Great Moments In Comics History No. 6: Lezzle Pon

Just wanna chime in and just repeat what most fans have already known for several months now (hey, I don't buy floppies anymore so I'm always late): The Sinestro Corps War is damn bloody awesome! Lots of punching, kicking, zapping and not really introducing anything new by the story's end. Oh sure, there's all that new spectrum of Lanterns, but really, what the fans wanted was the illusion of change and this storyline delivered.

I particularly like this one scene when Guy Gardner is infected by a microscopic member of the Sinestro Corp called Despotellis. This parasitic bastard doesn't need a ring to kill you. It just swims in your bloodstream for a few hours and you'll melt from the inside. Nice.

So how do you fight a virus?



By siccing a super-intelligent smallpox virus bent on revenge on it, that's how!

Mogo

Mogo. A sentient planet. Also a member of the Green Lantern Corp. He has the ring and everything. (scans too small? click on them)

When not playing host to a death match between two Supermen...

...or help save fellow heroes from crashing and burning...

...Mogo is getting harassed by a planet killer from the Sinestro Corp

But Mogo first appeared in a short 6-page story written by Alan Moore in Green Lantern #188 back in 1985. It was a typical Moore sci-fi short story with a twist at the end, something which he used to do a lot when he was writing for the British sci-fi comic, 2000AD.

Sure, we all know who Mogo is now. But back then, 12-year old Khairul H. was just as stumped as this bozo. I knew Alan Moore would pull a Twilight Zone-style twist but what? what?

Holy schnike! I did not see that one coming back in '85! Mogo is the planet?! Well, I never! I still regard this as one of my favourite stories in comics. This and other Alan Moore classics are collected in DC Universe: The Stories Of Alan Moore. Grab a copy. You won't regret it.

Scans from Infinite Crisis, 52 vol. 4, Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War vol. 1 and DC Universe: The Stories Of Alan Moore by Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka, Keith Giffen, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Patrick Gleason and a whole lot of other folks.

The Brave and the Bold vol. 1: The Lords of Luck (DC, 2007)

I was so looking forward to getting this book in my hands and cracking it open that when I finally received it I went through the book like a hot knife through butter. It did not disappoint. A fun, fun book to read.

There. That's my review. The Brave and the Bold: The Lords of Luck by Mark Waid and George Perez is a very good read. Go buy yourself a copy.

What do you mean you want me to elaborate? Oh, all right.

"The Brave and the Bold" was a DC title that came out before my time and usually featured Batman and a superhero guest star teaming up to fight a common foe. In this latest incarnation, however, Mark Waid decided not to write one off stories but rather an interesting six issue tale involving murder, theft, gambling and a book that can foretell the future. It is also not an exclusively Batman book (though he is featured prominently. Hey, he's Batman). It also has Lobo trying to look up Supergirl's skirt. If that isn't enough to ring up the sales of this book, I don't know what will.

The book opens with both Green Lantern and Batman finding the same dead body in their respective workplaces at the same time. Hal stumbles upon the corpse in space just above Earth and Batman discovers it in the Batcave. The pointy eared one soon finds out that there are sixty two other identical corpses discovered all over the world and they were all found close to superhero hangouts: Atlantis, the Flash Museum, the Daily Planet. Conclusion: this self replicating guy was trying to reach as many heroes as possible and was murdered before he could fulfill his plan.

This murder mystery takes an interstellar turn when it is revealed that the dead body was an alien and his mission on Earth was actually to steal a book that chronicles the past, present and future, called The Book of Destiny. His murderers turned out to be a couple of alien gamblers from Ventura, a casino planet. So by the end of the first issue, the alien gamblers have a book that can tell the future and Batman and Green Lantern have to hunt them down before the aliens break the banks of every single casino in the universe.

Or will they? This isn't about trying to win at the blackjack table, is it?

While reading this collection, I was more interested in the interaction between the heroes (and one anti-hero) as they travel through space and time to retrieve The Book of Destiny than the actual chase for the book itself. The Batman-Green Lantern one-upmanship was amusing and Green Lantern's constant reminder to himself that Supergirl is jailbait is downright creepy (doesn't Jordan get enough booty as it is? What is he? DC's version of Captain Kirk?). It's also good to see Jaime Reyes a.k.a the new Blue Beetle hold his own with Batman against the Fatal Five, though I think the only reason Beetle is in this book is to generate some interest in his own excellent but flagging title. But that's one reason for commissioning these team-up books, right? A platform to showcase characters that aren't yet fan favourites but have the potential to be one.

And Batman versus the Legion of Superheroes? Best issue in the entire arc. He was transported forwards to the 31st century and meets up with the Legion and he still managed to run circles around them. And yes, that's versus as in "against". The Legion don't get to team up with Batman. They get their faces kicked in by him.

In the end though, with the help of The Challengers of the Unknown, alls well that ends well. If there is any complaint that I have while reading this book, it was with the Challengers of the Unknown. It was not their seemingly deus ex machina appearance towards the end of the adventure, for their identities were hinted at earlier in the story by Destiny himself. Rather, it was the manner they were brought in to help the heroes that made me go, "huh?" Here's the scene:- Batman uses the Rannian Zeta Beam to pull in the fearless quartet. Adam Strange is surprised that Batman can master the technology so quickly and admitted it took him years to figure it out himself. Batman's reply? "We don't have years."

So, uh...what? Batman is not only a great detective but a super genius who can understand and operate an alien technology within seconds? Mark Waid couldn't have Adam Strange operate the Zeta beam all by himself? That would be easier to accept. I know, I know. I'm arguing about a minor detail in a sci-fi comic book adventure and believe me when I say that I am not and I do not want to be that guy who takes umbrage on every perceived mistake in comic book minutiae. But still......"We don't have years."? Ugh.

That minor quibble aside, The Brave and the Bold: The Lords of Luck is a rollicking fun adventure featuring two of DC's favourite superheroes with some guest stars pitching in. I have never read the Supergirl series but I do know the hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth by the comics fandom in the internet on the way she was being written in her own book. But I don't see anything anything wrong with the way she is potrayed in this team-up book however. Heck, I even enjoyed her banter with Lobo and understand her wide-eyed admiration of Hal Jordan. I guess credit must be given to Mark Waid for being able to pull that off while the writers of her own series could not.

George Perez is, well, George Perez. He has not lost his touch. Correct me if I'm wrong but this series is his first pencil work in a comic book since the 1990s. I thought he had either retired or died and it was a feeling of serendipity when I heard his name was associated with a new DC project which turned out to be The Brave and the Bold.

I would say that this book is 'new reader' safe. You don't need to know a lot, or even any, of the characters' back story be it hero or villain in order to enjoy the book. In any case, there are annotations at the back pages written by Mark Waid where he gives some added information, mostly which issue of which comic the characters first appeared in. He also included a bit of trivia like the fact George Perez has no idea how blackjack is played. Seriously, George? Okay. I believe you.

Lords of Luck is a great fun adventure spanning time and space and though I feel the ending was a bit rushed, I highly recommend it.

Batman: In Darkest Knight (DC, 1994)

Back in 1989, DC published a non-canonical book featuring Batman in Victorian-era Gotham hunting down the serial killer Jack the Ripper entitled Gotham By Gaslight. Written by Brian Augustyn and pencilled by Mike Mignola, it was the first 'ELSEWORLDS' book (though it wasn't labelled as such) to come out from DC's offices. The Elseworlds imprint enabled DC to come up with "alternate-worlds" stories for their characters without messing with the fanboy/girl minds about how it all fits in the DC continuity. Because that's what comic fans do. We may not be able to organise our personal lives but Goddammit, we want our favourite fictional stories to be in the proper order, mmm-kay?

Gotham By Gaslight proved to be so successful that DC was churning out Elseworlds stories like it was going out of fashion. A few were actually quite good but inevitably, most were just dreary. Batman: In Darkest Knight was one of the dreary ones. Yeah, this book is definitely not a good read. God, it was all kinds of awful and it was written by Mike W. Barr who does not worship at the altar of Awful Writing, I'm sure. Maybe he needed some quick cash that day and wrote this shit up over the weekend.

In short, it could be called, "What if Bruce Wayne became Green Lantern?". Instead of Hal Jordan, Abin Sur's ring found a despondent Wayne sitting in his manor trying to figure out how to give some whup-ass to criminals without getting his ass whupped in return.

Now, empowered by the Ring, Bruce.....aw, the hell with it...here's the *cough* plot: Wayne as the new Lantern of sector 2814 is ordered by the Guardians to go to Korugar and detain rogue Lantern, Sinestro. Sinestro is banished to Qward, gets a Yellow ring, goes back to Gotham, figures out who this new Green Lantern is, kills Jim Gordon, kills Joe Chill, gets an outfit that makes him look like the Joker with Spock ears and Sinestro then turns Harvey Dent into Two Face.

Meanwhile, the Guardians are not pleased that Bruce refuses to follow orders. So they appoint three individuals as new Lanterns to bring down Wayne (or to help him, I can't figure out which. Eh.): Clark Kent, Barry Allen and Queen Hippolyta.

They fight Sinestro but the bad guy escapes. Bruce goes off to space to chase him. The End. Oh yeah, Sinestro kills Alfred.

Apparently, this Green Bat is now part of the DC canon after what happened in 52 so they're re-releasing all the Elseworlds books which had characters who will appear in the upcoming Countdown: Arena hullabaloo. Lantern Batman, Gaslight Batman, Commie Superman...they're all gonna be there. But even if you're a Batman and/or a Green Lantern fan and you never picked up In Darkest Knight, please don't start now. The problem with this book is that there's nothing new here. Rehashing the histories of familiar characters and just adding a twist to them does not a good story make. Hell, even if you're not familiar with Batman's origin I still won't recommend this book.

Spend your money on the latest issue of Horny Biker Sluts or something. 'Cause IDK is just a big yawn-fest.

Green Lantern: Rebirth (D.C.)

In 1994, the people at D.C. Comics who were in charged of the Green Lantern smoked one too many of those funny cigarettes and came up with the daring idea of turning Hal Jordan, Earth's Green Lantern, into bad guy Parallax and eventually had him killed and turned into the vengeful spirit, Spectre.

Green Lantern fanboys went ape-shit crazy. And that's the worst kind of crazy, let me tell you. I admit I don't have a confirmation on this but the D.C. office was swamped with angry letters and even unsolicited story ideas from fans who refused to accept the "Hal Jordan joined the Dark Side and now he's a ghost" storyline. But D.C. was adamant. Hal Jordan is gone. Live with it, people.

Fast forward to 2004 and the launch of the mini-series, Green Lantern: Rebirth. I like to call it Green Lantern: Retcon because that's what it is. Geoff Johns was brought in to clean up the mess that he didn't make and he had to make it good. It's not great literature (it's a comic book, whatchoo expect?) but as comic retcons go it's not half bad. Ethan Van Sciver was tasked with the pencilling chores.

Johns decided that the biggest retcon is the Parallax nonsense. Yeah, it's not Hal's evil alter ego. It's not Hal's evil twin. Parallax is actually the embodiment of fear itself and it actually looks like this:

Parallax is a big yellow grasshopper. I'll give you a minute to let that sink in. Don't worry, I'll still be here when you come back.

Hi, welcome back! You okay with that revelation? Hal Jordan was possessed by a yellow alien grasshopper. Apparently, the Parallax grasshopper thingy was banished into the Central Lantern Battery by the Guardians of the Universe a long time ago before comics were invented. It stayed imprisoned inside the Battery waiting for the right person to set it free. Parallax found the right person. No, not Jordan. Jordan's just the host. Parallax found this guy:

Yes, who else but Sinestro. He was actually a Green Lantern before he joined the Other Side, but really, if your name is Sinestro, I don't see how you can stay a good guy for long. Especially with that mustache. All he needs now is a top hat and cape and he can terrorise young ladies on railway tracks all day long. And if you don't know what I'm talking about....don't worry. Nobody's perfect.

Anyway, by this time Hal Jordan's soul decides to leave the Spectre and flies back into his own dead body. Jordan's back! Fanboys rejoice! Yay! See, that wasn't so hard, D.C.

Hal Jordan. Sinestro. They fight.

Jordan kicks Sinny's ass in double quick time but the flying egghead man with diabolical mustache manages to escape to another dimension. Of course. That's what I would do. Now Jordan and the remaining Green Lanterns (Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner and Kilowog) have to go and have a little chat with Parallax the yellow tinted grasshopper embodiment of Fear. But first, Batman expresses his doubts regarding Hal's innocence. Here is Bats doing the paranoid schtick (oh yeah, didn't I mention? The Justice League, Justice Society and Teen Titans have a brief cameo):




Batman should watch out for the Angry Black Man. He's not afraid of you, Batman. And neither is Hal Jordan. Batman doesn't trust anyone who isn't afraid of him and Hal Jordan is so high up on the bravery scale that Bats' "fear me for I am sexier than you!" strategy doesn't work on him. In fact, he lays one on Batman instead:


Holy Sucker Punch, Batman! That's gotta hurt. Maybe it was payback for this?

The Lanterns then go do battle with Parallax who has possessed Ganthet, the leader of the Guardiands of the Universe. Suffice it to say, they succeed.

Parallax is sent back into the Central Battery on the Guardians' planet of OA and the heroes go back to Earth for a lot of hi-fiving and back slapping. Except for Batman. He's still pissed off, more than usual. But he concedes that Jordan's return could be a good thing. That is Bat-speak for "Welcome back, old friend!"

Back at the Green Arrow's place, Hal Jordan is reunited with his old Lantern ring charger thing which Green Arrow has kept all this time:

Welcome back, Hal Jordan.