Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #1

Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #1
Cover Date: Summer 1992
Writers: Various
Artists: Various

Previously...

Last time we talked about how Hal Jordan hooked up with a 14 year-old (which gets retconned down to being a 13 year-old in this issue). Anyway, that relationship lasted for the rest of that run of Green Lantern, but, by 1992, Arisia had kind of fallen off the map. Now, you might think that the writers of Green Lantern would celebrate the fact that they no longer had to deal with that...unpleasantness, but Gerard Jones wasn't your typical writer. No, Jones decided to address the situation head-on....

Plot

So the framing story for this anthology is Hal and a bunch of other Green Lanterns looking at the Book of Oa, which tells them about famous Green Lanterns. The other stories are particularly memorable, but eventually Gerard Jones gets his chance to explain what happened to Arisia after we say her last.

Well, at some point after the end of the second volume of Green Lantern, Arisia decided to make a trip back to the old Green Lantern Corps headquarters in L.A., which unfortunately coincided with Guy Gardner and Kilowog accidentally demolishing it. The upshot is that Arisia gets hit on the head and reverts back to her 13 year-old personality, but still has the body of an adult.

This inspires her to have a flashback where it's revealed that she never really had a fully mature brain, but instead was using her power ring to fake having an adult personality so she could seduce Hal Jordan, which, uh...turned out to work like a charm.

You know, it's funny, because Gerard Jones was the writer who objected to the story where Hal went crazy and killed the Green Lantern Corps because, you know, he felt like it would ruin Hal's character, but revealing that Hal was sleeping with what was essentially a 13 year-old, that's apparently okay.

Anyway, Arisia, using her quasi-adult brain, also became a model, because apparently Jones felt like his story wasn't making the audience feel uncomfortable enough:

Anyway, her brains still scrambled, Arisia manages to get into a car wreck, which gives her amnesia. Meanwhile, back on Oa, Hal and his buddies have been watching the whole fucking story, and Hal vows to fix everything, whenever he gets a chance to head back to Earth. Then he decides just to go onto the next story, since, you know, what's the worst that could happen leaving a 13 year-old with amnesia and the body of a fashion model alone for a few weeks? To Be Continued!

Commentary

Here's the thing, when Hal Jordan got replaced as Green Lantern in 1994, this was probably exactly the sort of shit that made DC editorial say to themselves, "Yeah, it's time for a new Green Lantern." The Jones version of Hal Jordan was interesting, if only because Jones seemed to really have it out for Hal. I mean, this was a period where Hal was portrayed as a chronically unemployed, graying ex-test pilot with jail time on his record. And then you add the fact that his last relationship was retconned into having the mind of a child? Hal would've better off getting written out of the book three years earlier.

Damage Stars: *****

Green Lantern (v2) #206

Green Lantern (v2) #206
"In Deep"
Cover Date: November 1986
Writer: Steve Englehart
Artist: Joe Slaton (Pencils) Mark Farmer (Inks)

Previously...

After the first Crisis, most franchises in the DC universe took an opportunity to try new things out. Superman and Wonder Woman got new origins, Flash got a new protagonist, and Green Lantern...well....

For whatever reason, the people writing Green Lantern decided the transform the book from a book about a (mostly) solo hero working in deep space, to one about an Earth-based team. Why? I have no idea. Anyway, to make it happen, the Guardians of the Universe, who run the Green Lantern Corps, decide that they're going to retire to another dimension, and that individual Green Lanterns are now free to do whatever the fuck they want. Instead of using their rings to crave out empires in space, a bunch of them, led by Hal Jordan, decide to go live in L.A..

More importantly for this issue, though, Arisia, the token plucky teenager, has been ill over the past few issues.

Plot

Hal Jordan and Arisia have fallen down into a mine shaft as the result of last issue's fight with Black Hand. Their rings are also out of power. Jordan gets up and notices something...different about Arisia.

I don't think I like where this is headed.

Arisia kind of freaks out, so Hal helpfully calms her down the only way he knows how:

Awesome. You couldn't destroy Hal Jordan's character any faster if you were trying.

Anyway, the rest of the Green Lanterns are still above ground. They decide to regroup, and some reporter follows them and starts asking questions about how they're going to handle Black Hand. Kilowog, the biggest member of the team, decides to handle it in the most appropriate manner he can think of:

So...we're sure the Green Lanterns are the heroes of this book, right? Anyway, the reporter leaves, and Jon Stewart explains to Kilowog that the beating of reporters is generally looked down in America. The rest of the Green Lanterns disagree.

Back in the mine shaft, Arisia explains that she must have subconsciously used her power ring to age her to adulthood so she could fuck Hal Jordan. Hal seems mildly disturbed by this revelation. She then tries to sell him on the idea that her mind has matured as well, so it would be totally right for them to get it on. Hal essentially accepts this premise, explaining, "I believe your mind matured! Coming to me and admitting your problem proves that!" Yeah, that's ironclad logic there. Hal then tries to get out of the conversation by claiming that he's not ready to love again after his string of ill-fated romances in the past hundred issues or so of this comic.

Black Hand attacks, and the Green Lanterns try to fight him off, only for the villain to start draining the power from their rings, causing the team to immediately run away. The Green Lanterns in this issue could not possibly seem more pathetic.

Back in the mine shaft of forbidden love, Arisia asks about Hal's ex-girlfriends, and we learn that they were, in order, a woman who was occasionally possessed by an alien gem, a woman who lived in the future, and his friend's girlfriend who Hal stole when said friend was in a coma. And then Arisia and Hal get attacked by a mountain lion. Did you know Steve Englehart was generally regarded as a decent writer back in his day? You're not buying it, huh? Hal and Arisia fight off the mountain lion for a bit.

In the meantime, Black Hand is using the Green Lantern power he stole from Hal and Arisia to lift Angels Stadium into the air. Has enough time passed to make a Donny Moore joke? Anyway, the Green Lanterns finally get their shit together and stop him. They then decide to look for Hal and Arisia and...

Hey, don't judge Hal, he held out against Arisia's underage charms for nearly one full issue. What more could be asked of him?

Next Issue:

Hal's Greatest Challenge Yet!

Commentary

Well, this was a thing, then.

I guess Englehart thought to himself, "Well, Hal needs a love interest, and I've got a spare female member of the team, so what if she's 14...?"


Also, you wouldn't think that they'd ever bring up this story again, but Arisia is still an adult, and still alive and kicking in the Green Lantern titles even today, despite the fact that her modern depiction traces from this very issue. It's kind of amazing what sticks and what doesn't. You'd think DC editorial would do everything it could to erase the Hal Jordan's re-enactment of Lolita but no, as far as I know, it's still canon.

Damage Stars: *****

Green Lantern (v3) #117

Green Lantern (v3) #117
"Found Art"
Cover Date: October 1999
Writer: Ron Marz
Artist: Darryl Banks

Previously....

It's 1999, so Kyle Rayner is your Green Lantern. Also, despite a statue of him appearing on the cover, Hal Jordan is not in this issue.

Plot

The issue begins in media res with Kyle being choked to death. But how did he get there?

It turns out that he was working on a painting for an art show (Kyle Rayner was an artist, you see), but he had to stop over at Guy Gardner's bar to housesit or something. So he goes over to the bar, and, wouldn't you know, the Manhunter that Guy kept deactivated in his bar for some reason immediately comes to life and begins attacking. I suppose the moral being, do not keep deadly, deadly robots as trophies.

So Kyle and the Manhunter get into it, and that leads us back to where Kyle was at the beginning of the issue. In shocking twist, he is not then brutally strangled to death by the killer robot, but instead manages to eventually decapitate it with a power ring axe.

But wait! In the middle of the fight, Kyle's painting got destroyed, and the art show is in one hour! What will Kyle do? Well, despite learning first-hand how dangerous it can be to keep Manhunter technology laying around, he decides to take the battered Manhunter head and pass it off as his latest work of art...although I thought he was a painter.

The issue, realizing that it's several pages short, then has Kyle hang around his supporting cast for a while, before he decides to leave the art show with his girlfriend, Jade. Just then, his ex-girlfriend, Donna Troy, and that's the cliff-hanger ending. Because nothing sells comics like the prospect of awkward conversations with an ex-girlfriend. To Be Continued!

Comments

Like most of DC's output in the late '90s, this issue is basically innocuous. I wouldn't exactly call it good, but there are worse comics out there.

I don't know, it's kind of hard getting worked up over a book starring Kyle Rayner. This issue brings attention to the fact that he's an artist, which always seemed to me like a crappy occupation for a super-hero, because, when you think about it, artists are usually pretty unlikeable. The comic opens with Kyle working on his painting, and talking about his latest work draws from Impressionists. So, by the third page, I'm kind of rooting for the robot to kill him so I won't have to hear him talking about his fucking art show anymore.

I guess the only thing I'd recommend is the final page, where Kyle and Jade react to the presence of Donna Troy with horror: