Green Lantern #7 Part 1: In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night, No Stupidity Shall Escape My Sight...

We're back again with another edition of Fucking Comics! After taking a crack at some Marvel books, we've decided to go back to poking fun at our favorite comic book bitch, DC Comics. More specifically, we're look back at the Green Lantern #7 originally published in August of 1961.

As usualy, we'll start with a little big about the book and who the major characters are to get our regular readers up to speed. During the "golden age" of comic books (this is the period starting in the 1930's and going on until the end of the 1940's) DC Comics introduced the first Green Lantern in All-American Comics #16. At that time he was a guy who had a magical lantern from outer space and he became the Green Lantern. He'd run around and fight crime in a green and red costume and make magical constructs with his magic lantern. However, it did not have any effect on wood (kind of a stupid limitation don't you think?)

Anyway, when the Silver Age of comics came around (the end of the 1950's until the 1970's... And you can keep on going, the Bronze age being from the 1970's to the 1990s, and the Total-Shit age from 1990 on.) I guess they thought the idea wasn't interesting enough and decided to change things up a little. Oh and, in the 1980's after a little fiasco called "Crisis on Infinite Earths" (which was an attempt to correct all of DC Comics continuity errors by merging everything into one universe, which fucked things up even worse so that every 10 years or so they have an "infinite" something to try and fix their monumental fuck up) made about 90% of that Golden Age material completely irrelevant.

In the Silver age, they introduced a guy named Hal Jordan who is a test pilot who is summoned to the crash site of an alien named Abin Sur, who is one of many Green Lanterns. He gives Hal his power ring and power battery (Which looks like, surprise surprise, a green lantern) Hal then became a member of the Green Lanterns, a group of beings who protect sectors of the universe from evil at the behest of a bunch of blue skinned midgets named the Guardians.

Green Lantern's power ring allowed him to do a bunch of crazy shit, including being able to fly, and create constructs out of green energy. He could instantly come up with any number of other abilities that his ring could do at any given moment until DC actually hired some writers who realized having a hero who had no limitations to their abilities was really fucking boring. his fantastic crazy powers included being able to change peoples shapes, make duplicates of himself, and shoot CO2 from his breath at clocks at a super speed among other things. Crazy as it was the guy had a few limitations, he had to recharge his ring in his power battery every 24 hours (that's the only standard they give, it appears that Green Lantern can use his ring as much as he wants it just suddenly runs out of power after 24 hours. Also, there appears to be no concept of time either since he can travel light years into outer space in a matter of minutes but it takes him almost 24 hours to travel to Alaska. No joke.) Also his ring doesn't work on anything that's yellow.

That's right, this hero's one weakness is a color, which in some ways is more pathetic than the original Green Lantern's powers not being able to effect anything made out of wood. I don't know about the rest of you reading this at home, but I think having a weakness to something that's the same color as pee is not something you should let get out to the known public.

Green Lantern usually spends most of his time goofing off and using his powers for stupid shit that involves the supporting cast of this series, as opposed to doing what he's supposed to be doing: protecting his sector of the universe from evil.

First and foremost of these people he wastes his powers on is Carol Farris. As Hal Jordan, GL works at the Ferris Aircraft Corporation, and Carol Farris was the bosses daughter. Hal is always trying to go out on dates with Carol, but when her dad decides to go on a two year trip around the world and puts his daughter in charge (under the condition that she doesn't get involved romantically with any employees) while he's gone. Tough shit for Hal. But apparently, even though Carol's dad has excellent business sense (following the "don't shit where you eat" principal of dating co-workers) he's still a big fucking moron, because he consents to having his daughter marry the Green Lantern if he ever proposes. Of course ol' Hal decides to have a secret identity so he's constantly at competition with himself. He's constantly using his power ring to show off, but then trying to snub Carol and/or avoid her proposals (you know a simple "no" would probably work, but that's not good enough for Green Lantern, he has to create a giant monster with his ring so he can "stop" it and get out of having to answer her proposal)

The rational of Hal not telling Carol about his Green Lantern powers and abilities is because of all the possible villains that would come after her (because telling your girlfriend that you're secretly a super hero apparently means that your girlfriend will tell everyone. Because you know, women can't keep secrets.) However, this doesn't stop Hal from having a side kick who knows his secret identity. Enter: Pieface.

Possibly one of the most racist things I've seen in any comics that were published outside the 1930's (where it was routine that every character who was not white had to follow every stereotype in the book.) You see, Pieface is an Eskimo from Alaska who is Hal Jordan's mechanic. Do you get the correlation here? An Eskimo who's nickname is Pieface? Eskimo Pie. Pieface? Catching on? Yeah, if that isn't bad enough, the guy is the most inept sidekick and is played off to being a complete idiot. Pieface is usually portrayed to stumble into danger, and then have Green Lantern rescue him. He's not shown to be very intelligent, and the writers have this urge to have Pieface get changed into animals like monkeys and seagulls (two animals that we wouldn't consider particularly bright -- coincidence?) I think the most depressing thing about Pieface is his catch phrase "Jumping Fishhooks" because you know, all Eskimo's know about fishing.

Green Lantern in his heyday wasn't a particularly competent superhero, that's not saying a lot when you consider all the DC characters of that era, but I think Green Lantern has to be the most inept of them all. He's the only one I've read that can defeat numerous cosmic threats and save other planets, but when he's on Earth he usually is a complete bungler who is often flying into trees and/or other objects and knocking himself unconscious during battle. Not a very threatening character to any stretch of the imagination when you take that and the fact that his ring doesn't work on anything that's yellow.

I mean, you could wear a yellow jump suit and fight the guy in a forest and you'd probably kick his ass.

With that as some follow up, we're going to take a look at the 7th issue of Green Lantern certainly not the worst I've read so far, but it's a good place to start!