Drunken Comics Rage

Welcome back to third and almost-final part of my recap and reaction to the third collection of the new Green Lantern ongoing series.  Click on the links to find parts one and two if you dare.

Last time, our hero Hal Jordan had been a POW, escaped with his new (and mildly annoying) love interest Cowgirl, found out his new love interest went back and got shot down again and recaptured, flipped out, went to save her, got framed for murder, got saved by the Justice League, found out bounty hunters were after him, and got captured by some dude named Hunger Dog.  No, not Temple of the Dog, that was something else entirely.  But they were hungry.  Anyway.  Now you get to see the payoffs for all my annoying interludes from last time.

So who is after Hal?  Its…Amon Sur, son of Abin Sur, who recruited Hal into this Green Lantern Corps thing in the first place!  Dude has some major daddy issues, apparently; after a life of galactic crime he’s now decided that he’s going to capture and kill Hal and then be conveniently standing around when Hal’s ring goes looking for a replacement GL for the sector.  ‘Cause Amon ain’t afraid no mo’, I guess, and is the obvious selection, despite a whole world of superheroes…ah well, there is no understanding the mind of the galactic criminal.  Anyway, right as he’s about to blast the defenseless Hal into smithereens…Hunger Dog reveals himself to be John Stewart in disguise!!  John had captured the original Hunger Dog some time ago and gone undercover to determine who had put the bounty on Hal!  John just sorta stands around while Hal punches Amon a few times…until a yellow ring comes arching over the horizon, telling Amon Sur that he can inspire great fear and has been chosen as the newest member of the Sinestro Corps!  I bet you saw that coming!  I didn’t J  Before he can get into major fear-inspiring with his fancy new toy the ring teleports him away for psychological and physical training, presumably with the scary dude who ate that technologist guy’s head.  John Stewart runs off to go tell somebody important about what happened, and Hal…goes off to have a beer with his new hottie Cowgirl.

Meanwhile…the Star Sapphire hunts down Carol Ferris, former love of Green Lantern who had the audacity to get married while he was dead and a universal being and a POW and stuff, and yet again comes after Green Lantern so they can consummate their relationship and then, umm, the Sapphire can kill Hal and then encase the world in crystal.  Seriously.  More on that in a minute.

Hal and Star Sapphire/Carol scrap for a few minutes; eventually the crystal realizes Hal might actually be digging Cowgirl more than Carol!  So, it hops bodies and takes over Cowgirl.  Carol is pretty tired of the whole Star Sapphire taking her over thing, and tells Hal to suit her up with the ring, which he does (and though I didn’t go back and look, I think Carol’s green suit was a bit of an homage to the ol’ suit she wore back in the day in the first Star Sapphire go ‘round).  The two of them start dealing out a beatdown to Star Sapphire/Cowgirl, when…a handful of blue chicks, the Zamarons, show up.

I’m probably not going to get this exactly right, but apparently when the Guardians decided to setup the Green Lantern Corps (and reject intellect-impairing emotion, which I largely applaud), some females of their races rebelled against the no-emotion thing and decided to break off.  They formed their own group, the Zamarons, intending to do the opposite of the Guardians…seek out and embrace emotion.  Bajillions of years later they run across the Star Sapphire, embedded in the skeletal remains of a couple in embrace; figuring this is the perfect example of love, they spend bajillions more studying the crystal.  Over time, they lose sight of what love means; they seem to consider it ok that a wearer of one of the crystal shards can take a lover, spawn, and then encase the world in crystal as a sign of the true meaning of love.

(It’s a little better than I write it here)

Having basically taken down Star Sapphire/Cowgirl, Hal turns to fight the Blue Amazon Zamarons.  Carol manages to pry the Star Sapphire off of Cowgirl’s pretty little forehead.  The Zamarons hold down Hal, while the Sapphire locks the two ladies up and insists Hal makes a choice of his ultimate love.  Hal cunningly lays a big smooch on one of the blue chicks, fooling the crystal into thinking he’s chosen her.  The crystal claims the Zamaron, which sufficiently confuses them that they bail out to go fix her, with a warning to Hal that he has no idea what he’s done in turning them away.

The Zamarons wander off to pry the crystal off of her head.  They get all introspective suddenly and realize that 1) maybe sticking the crystal in somebody’s forehead might not be ideal in terms of keeping the host thinking clearly and 2) maybe they really haven’t figured the whole love/emotion thing out.  So what to do?  Well, the answer to #1 is apparently to make the crystals into rings to get them farther from the brain (ok, that makes some sense).  As for #2, they realize they have focused too much on love, and instead must focus on all the emotions the Guardians have turned away from…and cue an image of a circular room with columns of colored light/pedestals, with only three so far ‘lit’ up…green, purple, and yellow.  Foreshadowing strikes!

Meanwhile, Hal figures its time to sit all his women down, or at least all those that know he’s Green freaking Lantern and have had a malicious horny crystal embedded in their forehead, and have a talk.  Carol gets real uncomfortable like and leaves; the collection essentially ends with Hal and Cowgirl flirting…and then Hal finding out Carol just got a divorce!  Plot twist!!

Next time: what the hell I think about all this.  ‘Cause I know you are dying to know.  Or something.

Filed under: DC Comics, General Comics Rage, Monkey Rage