A good variety of panels this week. Granted, it may not be the greatest thing that I’ve been reading Clone Saga out of pure nostalgia mixed with curiosity, but that’s still better than hermanos reading Jeph Loeb’s Hulk for whatever damn reason.
Amazing Spider-Man #613
Mark Waid and Paul Azaceta
Arkham Reborn #2
David Hine and Jeremy Huan
Here we go with the biggest week yet of this. Big week for Punisher and Ares, so if you like badasses with skulls on their chests, there you go. Ambush Bug was apparently an almost complete rewrite of what was supposed to be #6, so the panel in question isn’t supposed to say, “This is how funny the comic is.” It’s more, “They’re telling the truth and joking about them joking about it doesn’t stop it from being bad.”
Ambush Bug #7 (of 6)
Keith Giffen, Robert Loren Fleming, Art Baltazar and Franco
Anti-Venom: New Ways to Live #2
Zeb Wells, Paulo Siqueira and Chad Hardin
Back for another week of panels that give you a vague essence of the comics we have read this week without any real context. Let the non-reviews begin!
Amazing Spider-Man #607
Joe Kelly, Mike McKone and Adriana Melo
The Boys: Herogasm #5
Garth Ennis, John McCrea and Keith Burns
In only a few weeks, DC will release Blackest Night, the big summer event and culmination of Geoff Johns’ fantastic run on Green Lantern. Willpower, fear, love, hate, compassion, greed and hope will be duking it out as Black Hand and that Cosmic Harvey Dent Smurf resurrect all sorts of heroes and villains to join their side. We’ve been given notice about some who would return and others who might. Earth 2 Superman, Martian Manhunter, Terra and the Flying Graysons will be there for sure. Perhaps we’ll see Elongated Man, Alexander Luthor, or General Glory rise from the grave.
But you know what? It’s a bit cheap. All these black rings are flying around and the only major resurrections go to those who are superheroes, supervillains or acquaintances thereof? That’s no fun! Okay, that’s a lie, since this is going to rock, but that’s not as fun as it could be!
By focusing on the fictional, think of all those we’re missing out on. What about the real corpses out there? We could not only have Heath Ledger back, but also Cesar Romero as the icing on the cake. David Carradine could return to get revenge on those murdering ninjas. Jack Kirby could engulf Jim Starlin in a bubble construct and toss him into the deep recesses of space out of revenge for Death of the New Gods. Elvis Presley could return to Graceland and… oops. Disregard that. I forgot that Elvis never actually died.
After much deliberation, I have put together the Top Ten Real Life Black Lanterns I Want to See.
I guess I should put down some set-up first. This is from Avengers/JLA #4, written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by George Perez. It came out a little bit before Marvel and DC made some of their bigger modern changes. The team rosters were still more classic than in recent years, still before the days of Disassembled and Crisis of Conscience. Hal Jordan was still the Spectre.
I won’t go too deep into the story, but it involves Krona making a bet with the Grandmaster that puts the two super-teams on opposing sides. Not that that needs too much extra effort, though, as Captain America and Superman seem to have it in for each other. Superman sees mutant hatred, Dr. Doom, the Hulk and the Punisher running wild and considers the Avengers a bunch of failures. Captain America sees how the people in the DC world worship the Justice League to the point of museums and monuments and considers them little better than world conquerors. This leads into more than one throwdown, including a fight where Superman beats up Thor.
Fast-forward a bit. To save reality from Krona, the Grandmaster has been pushing the two worlds closer together. Reality rewrites itself again and again. The Avengers and Justice League go from being from two distant alternate realities to neighboring realities. Then they go from two teams that visit each other’s worlds on a regular basis to two teams that co-exist in the same world. Few are able to see through the lies.
Finally, the two teams find the Grandmaster, who wants the heroes to go stop Krona from destroying both their worlds. Due to reality being rewritten over and over, the teams are both down to their more base, classic rosters and identities and want to know exactly what they’re fighting for. Using the last of his powers, Grandmaster shows them a series of screens that broadcasts their histories. Despite all their victories, it focuses mainly on these heroes watching the losses that are meant to be. Tony Stark’s alcoholism, Aquaman’s loss of hand, Bane breaking Batman’s back, Doomsday killing Superman, Captain America losing his abilities and failing in his attempt to rely on armor tech, Odin’s death, Jason Todd’s death, and so on. The more important ones here are that Barry Allen sees that he’s going to die, Scarlet Witch and Vision see that their children will be creations from Wanda’s own madness, Giant Man sees the smack that he will never live down and Hal Jordan sees his descent into becoming Parallax.
And yet, in the end, the two sides decide that it is not up to them to judge the realities they are saving. They band together and plot against Krona. Superman suggests Captain America lead them, which he agrees to.
I swear, when I was intending to write this article, I thought these pages were more than two. Three, maybe four. They’re just so dense with dialogue that it’s bursting at the seams. That’s George Perez for you, I guess.
All five of those different conversations are aces, especially when you notice the segues. Notice how each conversation ends with another character in the shot. It took me forever to see Captain America in the background window. What I really loved about this scene is the stuff with Hal and Barry.
How messed up it has to be for these two. Barry knows that win or lose, he’s going to be dead within hours. It’s depressing, but not nearly as bad as what Hal has to be going through. Barry goes out honorably. Hal knows that not only is he going to die, but first he’s going to go crazy and take out a bunch of his friends before becoming the Darth Vader of the DC Universe. And he’s fighting to preserve that! It’s fucked.
Maybe it’s just me, but you can read the weight of it in Hal’s oath. The way he seems so less enthused compared to all the other times. Is it defeat? Sadness? Intent to do his best one last time? Shame? Bitterness? Is it that he realizes that the very oath he’s reciting has been proven to be nothing more than a lie?
But there they are, Hal and Barry, supporting each other. Just by the mutual reassurance, the two doomed friends are all but removed of that weight. It’s a nice, bittersweet scene, but sadly loses something thanks to their later resurrections.
I think I decided about including these pages for this installment because of all of that going on these days. Personally, I feel totally fine with Hal coming back (Green Lantern is more of a job position than identity, allowing Kyle to thrive on his own, though admittedly to a lesser extent). I can’t bring myself to care about Barry Allen’s return, outside of a couple choice moments in Final Crisis. Unless Steve Rogers stays away from the Captain America mantle and becomes the new leader of SHIELD/HAMMER for an extended period of time, I feel like his death could have lasted another three years. And Bart Allen… shit, I don’t know. That poor guy got messed up so much since Geoff Johns got his hands on him that I can’t say what’s best for him at this point.
Bottom line: I guess I feel like in scenes like this, the finality of one fictional character’s death strengthens the quality of life. But that’s me.
Back to the Avengers/JLA comic, there was one panel I’ve always loved for a stupid reason.
Look at Captain America. That’s the moment I realized that Steve Rogers has balls made of vibranium. He goes on to threaten Superman with such confidence that even now, my brain is trying to come up with ways for that outcome to be a possibility. I’ll get back to you on that. Cool as that is, that’s not why I bring it up.
I don’t know if this was a subtle way to intentionally foreshadow Avengers: Disassembled, but let’s see what happens when we remove the guys on the right.
Hey, now!
By the way, I still miss Hal’s kickass white hair tufts.
As part of the ongoing Green Lantern: The Masquerade theme, I’ve been looking through the various Green Lantern Corps, wondering what Corps I’d be signing up for.
Green is traditional, and I look good in the color. But come on, willpower? Me? I’ve spent the last five years swearing that I’d get up early tomorrow and go jogging. Also I’d have to put up with Guy Gardner.
Red? I do like kitties, and they have one on staff. But rage is tiring and vomiting lava is hard on the throat.
Yellow is a terrible color for me, and I can’t see myself instilling fear in anyone.
Forget about the Pink Corps of Star Sapphires. Wearing that little clothing in the icy vacuum of space? Why don’t I just pour a tray of ice cubes down my pants?
I flat-out hate the Indigo Lanterns. Serene bastards. You’re supposed to be compassionate! Get off your lazy benevolent asses and get to work!
The Blue, the Lanterns of Hope, might get my vote, because hey, I’m hopeful. Didn’t I spend the last four months hoping that they wouldn’t cancel Dollhouse? And lo, they did not. Behold my power!
But then there’s the Orange Corps. Honestly, these are the ones I really want to be on. Imagine all the cool stuff you’d get if someone gave you an magic wishing ring powered by greed. That would rock. And hard.
Sadly, as far as I can see, the Orange Corps is headed by Larfleeze, who looks like a bug would if it had just flown up your nose during an otherwise lovely bike ride and forced you to sneeze it out into your hand again. And the only way you can join the Corps is to let Larfleeze kill you and steal your identity.
There’s always a catch, isn’t there?
All right, I was the very last person in the world to read Blackest Night, but as I was going through the explanation of all the different Lantern Guilds at the end of the book I stumbled across this:
The blue ring charges a green ring and de-charges a yellow.
Is it just me, or does anyone else hear a pair of dice rolling when they read a phrase like that?
I think that the various Lantern Guilds at war with each other would make fantastic role-playing games.
We’re almost done with yet another week of this awful Morrison mind-scramble crap. God, what a hack. Between this and his Seven Soldiers run, I don’t even get why the man gets any work. Did you even read his New X-Men run a few years back? The guy who followed him was SOOOO much better.
But enough about that. Yesterday’s update saw some incomprehensible garbage involving Rubik’s Cubes and Metron as a tard. I don’t know, Final Crisis sucks. Let’s move forward!
As always, thanks to david “hermanos” brothers for helping me with this. He wanted me to remind you that a new Seaguy miniseries comes out today. Make sure to stay far away from that tripe. The last one was bad enough. Fucking Morrison.
We’re almost done with this week. Tomorrow, we get Darkseid at a rave and a guy with a bunch of bubble monitor things wrapped around his head. You can see a preview here.
Alanna, my friend who made the GIF that should clearly show you why you shouldn’t be reading or buying comics by Greg Land, read Green Lantern from last week and, like a lot of really smart people (me), realized that something sucked. In her own words:
I really hate the Star Sapphire outfit. A lot, it’s a stupid outfit and a recent redesign, so someone looked at it in the last decade and thought it was a good idea, and that’s terrible. But I think I get the idea, the designer tried to make it a sexy costume to go with the whole love theme. It’s just that they just made it impractical (especially when you’re as endowed as most of the Star Sapphires) and completely ridiculous. Bits of the detailing are neat, but they’re completely overwhelmed by the rest.
I figured they’d look far better, or at least like a Corps worth taking seriously, if they’d put on something that isn’t a wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen. So I threw this together.
Alanna popped into Photoshop and sent over this:
First of all, I apologize for the title of this entry.
I’m not particularly well-versed in Green Lantern lore, but I’ve noticed a few trends in how people respond to Hal versus how they respond to Guy.
Even discounting the Kyle fans, Hal seems to be the less popular of the two. Among fans, an appearance by Guy gets cheers, while Hal is viewed as business as usual. There are a lot of reasons for that. Hal is business as usual for Green Lantern fans. When a character has been appearing pretty regularly since 1959, it’s a lot harder to keep up his appeal compared to the guy who, despite a shortlived series of his own, gets added in for spice every now and again. Guy is the more extreme character, and extreme characters tend to be interesting.
But Guy has his own deficiencies. Deficiency. Okay. He’s a jerk. A biggun. However, that deficiency is also his strength, as a character. Why? Because every character and every writer makes it clear that they know he’s a jerk. Once that happens, once the text makes it clear that the story is about a jerk who also happens to do good things, it’s possible to relish the outrageousness of the character the same way we can relish the violence and the spandex costumes.
Hal, on the other hand, is a Hero. He is shown as not only the first Green Lantern, but the best Green Lantern. The sense I’m getting from diehard Green Lantern fans is that the outrage is not just about the mistakes Hal makes, but the fact that he is being sold as the One True Lantern. Because of that, all of his flaws, from his odd courtship with Carol Ferris to that little tantrum during which he almost ended the Universe, are being excused or ignored. And so Guy, with his rudeness, sexism, arrogance, and sometimes outright meanness is popular, and Hal is reviled.
Maybe a little accountability goes a long way?
