In brightest day, in blackest night...

Today's dollar comic is entitled "Green Lantern: Return to Oa."

This Green Lantern comic is special for a few reasons. It was published in 1990, which makes it as old as I am. Secondly, I wasn’t really interested in it until I was flipping through trying to find the date and found out that Guy was in it! Guy Gardner, as I’ve stated several times before, is my absolute favourite Green Lantern. He’s a good guy underneath his asshole-ish exterior, and when he’s being an asshole, he’s one of those entertaining assholes. Plus I like to giggle at his haircut. Side note: I was reading some Blue Beetle scans on Scans_Daily and someone commented saying that Guy Gardner should be Milagro Reyes’ canon mentor. YES, that is the best idea ever. It would be an awesome comic if Milagro became a Green Lantern and then G’nort teamed up with her and Guy was their long suffering like, supervisor person.

Anyway.

The cover of the comic is unsettling, as there are no eyes visible behind Hal’s domino mask.

We begin with a little exposition. Something big happened and the Corps are reduced to three (one of those three better be G’nort.) Hal mentions travelling with a guardian called the Old Timer. The Old Timer is holding a Green Lantern prisoner, and towns in America are disappearing for whatever reason.

Hal gets hit by something, falls, and wakes up in Rose’s house. I think Rose is an old paramour or something. Then he gets freaked out because of something off panel going “Fish heads! Fish heads!” True story: when I was in grade 12, during the magazine campaign, one of our punishments for not reaching our goal was hearing the “fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads” song between every class. It was hell, so I had a minor PTSD attack when I read that. Hal puts on his mask, which starts glowing or something. I actually don’t know…does the mask have some sort of power? Someone please explain this to me.

Hal runs outside and a bunch of farmers (yes, because ALL FARMERS are xenophobic hicks) are attacking some kind of fishy alien with pitchforks (yes, because if farmers had to attack something, they always use pitchforks). True story: I was sitting in the house watching TV last night when I heard a weird, high pitched sound from outside. I was afraid coyotes (or possibly aliens) were attacking my dog Dallas. She’s like 12 and I knew she couldn’t fight off a coyote. So I grabbed a flashlight and a little axe and went off to fight the coyotes/aliens. I didn’t actually find any. My point: I live on a farm and my first instinct was not to grab a pitchfork to fight an intruder. ANYWAY, Hal saves the alien, who says he walked to earth.

I don’t really understand what happens next, but what it boils down to is that Old Timer is going crazy. Oh, I guess they were all transported to another planet. Rose freaks out because she has a loan for her farm and she doesn’t want to lose it.

I’ll be honest here. I have no idea what’s going on. Hal is flying through like, jellyfish and stuff and then he comes across John Stewart, who is trapped somehow. Then he’s fighting this big weird monster. This is such an acid trip. Hal can’t defend himself because this monster is shooting yellow lasers. WORST WEAKNESS EVER.

Old Timer shows up. He made this new planet and reveals that if he is threatened, the planet is destroyed. Old Timer says he just wants everyone to be happy, which is why he brought Hal to the planet to be with Rose. Old Timer does something and sends Hal back in time (or whatever? I don’t really know) and he wakes up at Rose’s, she repeats what she said before, except Hal is acting like a suburban dad.

Toby asks Hal if he can see a town out of the corner of his eye (the town the fish people came from) but Hal thinks it’s a game. He’s all, “we have a lot of farming to do!” Because apparently they went back to a time when farm machinery didn’t exist because he’s doing everything by hand. Rose has contracted a Southern accent that she definitely didn’t have before.

Hal’s ring does something funny and later in bed he’s all “I can’t believe I’m doing this, but what choice do I have?” Cut to…GUY GARDNER, who is watching Wheel of Fortune and insulting the contestants. His haircut really is horrendous. I do appreciate that Guy wears his costume and gloves 24/7, apparently. Guy makes some ungentlemanly comments about the female contestant’s assets and then Hal starts talking to him from his ring. Ha ha, best line from Guy (re: Wheel of Fortune): “This is an insult to my intelligence. Lemme see what’s on the Playboy channel.” Oh Guy. Never change. That’s pretty racy for a comic book directed at kids.

Turns out that Hal planted a command in his ring to wake him when the Old Timer’s thoughts were no longer monitoring his mind. Guy: “Gee Hal, you’re so slick.” Love that guy. Hal asks Guy to come to Oa. Guy gloats a little bit. “I oughta capture this on video - except I’d have to erase last night’s date.” Again, pretty racy for a kid’s comic. Guy doesn’t want to go. “Never went much for that outer space stuff. All the dames are weird colours.” Never stopped Kirk. Guy realizes Hal will owe him a favour and goes to help him.

Choice excerpts from the letters page:
“Gerard’s doing a good job of showing how three different men handle the responsibility of being a GL. One (Hal) is struggling, another (John) is searching for answers, and the third (Guy) is a putz.”
“The only problem I have is with Guy Gardner (who doesn’t?)”
Hey, here’s someone who feels about Guy the way I do!
“As always, Guy is great (but please don’t tell him I said so).”
Here’s something I thought was random:
“He seems to be having problems using the ring, especially against felines and superheroes.”
GL takes the prize for stupidest weaknesses, but felines?

Anyway, that was a pretty okay issue. I didn’t know what was going on half the time but it felt like the writers were on acid, which was interesting, plus GUY.

They say that cat Shaft's a bad mother-SHUT YOUR MOUTH! I'm just talking bout Youngblood

My favourite used bookstore in the Annex just added a third floor of graphic novels, so I went to check it out. They have some awesome stuff (and a great selection of used piano books) but my favourite part was a selection of five random comic books for a buck. I picked one of the packs solely because it contained Youngblood issue 1 (or as it says on the cover, “1ST EXCITING ISSUE”). It was released in 1992. The cover alone is magnificent.










































I don’t really know many of the names. Bedrock, the huge dude in the back, is like as wide across as I am tall. I don’t know what those are on his shoulders. Old Man on the left there has mutton chops to rival the venerable Isaac Asimov’s. I do not for the life of me understand the Phantom of the Opera mask the dude on the right is sporting. What is its purpose? How is it staying on? The ginger’s thighs are ENORMOUS. And then his legs get super thin and then his shins look like someone stuffed a basketball down his pants. It’s amazing.

Inside they have a helpful guide to the names. The big guy is Bedrock, presumably because he’s made of rock. The old guy is Combat, because he engages in combat. The black guy is Chapel because…um…I got nothing. The token girl is Vogue, because she reads Vogue? The Deadpool-ish robot guy is called Diehard, because he likes Bruce Willis. The ginger is called Shaft, because he is obviously a black detective.

Each comic has a little character card. Mine is Vogue. She is apparently a Russian defector who is trained in gymnastics and martial arts. She likes to use throwing knives and shurikens. Yes, shurikens are obviously Russian, why do you ask? In her civilian identity, she runs a cosmetics empire. You can tell she is a cosmetics expert because of her face paint, obvi.

The first page contracts a tragic case of the Mark Trail disease of misplaced word balloons. Shaft (aka Jeff) is out with his girlfriend. Here’s the dialogue on the first panel according to where the word balloons are:

A tile on the floor: I’m actually shopping on my lunch hour with my boyfriend. Unbelievable!
The railing of a bridge: Believe it, Shelly. I told the guys back at the office that paperwork would wait.

Then in the next panel, Jeff appears to be having a conversation with himself while his girlfriend looks on, bemused. Shelly shoehorns into the conversation that she is an assistant DA. Presumably Jeff is some sort of detective.

A purse snatcher runs through the mall and Jeff leaps over…something, with a rainbow background. I wish I had the scanning technology so you could see this panel, but it’s magnificent. His right leg looks like it’s broken. His left leg looks like it was lopped off below the knee and the (now kidney bean shaped) foot was reattached to the knee. He leaps down some stairs and tackles the purse snatcher, who is now about two feet tall.

A man with a gun is on the balcony, aiming his gun that looks nothing like any gun I’ve ever seen at Shaft. He notices the sniper and throws a pen backwards (or something, the contradicting motion lines make this hard to figure out). The rainbow background is back. The pen hits the sniper in the throat and somehow knocks him backwards off the balcony, even though he was facing the railing. So I guess he was shooting at a spider behind him, or something.

Everyone wants to talk to Shaft, despite the fact that he just killed a man. It appears he breaks out in some kind of ballet dance move. He is hounded by journalists (of course, because journalists are always EVIL BAD VULTURES HURRRRR) and Shaft goes, “The press? The body isn’t even cold!” Yeah, when you just killed the dude, you don’t get the right to judge others.
Shaft has some pretty intense cheekbones. Like it looks like someone slashed his face. Shaft breaks out some dance moves again because someone is calling him on the Youngblood communicator.

I would never have noticed this if I didn’t read it on a website somewhere, but Rob Liefeld really, really hates feet. They are always either blocked from view or very tiny.

Now we switch to Bedrock, who is eating what looks like that weird green potion thing from Troll 2. Diehard telepathically (or something) figures out they need him and flies off. Chapel is in bed with a girl, and the whole sequence is very confusing, but it’s explained well here.

Shaft asks what’s going on and Anonymous Mission Control Girl informs them that their transport vehicles are under attack and yells by who: “IT’S STRONGARM AND GAGE!!! THE FOUR!” You know it’s serious because everyone has their teeth clenched SO HARD.

I got all excited because I thought Juggernaut was attacking Youngblood, except he’s not. Sad. His thigh is wider than his waist. Has Liefeld even seen a human being? I understand the urge to make your men manly; it’s a comic book, go for it. But at least make them proportionate. I promise, it’s possible. Off the top of my head, Ed McGuinness and Jim Lee can both manage it.
Two generic villains show up. One has a long ponytail that is waving around like Medusa’s snakes. I can’t even describe the girls villain’s outfit but here are some phrases for you: canary yellow, shoulder pads, and thunder thighs.

Anyway, Diehard attacks Juggernaut-lite and I can’t really describe what he’s doing. He leaps from above and kind of twists himself into a U. His legs are bent back way farther than they should be. In the next panel, his leg appears to be approximately two miles long. The next page features a very unappealing splash of Youngblood and some dudes with fat thighs in the back.

There’s another half to this book, but I can’t face it right now. True story: when I went to write “this” just now I accidentally wrote “shi” and then stopped. Freudian slip, I guess.