Green Lantern #21 (February 1992)

I am partial towards low hanging fruits.

Last issue ended with Hal Jordan and Gerard Jones both making big mistakes. Jones' mistake was naming a comic book character Flicker. Jordan's mistake was being captured by Fucker. I mean Flicker. According to Flicker, he's the LinkedIn of space. You need to find somebody trained to do a specific job? Flicker will find, capture, and kidnap that person for you! Unless he's already kidnapped them and holding them in his Temp Agency Dungeon. Then it's just a matter of filling out a few forms, transferring an egregious amount of funds, and waiting for your new employee to arrive via slave ship!

Apparently the first thing to be done after Flicker captures somebody is to interview them. Flicker and his employees need to find out the kidnapped person's skills so they know exactly what company to sell them to later.

I'm not sure if they drug them first or if Hal Jordan just loves being interviewed because he's being real fucking calm about this.

Hal has no idea how he got here or who the person interviewing him is. But when he begins to question the set-up, the interviewer changes their appearance a little and asks some more questions and Hal gets really excited to tell stories about the way he loves to fuck another man.

Maybe there's a simpler explanation as to why Hal doesn't want women in the Green Lantern Corps?

I don't want to accuse Pat Broderick of being lazy but pages 2-5 are composed of 36 panels but only 11 panels of original art. I'm not counting as "original art" any panels that repeat the art of other panels but with the slightest variations, like focusing closer on Hal's face, changing the color of the interviewer's hair, or combining images from two separately repeated panels. Perhaps Broderick was going for a bit of a Gertrude Stein feel with his visuals. The images are boring and cliché, repeated over and over again to simulate the repetitive, exasperating mundanity of a corporate interview. It totally works because I got bored immediately and flipped ahead to see how many pages this was going to go on.

I feel like I should have received a discount on the cover price.

What I believe Broderick is actually doing is highlighting Green Lantern's awareness of the situation. By repeating all of the images for the reader, the glaring changes in reality stand out while also highlighting how Hal Jordan can't perceive them the way the reader does. In that regard, it's actually much closer to my "this is like Gertrude Stein's work" theory than my initial and well-written hypothesis that "Pat Broderick is a lazy jerk." But that's what makes me a great critic! No matter how intelligent and well-formed my initial arguments and gut instincts against some piece of art, I'm still willing to work out how the art might be doing the opposite of what I first thought. Most people would hear what I first thought and think, "Pat is lazy! That Tess or Grunion or whatever the fuck their name is fucking knows what's what! What a genius!" I hope when I change my argument, they think, "Wow, this is exactly like every Gertrude Stein story I've never read (thank God!). Tess or Grunion or whatever really fucking knows what's what! What a super-duper mega-genius!", instead of "Why would this idiot back off from their initial, emotional, angry, GamerGate reaction? Why would they calm down and try to suss out what's really going on? What a fucking [insert whatever slur slides easily off their big jerk tongues]?"

While discussing all the myriad ways in which women don't bother him at all, Hal mentions Carol Ferris and the interviewer freaks out, revealing they're some kind of automaton. The stage hands hurry it off stage and replace it with a new robot before Hal can figure out what's going on and the interview starts over. Hal doesn't realize anything's wrong because apparently Flicker not only flicks and kidnaps, he injects people with a shit-ton of ketamine and valium as well.

Flicker looks like a rejected Firestorm villain from 1986. And his boss looks like an old Spider-man foe.

Oh boy! I hope Gerard Jones is about to serve up some really cutting satire on business people and corporations! It's about time somebody brought them down a peg! I know this was written in 1991 but, really, the best time to serve up cutting satire on business people and corporations is thirty years ago. The next best time is now. I think that's an old Chinese saying.

Flicker has captured Brik, Kworri, and AA as well as Hal Jordan. Kworri was Brik's recruit from the Obsidian Folk and AA was her recruit from the Pumice People. Thanks to Brik's recommendation, Flicker decided to capture them as well. But his boss isn't exactly chuffed at the quality of these hunted heads. Especially the guy with the repeated vowel first name.

Did he call him "fucker" because this guy is Space J. Jonah Jameson?

I'm still surprised editorial allowed Gerard Jones to name a character Flicker. His argument was probably that Marvel had a character named Clint for years and nobody seemed to give a shit no matter how many innocent kids learned a new swear word due to poor kerning on newsprint comics.

Flicker's boss approves of Hal Jordan's qualities, especially when Hal tries to break free and beats the shit out of all of Space J. Jonah Jameson's employees. But only because during the interview, the slavers . . . I mean, headhunters put switches in their new employees' brains so they can force them into unconsciousness any time they want. When Hal loses consciousness, he collapses and begins dreaming about Carol Ferris. I hope he doesn't get an embarrassing erection in front of all of his co-slaves. I mean co-workers. Green Lantern Corps space spandex won't hide a thing if he does. At least I hope it doesn't.

Oh boy. Welcome to boner city, Hal!

I'm assuming Hal's willpower is so great that he can resist getting a boner even while dreaming otherwise the panel after he wakes up, he'd find Brik slobbering all over his dong. You know, because she wants him so badly. Also if you're wearing a Green Lantern ring and somebody is able to suck your dick without your consent, it's actually implied consent because otherwise the Green Lantern ring would have protected you from the surprise oral. Sometimes it knows better than you do what will keep you alive and/or make you cum buckets.

When I first saw Jaws, I thought the shark (you know, Jaws the shark) was attracted to teenagers because sharks love cum. You can see how I could easily have made that mistake being that chum and cum sound so similar and also I was a really fucking stupid kid.

Hal's dream continues to get sexier and sexier.

I've had this wet dream at least three times.

I once had a wet dream where I was fucking a vampire as the sun was coming up and I held her down as the sun hit her and disintegrated her and I finished in my underwear. Don't read too much into that, like misogyny or perversion. Apparently my subconscious just loves fucking female vampires to death.

In Twin Peaks, the character of Major Briggs describes a vision he had to his son Bobby. He begins by differentiating a vision with a dream by defining a dream as a "mere sorting and cataloguing of the day's events." But I've never actually fucked a vampire to death so that wasn't a sorting or a cataloguing of any of my days' events. So was that a vision?! If so, what did it mean?! Will I become Blade?

Hal wakes up mid-interview where his interviewer is once again haranguing him about his issue with women, especially that one issue where his lover killed John Stewart's lover and then Hal never allowed John to talk it over with him.

Flicker's company seem to be the ones who kidnapped Star Sapphire way back in Action Comics Weekly whatever number it was that she was kidnapped in. Oh, #605. Thanks, editor's note! Hal realizes that the interviewer is trying to find out how to control Star Sapphire through Hal's knowledge of her. If they think Hal could ever "control" Carol Ferris, these guy's don't know Hal. Or Carol! When Hal realizes the interviewer's new tack, he comes out of his ketamine-induced stupor and attacks the woman interviewer. Space J. Jonah Jameson yells, "This interview is over!" Hal Jordan once more falls unconscious and begins hallucinating again. Flicker's got his hands on a really strong space ketamine source. I bet it's Lobo.

This wet dream doesn't last very long before Hal Jordan cums out all the windows on the spaceship.

"Clean up on Aisle All-of-Them."

Space J. Jonah Jameson doesn't take kindly to his spaceship being vandalized and orders Flicker to get them out of his office. Flicker decides to teleport them off the ship and then warp the ship across the universe. Space J. Jonah Jameson, always angry because he's, you know, Space J. Jonah Jameson, screams at Flicker that he didn't want to lose Hal! He just didn't want his shit broken anymore. Hal, Brik, Kworri, and AA have escaped Flicker's clutches for the moment. And AA took a prisoner as they were being ejected from the ship, one of Flicker's underlings. Hal decides to use him to find Star Sapphire. AA, a real wet blanket of a recruit, doesn't think that's a noble, honorable, and just use of raping the prisoner's memories. But Hal tells him to shut the fuck up and do what he's told if he wants to be part of the crew. So AA shuts the fuck up (but with reservations!). Kworri doesn't shut the fuck up at all because he's totally into abusing prisoners for Hal's personal business. The issue ends with the crew on the hunt for Star Sapphire.

Green Lantern #21 Rating: B+. This might present itself as a story about Hal trying to find Star Sapphire and put some of the demons of his past (and John's!) to rest. But it's really a story about the competition between Kworri of the Obsidian Folk and AA of the Pumice People for one spot in the Green Lantern Corps. Again, Hal has the opportunity to just take two more recruits to fill up his quota as quickly as possible. But like every barely competent middle manager in any business across the country, he feels like he's got to exert some sort of control over the situation and flex his power when he absolutely doesn't need to. Why reject one of the potential recruits? Why pit them against each other? It seems like sadistic inter-office bullshit to me! Just do as little as possible, Hal! You've already been guaranteed the promotion back to Earth! Why cause strife for other people when it's absolutely not needed?! Go back and hire Boodika. And also apologize to her! Hire both of these idiots! Christ, hire Flicker if it'll get you back to Earth sooner!

Green Lantern #20 (January 1992)

This cover got me thinking Hal's about to hire Mr. Natural.

Guy Gardner has about five more issues left being Green Lantern of Earth, if I remember correctly. I recently reread the post-Millennium Justice League where some editor's notes indicated that Hal Jordan beats the shit out of Guy Gardner around Issue #25. Bad news for Guy Gardner: Hal Jordan stars in the next four or five issues of this comic book. But some good news too: Guy will be getting his own solo title soon! Until then, Guy will just have to be content as a back-up character along with a sex-crazed barbarian crystal and a giant one-eyed phallus with luxurious hair.

Oh, and G'nort, of course.

I don't know that Chaselon the crystal is sex crazed or a barbarian. But if he's going to pull a Franzetta pose with a hot crystal woman draped around his cock, I'm going to make assumptions. Also, if you're going to draw a one-eyed worm with a thick patch of red hair around its base, I'm going to get an erection. It's all just simple laws of physics, man.

Don't think G'nort does anything for me. I'm not canine-curious. Guy Gardner on the other hand! Look at how majestic he is! So manly! So ripped! So toxic! My heart is fluttering! Although I am 52 so I might be dying. Enh, cross my fingers I make it through this review.

Guy decides to bow out of Hal's work conference on training and hiring new recruits. He's busy beating up Despero and saving all the lame members of the Justice League. But Kilowog decides to join up even though he's going to have to hurry back to turn L'ron into a prison for Despero. The editor explains it all away by pointing out that the scene where Kilowog decides to go to Oa happens before Justice League #58. Although the previous panel where Guy Gardner refuses to go because he's busy fighting Despero has an editor's note that reads, "See Justice League #58!" Get your story straight, editor! Where the fuck in time am I?! It's a good thing I don't give a shit about continuity. Besides, the only thing really bothering me is that Lobo made an appearance during that battle and I'm stuck reading this stupid Green Lantern comic book that doesn't have Lobo in it at all.

Is it okay that everybody shit all over Liefeld's Captain America but we're giving Brdoerick's Kilowog a pass?

I mean, of course we are! This image of Kilowog is basically Broderick's version of when Crumb draws massive legs on women. Exaggerating certain aspects of a character's body is an absolute turn-on for certain freaks, pervs, and weirdos. You know the kind of person I'm talking about. Comic book readers. Besides, it's not like we've never seen this exact same exaggerated pose on Power Girl!

Hal also summons Brik to his meeting and while she's super eager to fist him in the asshole, something nabs her before she can head to Oa. You can tell because in one panel she says, "Oh...NO!!" And then in the next panel, some yellow speed lines splash across her face with a FWAM sound effect. And then in the third panel, there is empty space. It's not as good as a splash page actually showing what happened to her. But you're probably used to this kind of thing if this isn't your first comic book. Writers love incomplete scenes. They think it raises the tension. And maybe it does if you're talking about the tension in my veins. Because now I'm angry and my heart is fluttering! This doesn't look good!

Hal tells John, Chaselon, Kilowog, and Larvox (G'nort got lost on his way to Oa) that he's made a deal with the Guardians. Since Hal doesn't actually want to travel across the entire universe recruiting 3593 more members, he's convinced the Guardians to lower the amount of recruits he needs to hire to 12. Not including himself. But including G'nort, Guy, John, and Kilowog. Which seems a bit lazy if you're asking me, an expert on laziness. He only needs to recruit five more members and he'll get his old gig in Sector 2814 back. Good thing Guy didn't make this meeting. It's weird that Hal even invited him seeing that his speech, in Guy's eyes, would have just been a longwinded description of shoving a dagger in Guy's back.

I'm afraid I'm going to turn the page and Hal's going to admit to being even lazier than I realized by saying, "Now, if you all go out and hire one person each, my job will be done!" He can't have balls that big, can he?

The nerve of this motherfucker!

John points out that maybe this is a good idea since Hal Jordan is a sexist pig who doesn't hire women. Hal's reasoning is that he always winds up fucking the women so he shouldn't hire any. He also points out that John has a history of fucking them too, like that dead one. So according to Hal Jordan, women shouldn't serve on the Green Lantern Corps because he can't keep himself from fucking them. Can somebody tell me again why Guy Gardner is the black sheep of the Corps?

I'm pretty facetious at times and prone to lying when I find it funny so here's the proof that Hal Jordan was a terrible choice for recruiter.

Kudos on correcting John's misgendering of the penis. But negative kudos for his tone sounding so disgusted by Larvox.


Sounds like somebody's blaming the victim for sexual harassment in the workplace!

Mentioning Katma Tui sidetracks the conversation for a bit because it was Hal Jordan's girlfriend, Carol Ferris (after becoming Star Sapphire), who murdered John's alien wife. So John can't bring it up in front of Hal and Hal can't bring it up in front of John. I mean, they can! But neither one of them wants to deal with their grief. Hal explains that the entire reason he hasn't brought Star Sapphire to justice is because he can't bring himself to arrest the woman he loves. So instead of helping to get justice for John's dead wife, he just ignores the entire thing and lets Star Sapphire roam free. Hmm, maybe that's why John gets so angry when Hal mentions Katma Tui?

Can somebody explain to me how Hal Jordan is the greatest Green Lantern to ever live again? Don't forget this is from 1991. I don't need any Kyle Rayner loving assholes all up in my comments screaming, "The comic book artist that's an Everyman version of every reader, a kind of reverse Mary Sue (Sue Mary?), if you will, Kyle Rayner is the greatest Green Lantern ever! He must be seeing as how he got the job while pissing in an alley!" Fuck Kyle Rayner! I wish the Omega Men had cut his head off!

The conversation Hal and John seriously need to finish gets interrupted by the first appearance (not counting the cover) of Boodikka.

Finally! Another female hire! And one with more toxic masculinity than all the other Lanterns put together!

I bet Boodikka goes around telling people how she's not like other women. I bet she describes herself as "just one of the guys." I bet her nipples are fucking huge.

The reason for Boodikka's introduction feels like some editor stuck their head in Gerard Jones' office and said, "Make sure one of the new Green Lanterns has a Lobo-esque feel to them! And huge tits!"

Boodikka makes sure Hal knows that she can kick ass just as well as any of the guys in the Corps. To prove it, she kicks Hal's ass while explaining her qualifications.

Wait a second. Do I like Boodikka better than Lobo? No, no. That's probably not possible.

I love that instead of the expected (maybe just expected from me?), "I'm not like other women," we get Boodikka saying, "I'm exactly like all the other women of Bellatrix!" Along with the worm, the sugar cube, and stolid Brik, Gerard Jones understands the concept of making aliens more than just funny looking dudes from space. They're also genderless worms whose mode of fucking makes John and Hal retch. They're sentient crystals that can speak across vast distances with each other through harmonic vibrations. They're silent, long-lived rock creatures trying to adapt to the concept of the inconceivable speeds of not just seconds but hours and days and weeks. They're huge females with big tits who can beat the shit out of any man they meet. Okay, that one is just like Power Girl but the concept of her culture thinking of lethal hand-to-hand combat and mastery of the short sword as "feminine arts" makes Boodikka more interesting.

Does Hal think "political correctness" means "tits"?

Even with her absolutely stunning interview, Hal questions whether or not Boodikka is Corps material. Yep. Hal's a sexist jerk. Is he afraid he's going to ruin this by fucking Boodikka too? Ha ha! Good luck, brother!

A later panel shows Chaselon standing next to Larvox and it just made me think, "The Green Lantern Corps needs another crystal dude!"

Hee hee. I'm 52.

Boodikka was a recruit brought by Chaselon. Larvox also brought along a potential recruit.

Jones and Broderick are just taking the piss now, right?

I feel like Gerard Jones told the art team, "We need an alien that looks like a penis." And so they gave him Larvox and Jones was all, "No, no. It's too symbolic! It's all shaft and no head! Try again." And that's how Amanita was hired!

I just praised Gerard Jones for his variety of aliens and then he decides to introduce a new alien that looks like a more realistic Larvox and acts even more Brik-like than Brik. I guess he was running up against a deadline on this one and just had to steal ideas from himself.

Even though hiring every recruit brought forward would get Hal back on Earth more quickly, Hal decides to only hire the penis. He doesn't immediately accept the woman into the Corps because, well, I think we covered that. He'd rather hire the creature that looks exactly like a cock whom nobody can communicate with because Amanita perceives reality much more quickly than everybody else. Which is why he seems slow to everybody else. Get it? If we hear him take two pages to answer a question, it's because two pages are like two panels to him. Basically, he's the reverse of The Flash who perceives the world slowly and so can do everything quickly. Thus Amanita is absolutely useless. But I guess to Hal, at least he's not a woman.

Boodikka should sue.

Hal explains, to himself, while fleeing into space so he doesn't have to justify his actions, that he picked Amanita because he scanned the minds of the new recruits and discovered that Amanita had "an explosive, metaphysical consciousness" with "a vision of cosmic connections that would turn [Hal] into a drooling fool." So basically he entered Amanita's mind and wound up on shrooms. Cool. I can dig this character. But it's still no excuse to not hire Boodikka! Hal continues thought bubbling justifications at the reader with the excuse that Boodikka is too much like him and the Corps doesn't need any more Hal Jordans. Looks like somebody feels threatened by a woman!

Hal may think he's justifying his choices but Jones laid it all out in perfect metaphor. What Hal most wants is to get back to Earth. But instead of moving toward that goal by hiring as many new recruits as quickly as possible (since he only needs to hire five, why is he being so fucking choosy?!), he refuses to hire the woman and hires the alien that looks like a fucking penis. Maybe that metaphor is too perfect, Gerard. A little too hammer to the reader's skull, if you will.

Hal heads off to find Brik who never made it to his recruitment scam meeting. He finds one of the recruits Brik was going to bring along, a warrior named Kworri of the Obsidian folk. He has racist issues about the other recruit Brik was going to hire, one of the Pumice People. Hal and Kworri fly into orbit around his planet to follow Brik's trail and find where she disappeared. They're confronted by some guy named Flicker who declares he's "the best headhunter in the business." I don't know what business he's headhunting for but it's probably criminal.

Green Lantern #20 Rating: B. Most of this issue was exposing Hal's problem with women. Although if you believe and trust Hal, he doesn't have as much a problem with women as his actions prove. He's just really into psychedelics, man. Were the '90s the first decade where printing became reliable enough for an editor to approve a villain with the name of "Flicker"? Either that or the editor just told the letterer, "Make sure you stick an extra space in Flicker's name or there's going to be trouble with fake Christian anger outlets."

Take a look at that huge gap the letterer left in Flicker's name! Can't be too careful!

Green Lantern #19 (December 1991)

I forgot how huge Alan Scott was.

I had this theory when I was a wee lad that everything in the past was immensely bigger due to atoms and the things inside atoms (quantum guts?) squeezing together more and more as time moved forward. So the Earth was much more massive but still on the same scale according to the other planets we observe today. I don't know what my theory was trying to prove. Why dinosaur bones are so massive? That giants actually did exist like the Bible tells us? That the universe was actually shrinking? Perhaps I just didn't understand the concept of theories. What I'm trying to explain is that younger me would have totally understood this cover. "Of course Alan Scott is massive! He's from the '40s! People in the '40s were way bigger than modern folk It's all in my book, 'The Squash Principle' which I wrote when I was six."

Another theory I had was that déjà vu was due to the unending cyclical nature of the universe and how we continually live the same lives over and over again. I think I told my friend Bobby Henline that theory at a sleepover at his place one night when we were like eleven. He probably just responded, "MAGA! Guns, guns, guns! You're fired!" No, wait. That's Bobby Henline now! I can see how I could get mixed up though, due to the cyclical and repeating nature of the universe. It's sometimes hard to remember what part of your life you're currently living.

This great big anniversary edition begins with John Stewart trying to take away the freedom of some long-necked blue aliens who love to murder Blobels.

Maybe they hate Blobels. But maybe they love killing Blobels! How can they do that behind their own borders? Fascist!

I don't think we've seen these aliens before. They're too weird to be recurring characters. They've got those weird Satyr legs and ankles and long llama necks and big fat thick wormy tails coming directly out of their groins. Hmm, maybe they're not tails. Also maybe their necks aren't necks and their heads aren't heads! I'm making a lot of assumptions based on my humanoid biases! For all I know, each finger could be a big fat swollen clitoris and their eyes could be glassy membranes holding back their bowel movements! I'm not the only one that's suddenly horny, right?

Being an anniversary issue, the proper way to fill the extra pages is to have the character think about how they got to this point in their lives. This was 1991 so you needed a lot of extra room to explain a character's past over the last few decades. Unlike, say, in 2011 when you've jettisoned all of that baggage and hired Scott Lobdell to write fantastic first pages that begin, "My name is Superboy. I'm a boy who is super." Why didn't anybody come up with such succinct introductions before that?!

John remembers how he's an architect and how he's a back-up, back-up Green Lantern and how he married Katma Tui and how Star Sapphire killed Katma Tui and how he became a miserable wreck who couldn't pay attention to his job and got an entire planet killed. That only takes up five panels and gives a lot of information quickly and in a personal way. Could it be Lobdell's method was actually a step backwards in story telling?!

After telling the reader about himself, John goes on to aggrandize both Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner. Yeah, I know! He actually thinks up some nice things to say about Hal Jordan!

Oh, you probably thought it would be harder to think up nice things about Guy, didn't you?

Pre-brain-damaged Guy was a way better person than Hal Jordan. I would also point out that Hal Jordan has become a much better person since Emerald Dawn but why bother? Everybody already loves him so much. "Mmm, mmm, Hal Jordan! You're so bold and perfect and square-jawed! And your dick is huge! I can't get enough of your dick, Hal Jordan! Mmm! Mmm! So good!" You know, Guy's got a dick too! Maybe if it were stroked a little more often, he wouldn't be so irate and moody!

John Stewart's spiraling about why he was chosen to keep order on the Mosaic world (which used to be Oa). He comes to the conclusion that he's the most exploitable because he's the best student. Man, do I feel that! I remember one time in typing class on a Friday when we were always allowed to do our own work but Mr. Gary, knowing I was the best typist, wanted me to type up some worksheets for him. I'm not sure what I said to him in the moment because I was enraged but it amounted to "Fuck off, pudding man." Later that class, he asked my friend Paul what was wrong with me and I think Paul's answer was a simple shrug as opposed to Paul's entire theory of all the fucked up shit that was wrong with me. Because he wanted so badly to be my friend! And he still is! Thanks, Paul!

John's moping turns into "John has a vision."

Is it a vision or is it just a hallucination brought on by touching blue llama Satyr finger clit sweat?

John is right. The Justice Society disappeared forever ago. Was it due to Crisis on Infinite Earths or did it happen before that? Probably Crisis seeing as how the Justice Society were on a whole different Earth. So when did we learn that they were trapped in a bottle battling Ragnarokian beetles with paddles in a muddy puddle paddle beetle bottle battle?

Instead of assuming that he'd eaten some alien psychedelic something or other, John decides Alan Scott actually visited him in a vision. I guess architects don't believe in Occam's Razor. Although how well does Occam's Razor actually work as a means of understanding the world when you live in a comic book?! In a comic book, usually the most wildly inconceivable answer is the correct one. Anyway, John rushes off to Earth to stop looking for scars although, um, isn't that just what he's doing? The Earth is the past, man! Suck it up and become a citizen of Mosaic already! Stop miring yourself in the past, especially the super duper old past from the '40s!

Chapter Two concerns Hal Jordan. He's still recruiting for the Corps and while doing so, he finds himself on a planet ruled by Alan Scott's old buddie, Doiby Dickles. This comic book wasn't kidding about celebrating fifty years of DC history! Even if we're on the other side of Crisis on Infinite Earths. I suppose it would be hard to have a 50th anniversary celebration if you kept reminding everybody at the party that you threw the majority of the first 45 years into the bin five years ago.

Doiby turned a good portion of his planet into the Brooklyn of the '40s and '50s. He also taught everybody on the planet to speak like a '50s New York bum. I don't mean a houseless person! I mean a bum! As in what you'd call some no-good jerk neighbor in the '50s! Although they were probably all, "I'm calling this guy a bum because I don't understand how people can become down on their luck. And what I don't understand scares me!"

Anyways, I'm skipping over most of the Doiby stuff because who the fuck cares about Doiby Dickles and his old timey way of life? I was probably bored by it in 1991 so I'm absurdly bored by it in 2024. I seriously hope Chapter Three doesn't have Guy Gardner discussing the past with Pieface.

The "help" Doiby is about to suggest is Alan Scott.

Hal points out to Doiby that Alan Scott disappeared years ago. I don't know how Doiby didn't also disappear. I'm fucking surprised Hal Jordan even remembers Doiby and Alan. I'm pretty sure they should have ceased to exist in the DC Universe by 1991.

Alan Scott appears in a vision to Hal and Doiby too. He tells Hal to seek him out. So he and Doiby hop in Doiby's space cab and head to Earth to find some answers. Why Earth? Because Alan Scott didn't leave them any clues to his current whereabouts except that he was an Earth-based Green Lantern that wasn't affiliated with the Corps.

Time for Guy Gardner and Chapter Three! Guy only gets to pout for a couple of panels before Alan Scott appears to him because the entire last issue was a Guy Gardner issue. Some readers were probably sick of him by this point. Not me. I can't get enough Guy Gardner, even when he's written like a total Republican.

I'm not going to express what I'm pretty sure Guy's reaction to this was being that it was basically written in the '80s.

Guy Gardner's reaction wasn't to flaunt his Gaydar but to exclaim, "That was weird! It doesn't seem wise to follow that gay ghost guy. But it might be exciting!" So Guy flies back down to Earth (he was messing around in orbit obliterating small heavenly bodies) to investigate the disappearance of Alan Scott (who wasn't expressly gay in 1991 but we all saw his choice of collars. Most heterosexuals weren't that big on camp back then). Guy's first stop: visit Alan's children, Jade and Obsidian! That probably won't help because aren't they still super confused about how they exist on this Earth post-Crisis anyway?! Man, I really need to re-read Crisis on Infinite Earths. And probably that follow-up series about the complete history of the DCU which was all, "This is how it is now. We know you hate it. But you have to accept it. At least until Zero Hour and Infinite Crisis and 52 and The New 52 and Rebirth and whatever else we eventually come up with to fuck canon in its every orifice."

Todd and Jennifer-Lynn don't know shit about what became of their father. They suggest Guy go see Harlequin. That's when John arrives and says, "Maybe we should go see Harlequin." Then they run into Hal and Doiby on their way to see Harlequin. So they all go knock on Harlequin's door together, forgetting she's an old woman. She probably won't freak out too badly about three Green Lanterns showing up at her door. But seeing Doiby Dickles? Ugh. Gross. I'd rather blow out my rectum straining on a rock hard opiate shit.

I don't know what I have against Doiby Dickles. Let's play a game! I'll scan a picture of Doiby and you decide for yourselves what I have against him!

Doiby's the short fucker in the stupid hat with the irritating look on his dopey face.

The Harlequin (not to be confused with Harley Quinn who isn't old and not sexy) shows the Lanterns and fuckfart a message that Alan Scott left on the wall of their house: "I am needed. I will return, I promise you!" I'm not sure about that comma. But what do I know? I only have a college degree in Reading Shit. Maybe if I'd gotten a degree in Writing Shit, I'd know how to use commas correctly.

Old Harls pulls out Alan's old lantern that has nothing to do with the Guardians of the Universe to show the other Lanterns that wherever he is, he's got to be out of power by now. But then the lantern (which always has power? Why even bother with a ring? Just carry the lantern around!) conjures up an image of Alan Scott and confesses that it was the one who contacted them because it was lonely.

It sounds like Alan was fucking his lantern.

Not knowing when the lantern was last cleaned, nobody wants to fuck it. So they figure they'd better find Alan Scott and get his dick back to his wife and mistress so the lantern stops bothering everybody.

Did Alan Scott invent the fleshlight?

Guy Gardner says what everybody was thinking (including me!): How fucking lucky was Alan Scott to have a Green Lantern ring but no bosses? And his weakness was to wood instead of yellow. I bet wood is far less common to have to deal with because what super villain goes around hitting people with wood? Other than The Floronic Man and Mister Cricket (copyright me!)? Alan's lantern decides to show him how it came to be and how Alan got the cushiest Green Lantern gig in the DC Universe.

Chapter Four recounts Alan Scott's origin.

Was this drawn by a 4th grader who won some kind of DC sweepstakes?

Oh shit. This section was drawn by Martin Nodell, the creator of Alan Scott! I'm such a fucking asshole. Why couldn't I have had a mother who would often tell me, "If you can't write something nice, don't write anything at all"? Instead I got a mother who constantly yelled, "Get that slut out of this house!" So unfair.

The Green Lanterns are boggled by this Yalan Gur. Not because he looks more idiotic than Howard the Duck but because his ring works against both yellow and wood! And he's not bothering to follow any of the rules handed down by the Guardians of the Universe! He's a fucking maverick! This guy's my new favorite Green Lantern! I wonder why stupid 20 year old me didn't fall in love with duck-faced Yalan Gur when I first read this? What an idiot I was.

You know what the Guardians also told you not to do? Kill an entire planet of aliens, you bootlicker!

Alan Scott's battery explains that Yalan Gur was the teacher's pet. The Guardians loved this guy (and rightly so!). But then he was nearly killed by a yellow monster and the Guardians were all, "Maybe we shouldn't have created the yellow flaw? Was that a stupid idea? Should we take it out?" And so they did! But just for their favorite boy, Yalan!

Right? Fuck those little blue assholes!

You know what? I'm really enjoying Marty's cartoony pages. Also he was 76 by this time and really hadn't done a whole lot of comic book work in the last few decades. I wonder if DC paid him for this? I'm sure his creator credit meant nothing, having been established in 1940. They probably had him do this work for free and made it sound like some kind of honor. Hell, Mart should have received royalties his entire life on every single character based on his versions of the Green Lantern. That includes all the stupid aliens over the years like Chaselon and Ch'p.

Yalan Gur begins to fuck with the population of the Earth, forcing them into chaos at every turn. Eventually the Guardians grow sick of his cocky bullshit and decide to make him vulnerable to the simple stick after which he was killed. Although not by sticks or wood. He got angry at the Guardians and then forgot to protect himself as he re-entered Earth's atmosphere which, surprisingly, isn't made of wood. I'm not going to question the inconsistencies of a comic book written in the '40s (I'm assuming this isn't totally new shit so that I don't have to rage at how stupid it is). They were actually being written for kids back then! You think kids need canon and consistency and logic in their fantasy stories? No way! That's why they're so much better than me and you. I'm assuming you're an adult. If you're not, you really shouldn't be fucking reading this, kid. Go to bed.

So Yalan Gur's lantern remained on Earth causing trouble until Yalan Gur's soul repented its sins and Alan Scott found the lantern which still retained its weakness against wood. And maybe for burning up on re-entering Earth's atmosphere.

When the Lanterns return to the present (they weren't just being told the story of Yalan Gur; they were witnessing it first-hand via time travel. Is Alan's battery the most powerful Green Lantern battery?), Hal and John explain the lessons they've learned. Guy does too. Sort of. He sarcastically expresses the lessons he should have learned before fucking off to beat up Despero. And, well, that's it! Nobody finds Alan Scott. Nobody confiscates the time traveling Green Lantern battery. Nobody explains to Jade and Obsidian what the fuck is going on. They just go back to their jobs having done absolutely fuck all.

Green Lantern #19 Rating: C. Too long! Too boring! Nothing happened! The only good thing about this issue was Yalan Gur whom I absolutely had forgotten about but remembered instantly upon seeing Mart Nodell's caricature of him. I re-read the Green Lantern Quarterly comics a few years ago and already can't remember much about them (except that Scott Lobdell wrote one of the stories, maybe the one about that Jack guy?) so now I'm wondering if Yalan Gur got any stories in that comic? Now I want to go back and check!

Green Lantern #18 (November 1991)

When I was younger and full of pep and verve, I would have Photoshopped this cover to say, "ONE HORNY GUY!"

Never mind. As you can see (and which probably confused you for a moment or more), I did it anyway. My Photoshop skills have begun to stagnate so maybe I should return to the dictum of my younger days: "If I think it, I do it!" As you can imagine, that's led me into some pretty wild situations, like eating string beans or walking barefoot in grass. Fucking crazy times.

This is the original cover if anybody was curious.

The reason I thought, "ONE HORNY GUY!", was that my first reaction upon seeing this Franzetta-inspired cover was, "Did Guy Gardner just fuck his way through the Oan sciencells?" According to the cover (the one I manipulated), he has just done exactly that. So that's what this issue will be about. Guy fucking every Green Lantern villain. I hope he skullfucks Hector Hammond. Baby got back (of the head).

I haven't posted a review since the day before that violence-solves-problems guy was killed while shooting at Trump so I can understand if some of you were worried that that had been me. I will not refer to it as an "attempted assassanation" because that sort of implies the target was important and not a sentient fart in a poorly tailored suit. I also haven't been away for three weeks because it takes me that long to Photoshop one comic book cover. I just had some work stuff I was dealing with! Also I'm lazy! And it's been really fucking hot!

Speaking of people who think the ultimate problem solver is violence, Guy Gardner seems on the verge of climbing a roof across from the United Nations.

Of course Breakdowns began with some guy shooting Max Lord in the head and it didn't solve any problems. It just created this problem that's got Guy pissed off. Although for the person trying to kill Max, I guess it solved their problem of the Justice League continuing to operate even though they kept sneaking over international borders to instigate regime changes in Bialya. Which is probably breaking international law but when you're living in a country that invented the CIA, it's just another afternoon tea party.

Guy is right though. Not about the violence but about being controlled by the United Nations. He serves a greater authority. Not in the way people usually mean that when they're all, "I serve a greater authority!", and then you learn that the "greater authority" they're talking about is a historical delusion and believing that It exists should actually be categorized as a mental illness (I capitalized "It" not because I believe in the Christian God but because I'm a very respectful Boy). No, Guy serves the Guardians of the Universe which, if you believe in logic, trumps the United Nations by a number so many factors of ten greater that the United Nations would be reduced to zero if this were a math problem. Because the Universe is like the United Galaxies and galaxies are much bigger than nations.

After quitting the Justice League (which was just disbanded by the United Nations anyway), Guy smells his fingers.

Only a few reasons exist as to why Guy would smell his fingers and they're all gross (even if some of them could be quite sexy) so I'm not going to get into it.

G'nort approaches Guy as he leaves and freely expresses how he'd like to rub off on Guy. General consensus being that G'nort isn't just doglike but actually a space dog, my supposition is that somewhere in some comic (probably one in the modern age drawn by Simon Bisley and written by Gail Simone), G'nort humps Guy's leg. To completion.

This comic book came out in 1991 and has thought bubbles. I just mention it because sometime soon, maybe around the mid-90s, they all but disappear in favor of "Narration Boxes" where you get the protagonist's inner feelings about the moment but spoken in a way that's outside of the present moment, usually sounding like a commentary on a DVD, or somebody remembering an old story. I prefer thought bubbles because they're of the moment and honest and don't try to express far more than what the character is thinking at the time. Narration Boxes tend to wax philosophically on theme and meaning, expressing much more than the reader needs to know. They almost feel like a writer's crutch, knowing that the story they've written and the artist has drawn won't express the thing they want the reader to believe they're expressing. They're like an artist's manifesto posted next to their modern art piece which tells the reader exactly what they're supposed to think and feel while looking at the art.

Also, I mention thought bubbles because this is one of the things Guy thinks:

Now all I can picture is Ice humping Guy's leg and it's making me need to take a, um, bathroom break followed by a nap.

Not that I think Ice is a gutless weenie! But I'm sure Guy thinks Ice is a gutless weenie.

G'nort realizes Guy's feeling down because Guy has become DC's punching bag for every righteous hero. If they're not beating the shit out of Lobo to prove they can beat the sexiest threat in the DC Universe, they're beating the shit out of Guy Gardner because writers have made his character so unlikeable that all fans want to see is Guy getting knocked out. G'nort believes Guy needs some action to cheer up. But who can Guy fight when no writer at DC wants to see Guy act like a hero? Oh wait! I know! Every villain in the Oan Sciencells! And Gerard Jones will let him win because why not? It's time to revamp Guy's attitude and turn him into the greatest Green Lantern to ever live! Right before he loses the ring and becomes Guy Gardner, Warrior!

How did I ever like Guy Gardner? I never realized how much writers loved to make him spout Republican talking points.

I don't know why that homeless guy looks like a demon. Maybe Guy Gardner is currently flying through an issue of Hellblazer.

Guy Gardner winds up at a carnival where some lady named Kari who seems to have a romantic history with Guy works as a fortune teller. I don't remember her but that's probably because she's from the '70s or early '80s. I do own the issue where Guy Gardner winds up in a coma but I don't remember it much. It seems Kari misses the old Guy, a man of honor and sacrifice. But Guy doesn't miss the old Guy because the new Guy suffers from brain damage that doesn't allow him to identify with the person he once was. He just sees him as a beta male.

Guy wound up here because some person named Goldface wanted to see Guy again. They once adventured together in the anti-matter universe of Qward and Goldface remembers it fondly. But Guy remembers it differently. Mostly because Goldface is a super villain working with other super villains who have escaped the Oan Sciencells.

Does Guy choose the heroic thing or the violent thing? Don't bother answering, Anonymous. That's a rhetorical question.

Surprisingly, Guy doesn't win this battle against a guy covered in gold that shoots gold beams. Wait. Did I mean unsurprisingly? I don't fucking know. What happens is that the fight winds up in a draw and Goldface walks away because he didn't do anything except offer Guy a job and defend himself against Guy's attack. So now Guy feels even more impotent than when this issue began. Maybe even more impotent because of his old flame Kari who was all, "You're a terrible Guy Gardner who couldn't turn my Underoos into a foggy swamp no matter how hard you tried!" And she would know because she's a fortune teller.

By the end of the issue, Guy's beginning to realize he needs to make some changes in his life. How much do you want to bet that one of those changes won't be therapy? If not getting help from a therapist is good enough for Batman, not getting mental health help is good enough for Guy Gardner too!

Green Lantern #18 Rating: C. Not only did Guy not fuck all of the villains in the Oan Sciencells, he didn't even battle them! He didn't even see any of them! But he did learn that they were freed by the Mad Guardian in the hopes that they'd bring more villains back to Oa to be the Mad Guardian's friends. They did not do that. They just formed a little club with Goldface to become some kind of future threat. Ultimately, we saw no Angry Guy and no Horny Guy. We just saw a Lost Guy who realizes being the violent anti-hero who never actually helps anybody just isn't working anymore. Did it ever work? I suppose some idiots in their late teens and early twenties swooned over him like little hateful twats. I really wish I hadn't been one of them! I didn't realize how much of an asshole every DC writer made Guy out to be. I can't even imagine young me, who was definitely more full of toxic masculinity (because I had yet to be exposed to literature like Age of Innocence and Vanity Fair and Middlemarch and Beloved and "Melenctha" and a whole fucking host of other works that helped build my empathy past my love and compassion of cats), liking the Guy Gardner I've been reading all this time. I can only understand it in the sense that I was prone to putting people up on pedestals and imagining the version of them that I wanted them to be. I'm mostly talking about the girls I had crushes on in school but I think it extends to male characters I was drawn to, like Guy and Lobo. One of my biggest crushes that came out of comic books was Foxfur, one of Skywise's pre-Madcoil girlfriends, and how much page time did she get? Five panels at most?!

Green Lantern #17 (October 1991)

"No! Wait! You can't quit! We're not done fucking with you yet!"

I instantly had a few thoughts when looking at this cover and the most immediate and disturbing was, "I wonder what the Guardians' balls smell like?" I didn't plan on thinking that. I didn't want to think that. But the Guardians look sweaty and they're probably just free-ballin' and they're blue which probably adds a dimension to the smell, right? Do colors smell? I grew up in the '70s where everything was Scratch 'n' Sniff scented so I'm wired to think that yellow smells like bananas and red smells like cherries and purple smells like grapes and brown smells like chocolate and black smells like licorice and orange smells like oranges and blue smells like snozzberries and green smells like apples and/or watermelons. I don't know if the idea that all colors had specific scents cascaded down into newer generations but as a Gen Xer, colors definitely smell. So sweaty blue Guardians balls smell like a cowboy's saddle after a long cattle drive if you sniffed it while chewing blueberry gum that was almost out of flavor.

At the end of the last issue, John Stewart went mad. He went mad a little bit from the guilt of killing everybody on some planet I've forgotten about, a little bit by reading too many philosophical texts, a little bit by analyzing too many pop songs, a little bit by being forced to babysit a bunch of aliens thrown into a cosmic melting pot, a little bit by growing up in a racist America, a little bit by having Hal Jordan as a mentor, and a lot a bit by being possessed by an insane Guardian of the Universe. What he's done to himself over time, building a wall around his heart and his past so he doesn't have to care about all the pain he's endured (like the planet killing, racism, and pop songs), he's now done to Oa. He put up walls to avoid confrontation. John begins this issue realizing that he's got some shit to deal with and maybe by not dealing with it, he's used it to sculpt a prison planet full of metaphors and analogies which he can't run from. Although judging by the cover, he's going to fucking try.

An awful lot of comics were basing their themes on Pink Floyd songs in the early '90s (see Cerebus and, well, two. Two comics were doing that).

John determines that the Mad Guardian's voice in his head is just his own brain giving a voice to the Mad Guardian's memories that wound up locked in his head when the Mad Guardian died while mind-linked to him. So John yells at the voice to shut up meaning he's yelling at himself meaning he doesn't shut up at all, shoves the voice back into his subconscious, and continues to live deeply in denial just like everybody else with perfect mental health.

The red alien (who is part of a race now being referred to as "The Horde") comes out of his coma long enough to mutter "See Rose" to John. John doesn't yell at it to shut up even though this is obviously another hallucination from his crazed mind. Instead, John thinks, "Wow! How did Rose get this alien to send me a message to see her? I should maybe go see her!" It turns out that's exactly what happened which means John and Rose are either greater geniuses than I am or just more earnest. Because I definitely wouldn't have listened to the Horde fellow. I mean I wouldn't have comprehended what he was trying to say. I would have responded, "Sea rose? Which sea rose? What are you talking about? There's a sea on Oa?! How did you wake up? I had you on enough Ketamine to fuel a Lords of Acid afterparty!"

If you grew up in the '70s, you'd realize this is the perfect beat in the dialogue for Lenny and Squiggy to barge in the door yelling, "Hello!"

Hal Jordan also does not barge through the front door. Nor does the Kool Aid Man bust through the wall because he can't reach a doorknob due to his thick midsection and small arms. Nobody comes to save them even though John looked directly at the camera and pleaded, "How?!" How will they stop this travesty? How will they save the world? How can they turn the tide of hatred and violence that threatens to destroy everything?

Dammit. Now that I referenced an old television show like Laverne and Shirley, my mind has begun picturing John Stewart, architect, as Mike Brady. This is just like an episode of The Brady Bunch! The battling aliens forced to live with each other are just like the children from separate marriages being forced to get along in such a small space. John Stewart, the architect, must maintain peace and find a way for everybody to live together. Rose takes the place of Carol Brady, his platonic wife, helping John to see things more clearly. And the Guardians are Alice. They're just watching and making snarky comments while occasionally leaving the house (Oa) to go fuck Sam the Zamaron.

Rose suggests John turn every race's most shallow and stereotypical attribute into a positive by giving them purposes based on their differences. John points out that's fucking racist and Rose gets a little bit too mad at him for shutting her down.

Sure, John. She was going to say "now."

Like I pointed out, John's an earnest motherfucker. But if thinking Rose was going to say "now" helps John to get off his ass and start fixing this shit, I don't see any need to suggest otherwise. Obviously Rose was going to say now! Um, obviously!

John's walls collapse under the pressure of every alien on the planet trying to knock them down. A tremendous massacre ensues as every alien race attacks every other alien race. Luckily Hal followed Chaselon back to Oa and he and his recruits arrive in time to save at least a few lives. John sees Hal arrive and it sends him spiraling once more. All of his childhood insecurities return to the surface. Plus that one insecurity where his wife, Katma Tui, was murdered by Jordan's ex, Carol Ferris (as Star Sapphire). So the guy whose ex murdered his wife who John resents because he's also the great white hero who always swoops in to save this poor little Black boy once again wags John's failures right in his face. Unbeknownst to Hal, of course, who just does his cop job the way any cop does: without thinking. John, who thinks way too much, finally decides maybe he should act. He couldn't act to stop race riots when he was a boy. He couldn't act to save his wife from Hal's ex. He couldn't act to save an entire planet because the bomb was yellow (but that was a case where he didn't think enough! That was one where he acted too much without thinking so I don't think it should be part of the list. But it is. Because, you know, an entire planet died). And now John can't act to save the aliens on Oa because he's more concerned with how the entire situation is a metaphor for his mental health rather than something that's happening right at the moment and it's causing people to die.

Don't threaten Hal with a good time brawl that could end with him 86'd from an entire planet.

Hal allows John to lead the team while also allowing John to think that Hal isn't allowing John to lead the team. That's why he's a hero! Having thought too much about how to protect the aliens of the planet from each other using the wisdom of philosophers and poets, John decides now to use the wisdom of Mike Tyson and Hal Jordan. Instead of walls and non-violence, John turns to beating the shit out of people and locking them in cages.

I guess this works better than the walls because Rockwell has no sycophants lending him their ears.

Those most scared of violence being committed against them are always the ones most willing to commit violence against others. Some people have guns even though they know what guns have done to our communities because they don't give a shit what happens to anybody but themselves. And the gun, while not actually making them safe, gives them a sense of safety. But here's the secret, assholes: you can feel safe without a gun. All you have to do is stop pooping your pants every day worrying about how you can't control every other individual on the planet! Calm down, fuckers. Take a breath. Maybe meditate a little bit.

Here's my secret to feeling safe without resorting to being part of the mass killing community (if you own a gun, face it, you're part of the community. You allow mass killings just to feel safer): if I'm killed because I don't have a gun, I don't give a shit. I'd rather die than be party to our gun epidemic. I doubt there's a gun owner in America who sleeps better than I do.

After the Green Lanterns stop the fighting by imprisoning all the leaders and making a grand show of their power, John heads over to Rose's house to ask for her help. Hal is all, "Wait. This is my lady's house!" And John is all, "Yeah, I need her help!" And Hal is all, "*GLARE GLARE JEALOUSY GLARE*"

John confronts the Guardians and learns they're not sending anybody home. They've become attached to their caged vermin. Or something. They claim observing different aliens and how they get along is for the greater good of the universe. And they tell John he's welcome to leave and abandon his duty and his new friends and the one thing he does better than Hal Jordan. So John doesn't quit. The cover was a big lie! Ha ha! I bet you were fooled, weren't you?! Stupid comic book reader!

John gathers all the peaceful aliens together to start a local governing council that will plan the new community. He's going to do the thing Rose suggested earlier that he called racist. Mostly because it's the easiest way to present a new comic book title, Green Lantern: Mosaic. It'll contain so many allegories and morality tales and fables and lessons to learn! I can't wait to read it (again!).

Green Lantern #17 Rating: B+. I was hoping for a more intricate solution to the problems of the Mosaic world than "putting the rabble rousers in prison." It's just such an American answer and not any more thoughtful than just building a wall. But at least John sees this as a temporary solution to keep the peace. He also makes sure Rockwell knows that he has no problem going even further if it's warranted. John will bring death and destruction any time it is needed to save his new world. But he doesn't want that. He's going to work with all of the earnest aliens he's met so far who believe they can all coexist. And they're going to hammer out some really smart solutions. And John will probably hammer out Rose's butthole, if you get my meaning. My meaning is what I literally wrote, by the way. Hal's going to have to start dating Brik (which would make Brik gravel her underwear. She's so into Jordan).

Green Lantern #16 (September 1991)

I bet by this point in the conflict on Mosaic, John's wishing he'd joined the Marines early in his life.

The day I matured was the day I realized "Cat's Cradle" was sung by an unreliable narrator who was trying to gaslight the audience against the son he ignored his whole life just because the son decided, by college, he wasn't going to waste one more second on his piece of shit dad. How I never understood the son's repetition of his father's lies when he borrows the car and informs his dad that they'll have a good time whenever he gets back later that night speaks to either my "child waiting for his father to come home like the narrator in Faster Pussycat's 'House of Pain'" naivete or our cultures ability to push narratives accepted by the ignorant masses over actual truth. So many people think the song is tragic when it's really a bad-ass anthem of rebellion and letting go of toxic family. I'm sure there were loads of dads whose sons never got to know them and later in life didn't want to get to know them who believed their sons were ungrateful jerks who couldn't understand what they gave up to provide for them. But, you know, they understood. We choose what is most important to us and other people observe those choices. Especially children.

Hopefully that winds up having something to do with this story so that I can pretend it wasn't simply a short look into my head after waking up from a dream where my dad was trying to get me back into his life.

America. Where every out of work miner in small towns like Hope Springs owns an Uzi.

America. Where the white guy in the background is more horrified that a cop is trying to stop some other white men from killing some non-white people than how every man in town tried to shoot their way through a white woman for a chance to shoot the non-white guys.

America. Where Christians are taught that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorah because of the gays rather than trying to explain why Lot gets drunk and fucks his daughters in a cave a week later.

You might be wondering why I brought up that last one. It sort of surprised me too because I was planning on listing a lot more shit that was wrong with America's policing and their treatment of our fellow Black citizens. But this issue is called "Scriptures" which made me think of The New Testament which made me think of the Old Testament which made me think of the way the story of Lot's daughters getting him drunk and fucking him is told in a way that makes you think, "Man, incest is hot." I see some you giving me some suspicious side-eye! I'm not the one who thinks incest is hot! Readers of The Bible probably are those perverts! You might be the kind of people who have only experienced The Bible second-hand and think the stories told in it communicate precisely what you've been told they communicate. Now, I don't know "precisely" what the religious dogma is surrounding Lot's daughters seducing their father because the elder daughter gaslights the younger one into thinking that the end of the world has come and no more men exist even though they just, on the way to this cave, passed through the town of Zoar with all those non-father men living there. Some people might think, "That's hot." But those people are disgusting and/or Paris Hilton! What you should be thinking when you read that is, "How drunk would I actually have to get to not realize that I had sex with my daughter the night before and would it be a believable amount so that I can pretend I'm drunk later tonight so I can have sex with my other daughter?"

I've just convinced myself that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was absolutely the fault of Lot's super horny daughters. Sodom was destroyed because a bunch of men were all, "Hey! We want to fuck those hot, genderless winged creatures who are currently staying in your house, Lot!" And Lot was all, "No way! Gross! Get out of here!" But then Lot's daughters were all, "Let us fuck them, Dad! Let us fuck them! Please! Speaking of pathetic, powerless, genderless pricks, our husbands aren't satisfying us! Please let us fuck everybody!" And Lot was all, "Um, okay, uh, hey, do you guys want to fuck my horny daughters?" And the Sodomites were all, "Did we say we wanted to fuck non-genderless, non-winged, non-unmarried women? Get out of here with that shit!" And so Lot was all, "Um, okay, you know what? Maybe we should get out of this town." And God was probably only half paying attention due to all the fucking negotiating about how many righteous people lived in Sodom with Abram that he didn't realize the real target of his wrath, Lot's horny daughters, had left town when he destroys it.

Yeah, you know what? That all makes sense. Don't question any of it. Bible explication time is over now!

John calls his "dream" a "vision" to obfuscate the fact that this massacre happened because he took a nice little nappy time.

America. Where old white guys who think cops serve them exclusively try to convince the younger kids in MAGA hats to shoot the cop who's obviously not about to take their side.

America. Where a person misinterprets a situation and then doubles down on their incorrect take even when it's proven wrong. I only bring that up because I'm way better than "America" and I can admit when I interpreted a panel incorrectly. That old guy isn't shoving a gun into the young guy's hand and convincing him to shoot John. He's wrestling the gun away from the cowardly young kid who won't resort to the terrible things that need to be done to protect the white race from all of these aliens and Black cops so that he can smash John Stewart in the head with the butt of the rifle (which must be a type of "brown-yellow" that I don't recognize because it knocks John Stewart fucking silly).

Has Rockwell ever fired one of these things before? I'm pretty sure he's holding it upside-down.

Maybe Rockwell learned to shoot from Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd cartoons and he believes you're supposed to blow your own fucking head off every time you pull the trigger.

Rose tries to explain to the crowd that she knows John Stewart is trying to help because she "spent last night with him." Having grown up in a rural white mining town, she immediately understands how that will be interpreted, especially when she sees every white guy pull a rope out of nowhere and begin forming a noose. I wouldn't know how to tie a noose but then I went to high school in the San Francisco Bay Area where we never had "noose tying" as a choice in our Physical Education classes. Somehow we still had Square Dancing though.

America. Where a white woman implying she had sexual congress with a Black man has resulted in an amount of deaths roughly equal to ten percent of the number of American soldiers killed in Vietnam. Maybe slightly less than that because I'm sure not all lynching deaths were because a bunch of fucked up white men thought a Black man had sex with a white woman. I'm sure some of the lynchings were due to some white man not feeling like a Black man was respectful enough, or grateful enough, or, you know, any fucking reason they could come up with that every other white person in town would have felt justified the killing.

The editors were probably all, "We're so sick of letters from offended white dudes. Make sure the person who first accuses Rose of an interracial sexual liaison is a POC woman."

If you think white dudes haven't been offended by any suggestion of liberal minded social justice in non-modern comic books, all you're revealing to me is that you've never really read the letters pages in older comic books. There's a reason white dudes came up with the term "snowflake"; they've been flaking their snow all over everybody else for generations. They've got to be the most offended demographic in the history of taking offense (which began, I believe, when God was all, "Hey, Cain. Where the fuck did Abel go?" And, yes, *I* know Cain and Abel weren't white. But just ask any white person to describe them and guess what? White as snow, motherfuckers!).

Some guy named Ibrahim manages to calm Rose down before she's murdered for crimes against white humanity.

America. Where some white guy uses a Muslim guy's last name and I automatically think it's a slur I've never heard before.

You might be surprised, based on my tumblr reputation as an "edgelord," how many slurs I never knew growing up. I probably learned the majority of them via comic books! Like Green Lantern's pal Pieface! I didn't even realize that one was a slur until this century! Learning that one, I felt like Randal in Clerks II being educated on the etymology of porch monkey. Not that I ever called anybody by Green Lantern's pal's nickname. Christ, imagine if I loved the nickname so much I just started using it as a chummy name for decades while everybody around me was thinking, "What the fuck is wrong with this way-too-jolly racist piece of shit?"

Looking up "Pieface" just to make sure that was Hal's pal Tom's "nickname," I wound up on "The Racial Slur Database" and, holy shit, I really, really don't know many slurs. They've got to be mostly made up by Internet trolls, right? I mean, this can't actually be one because nobody is native to Antarctica: "Ant. Antarcticans. Self-explanatory." No, no. It is not self-explanatory. Are we saying people use this slur against penguins?! What the fuck is happening?!

Now that the humans have attacked a peaceful delegation of Xudarians, the Xudarians have decided to join in on the violent fun. They now roam the skies of Hope Springs with Xudarian rocket launchers. But being a calmer species, they don't go blasting away yet. But the fuse has been placed in the powder keg and a match can be struck at any moment!

Which means it's time for an advertisement to break the tension! Ball Park franks. Eat them! They're "hot dogs"!

Current generations probably look at this and think, "He's dressed so wacky because he's a cartoon!" as opposed to "He's dressed so wacky because he's from the '80s!"

Notice the ad copy uses the term "skate away" and then has the stupid dog on roller blades. Yes, yes. Technically, he's "skating." But I'm from California, dude. Skate means skateboard or get the fuck out.

I was just watching an old episode of Project Runway and one of the contestants had decided that their "girl" they were designing for was a skater. And then she proceeded to dress this "skater girl" in a quilted outfit. A skater wearing a fucking quilted outfit. Michael Kors should have did a kick flip into a grind to slide across the runway slapping the fuck out of her as he passed (and all the other contestants too, just so they would learn not to be dumb idiots on the next runway).

And now back to our regularly scheduled twenty-two pages of tension!

This page reads so differently to modern readers who only think of Narration Boxes as a character's internal monologue.

On first reading this page, even I was taken unawares by the omniscient narrator's voice. I simply assumed it was John Stewart's view of the surrounding conflict and his musings on what fear drives people to do. But then I got to the narration boxes that sounds so fucking arrogant and narcissistic: "Only one being has power on this mad planet. One being has the power of sanity. The power of indifference. The power of estrangement." Okay, maybe the last two powers aren't that arrogant. They're a bit confounding when you think John is thinking it. "Why would he think of indifference and estrangement not just as powers but as attributes he perceives in himself?" I suppose I've often looked over a crowd of people and thought, "Only one person here is sane." But of course I've thought that, being the only sane person in existence.

John uses the ring to blast the shit out of every weapon being used against another being and then throws up walls between every single civilization. He also says, in a Narration Box, "Comfort yourselves with your scripture, little lunatics. I will keep you safe and secure." So, um, you know what? Pretty sure all of these Narration Boxes are John's inner monologue. The comic was written in 1991 and while you could still find omniscient narrators often enough, the Narration Boxes were definitely changing into inner dialogue and the "thought bubble" was on the way out. You still see thought bubbles from time to time but it's pretty rare already by 1991.

Anyway, I guess John isn't as sane as he thinks he is if these are the types of thoughts he's thinking.

By containing and separating every alien species on the planets, John disappoints the Guardians. The old farts look on his work and despair for it is the same work that they did before they all loosened up by getting laid. They should look down on the planet and think, "Of course this was John's solution. This is a stupid experiment. You don't take a bunch of different species and throw them in the same box and see how they get along. You do that to see them fight and determine the most vicious and powerful. Maybe we should fuck off and go get laid again?" Instead, they decide to continue to observe and hope things go differently than the way things went when they were trying to force order on the universe. Obviously things are going to go differently! All of these creatures have the ability to fuck with each other without worrying about space travel. John's solution is less of "doing the same thing they did by partitioning off species from each other" and more "using walls in place of the vast distances of space." All John's really done is move the parameters of the experiment closer to how things would naturally be across the universe. If you accept my metaphor of walls as space! And you should because you're mad and I'm sane.

Robert Frost's line shouldn't have been "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." It should have been, "Everybody can come together with their hatred of walls."

Through the use of a spy, Rockwell and his militants learn that many of the aliens feel the same way that they do. They want the walls to come down and Green Lantern's head. I'm not sure why they care about the walls being that there are "natural" walls between most of the civilizations anyway due to different gravities and atmospheres. I suppose the illusion of freedom is something they find worth dying for.

Meanwhile, the Guardians have been observing everybody's violent reaction. They're confused as to why mortal beings react out of fear and anger instead of trying to work together with beings that might stab them in the back and shoot them in the face at any moment, thus ending their, you know, mortality. Funny how these high and mighty immortal beings can't seem to ever understand how potent a fuel the fear of death can be. Plus they have no intention of sending any of these aliens back to their home planets because watching bugs in a jar fight each other to the death is so fucking thrilling. Better than sex, apparently, since they've given up sex to watch aliens kill each other.

The crystal aliens jerk each other off to create a harmonic disturbance that brings Chaselon the Crystal Green Lantern headed back to Oa. Hal realizes this probably means John's fucked up yet again, so he heads back too.

John has discovered that maybe he's more insane than everybody else on Oa when he tries to maintain the walls and his psyche is overtaken by the Mad Guardian's thoughts. Remember how the Guardians "cleaned" the Great Power Battery on Oa by shoving all the bad shit into John? Particularly that red electric creature thing? Pretty sure that's coming back to fuck everything up. You'd think that after John's mind is cleared of this being, somebody would have gone over the central battery with a fine toothed parasite comb and rid it of the other flaw that's soon to haunt Hal Jordan.

Green Lantern #16 Rating: A. The obvious solution to this entire problem has been a wall. But that's just the point, isn't it? Gerard Jones has written a story about an architect who must find a way for disparate races to get along which makes you think, "Well, build something. A wall!" And a lot of modern conservatives were probably putting pillows over their hard-ons as they read that. But just as I noted previously because of all the shit Robert Frost taught me (because I read "Mending Wall" correctly), I knew the wall would fail. So here in the penultimate issue, we see John resort to the wall to keep the peace. And we see how the wall fails miserably. Everybody hates the wall and it's just increased their passion for violence, especially violence against the Green Lantern. So how will John figure it out? Will John even figure it out? My guess is that Rose will figure it out by reaching out to the most violent aliens that started this whole mess. They'll find some common ground, hug, and peace will last for ten thousand years. Or Hal Jordan will arrive and start a massive brawl which well end with everybody laughing uproariously about how silly they were all acting and putting alien steaks on their blackening eyes.