomes Mogo's best friend. Maybe Dex and Mogo will tame each other!

Red Lanterns Annual #1

How much of this fight would actually be fisticuffs? Guy Gardner is a stupid jerk. Unless the cover artist is a stupid jerk. One of those.

Everybody can point to one of a million things that DC has done wrong in the last few years so let me point out another one. In their "Channel 52" portion of the comic book about the future of the Swamp Thing comic, Matt Idelson writes, "Holding to our fine tradition of making our annuals essential reading...." As you can see, he accidentally typed "fine" when he meant to type "really fucking stupid." How did an editor miss such an obvious mistake? Because they just don't care anymore. And who can blame them when they have to read and reread stories by Howard Mackie, Scott Lobdell, and Ann Nocenti to catch any continuity and grammatical errors? Their minds must be absolutely jellied by the experience.

Hopefully nobody new to the Red Lanterns decided to pick up this annual thinking that it might contain a self-contained story that might lure them into picking up the book on a regular basis, thus increasing DC's profits over the long term because they wouldn't fucking understand it. It's Part Three of a Four Part story. So fuck you, new readers! And wait! DC isn't done handing out the fuck yous! A hearty fucking fuck you to continuing readers as well since they now have to scrounge around their parents' house for loose change and not very closely watched billfolds to come up with another $4.99 this month! Because this annual continues the really fucking stupid tradition of making annuals essential reading!

Speaking of piss poor editing, please enjoy this romantic performance of "The Misplaced Space and The Missed Period."

Atrocitus wants to punish Guy Gardner by squicking everyone on Earth. Dex-Starr is also from Earth but he doesn't give a shit about a species that has no qualms about putting to death, every day, thousands of animals that they proclaim to love and cherish as pets. As long as Atrocitus leaves enough of the Earth left for cats and mice and birds to live free, Dex is probably behind the plan.

Wait. Scratch that. Fuck Atrocitus and his stupid plans!

One of Atrocitus's new Red Lanterns is named One-Heart? That was my nickname in high school! We also called this one kid "Two-Eyes." And another kid was "One-Liver." There was a kid nicknamed "Ten-Toes." And another nicknamed "Nine-Fingers." He had an accident in Algebra II. Then there was that weird kid that was nicknamed "No-Bellybutton." Where did that kid come from?!

Atrocitus's plan changes from the general skull-fuckery to an even more devastating plan: destroy all of Earth's tourist attractions! The best part about this plan is that Oregon will be left alone! There's nothing to see here!

Now New Earth no longer has an Eiffel Tower or a Grand Canyon or any Egyptian pyramids or Las Vegas or some stupid dam in China or some famous building in Spain that probably housed goats and chickens or Baltimore because the Red Lanterns completely destroyed them. So I don't want to see any more shots of Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background, DC! It's gone! And why would anybody bother to rebuild it? Or the pyramids! Nobody is going to rebuild those. And even if they did, who would want to travel to see some pyramids that were built by modern machines?! DC's editors had better pin this shit up on their DC Continuity Corkboard because I am going to call it out every time I see one of these stupid tourist attractions intact in a future comic book! Unless they all get fixed somehow by the end of this issue. Which seems like a reasonable thing to happen since how can any Earth continue without Las Vegas?

The second part of Atrocitus's plan is to send down thousands of Red Rings because everybody on Earth is going to be awfully angry about the destruction of The City That Reads. And they are! So terribly mad that every one of them that discovers a floating, glowing red ring decides to put it on their finger! Unless that's just human greed. It might be human greed. Atrocitus may not have needed to destroy lots of things for his plan to work. Although destroying all that shit for the sheer pleasure of it was probably a nice feeling.

Guy Gardner finds out what Atrocitus is doing and he gets angry. Or angrier. Perhaps angriest. Whatever! He wants to chew ass and kick bubblegum and he's all out of ass!

The entire DC Universe gets rebooted and Guy still can't live down that time he was sucker punched by Batman!

I do like how Charles Soule reverses the whole "I don't have time for this" comic book trope. Whereas they usually don't have time to explain and waste a bunch of time fighting before they stop fighting to explain, Guy lets Batman know right up front that he doesn't have time for that whole fighting part and they should just get right down to the explanations. Which is what happens! Thank whatever fucking God allows rimjobs for Charles Soule, a comic book writer who refuses to write comics that have already been written.

Meanwhile Skallox heads down to collect Shadow Thief because he's in loooOOoooOOOoove! He wants to take her back to the Blood Ocean on Styge Prime so that she'll be ever so thankful to be back to her somewhat normal self that she'll lick his butthole clean. Sure, she's a self-proclaimed xenophobe but we saw in an earlier issue of Red Lanterns that, in reality, she's simply protesting too much. She's like one of those super anti-gay preachers that believe that being gay is a choice because they're actually gay and desperately choo-choo-choosing to live heterosexually. But they aren't fooling God! At least not that God that loves rimjobs I mentioned earlier.

I'm really, really trying to remain angry at DC Comics so I can earn a Red Ring but fucking Charles Soule keeps writing moments like this and suddenly this thing I don't understand is happening to my face, mostly around the mouth parts but sometimes sort of around the inside corner of the eye area too.

While Guy and most of his crew try to help Earth, Zilius Zox has headed to Styge Prime to shit in Atrocitus's Blood Ocean. The original owner of Zilius Zox's Flying Bar, the Kaalvar, has become a Red Lantern and is on Styge Prime to protect Atrocitus's new home. He also has a chicken beaked, brain exposed friend to help him. And also Rankorr. Surprise! He wasn't crazy at all!

A bit psychopathic, maybe. But not crazy!

It turns out Rankorr just had a really evil mindcontrolling tapeworm in his system. But he hasn't eaten in a while, so he waves a Snickers bar in front of his mouth and when the evil tapeworm sticks its head out to get really satisfied, Rankorr yanks it up and out of his throat and tears it apart. Rankorr's back! Hmm, seems only the crickets care.

Seriously though. What is wrong with the inside corners of my eyes?! WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?!

Suicide Squad could learn a thing or two from Charles Soule's Red Lanterns! See how it's done? You take characters that nobody cares about, make them care about them through ritual magic of some nefarious kind, and then kill them off! It's not that hard to do!

And if you think that last panel I scanned fucked up my face in unknown ways (more ritual magic, I'd wager!), Charles Soule beats it a page or two later as Zilius Zox crashes the Kaalvar into Atrocitus's new Blood Ocean headquarters while saying, "My ship. My good ship. Thanks, girl." But even before that, he resolves one of his earlier plot threads.

If there were any doubts that Guy and Zox had become friends, this moment puts them all to rest.

Back on Earth, the rampaging new Red Lanterns are stopped when Bleez brings along the Reds' statue building friends they saved from Barg and his buddy a few issues ago. They have that weapon that calms people down and they blast Earth with it. So Earth is saved but what of the Earthlings that all became Red Lanterns? They can't just sit in the sun like Kara did. And all but one Blue Lantern are dead. I guess they'll just have to pick a Red side.

I have to say, I'd pick the side with the cat as well.

Red Lanterns Annual #1 Rating: Charles Soule should write all the DC Comics. At the very least, he should take over Red Hood and the Outlaws and Klarion the Witch Boy. It can't be too late to change writers on a comic book that hasn't even come out yet, right?

Red Lanterns #33

Did anybody bother to collect all the cover variants so they could build this entire scene?

Guy Gardner and John Stewart are the bestest of friends so I already don't believe this cover. Comic book writers know better than to pit one hero against another hero based on some stupid plot contrivance. Most comic book writers think about how normal people act in their own lives when dealing with friends and family. They realize they can count the number of times they've punched a dear friend in the face on no hands. This leads them to think, "Why would super heroes begin throwing punches every time they disagree when most people work things out through communication?" Then they write their script and go about their lives. Until a few days later when the script arrives back in the mail from their editor with notes all over the place that say, "This issue needs more action! How about making Superman punch Wonder Woman in the vagina on page four? Then Superman can maybe kick Batman in the balls on page five. So the writer goes back to the drawing board and writes a scene where Batman breaks his foot on Wonder Woman's hoo-diddly and is then kicked in half when Superman kicks him in the wobbly bits. A few days later, the script comes back in a manilla envelope with two words written in red pen: "HA" and "HA".

At some point the final script magically appears out of thin air and everybody is happy, even if it includes a short physical fight between heroes due to a misunderstanding. But don't think any writer would ever come up with that! Ridiculous!

See? The interaction between two heroes by a real writer.

Even though Guy Gardner nearly killed Atrocitus when Guy took over the Red Lanterns, he figure he needs help this time. He's probably right since Atrocitus is building an army thanks to all the Red Rings he sent out a number of issues ago. He's probably also going to need help because Skallox is a big doody headed traitor who's busy selling Guy out to Atrocitus!

John is curious as to why Guy became a Red Lantern and even though I already answered this in a previous commmentary, most people would probably rather hear it from Guy Gardner than from me. Basically, Guy has a lot of anger built up at himself and his own choices and he feels like he deserves to be a Red Lantern. You know, just like I've said previously. I've been doing this for nearly three years. When are y'all going to start trusting my judgment?

A-ha! That's why the cover artist mistakenly believed that Guy and John get in a fight this issue!

Skallox runs away from Ysmault to join up with Atrocitus on the new Red Lantern Headquarter Planet of Styge Prime, Skallox's old homeworld. I think I should take back the doody headed traitor line because it's possible Guy has put Skallox up to this mission. Just like he was chosen to infiltrate the Red Lanterns for the Green Lanterns, Guy now may be using Skallox to infiltrate Atrocitus's Red Lanterns. Or I could be completely wrong about everything. It wouldn't be the first time I was completely wrong about everything! The first time was when I decided to live my life the way I'm living it. What have I done?!

Skallox is going to become one of those spies that could be a double, triple, quadruple, or multitupular agent. Speaking of double agents, how come when people are ruining plots to old movies to be funny, nobody ever spoils No Way Out?

Back at the trading post, John Stewart gets in a brawl with some aliens that have a beef with the Green Lanterns. So, you know, he just runs into some non-Green Lantern aliens. Guy Gardner almost misses it while he's in the bathroom. Is Pulp Fiction the only movie that deals with people's fears of missing out on life by using the toilet? I'm pretty sure that was the main theme of the movie.

These Space Ports must have dozens of different bathrooms for all of the alien shaped anuses. Guy just left the one for "vaguely humanoid."

After the brawl, Guy learns that John just can't help him with his war against Atrocitus right now. He's in charge of a bunch of new recruits and he can't let any harm come to 2-6-8-1-7-9-5 or I'll never read another comic book with John Stewart in it again. Besides, Atrocitus only has a small army of maniacal, angry, monstrously disfigured aliens, right?

Rings! Rings! Red Rings for Everybody!

Red Lanterns #33 Rating: No change. Whoops! Looks like Guy and his buddies are seriously fucked! I think need to read the Annual next to find out just how fucked they are!