Week of 9/28/11
This was, overall, a bad week for DC comics, and since nothing much happened in each of the issues, this is going to be a quick entry.
Green Lantern: New Guardians
We rehash Kyle Rayner's origin story, but with no indication that this is a flashback or in any way occurring in the past. Way to confuse new readers DC; even I double-taked at all the dead guardians, thinking for a second that it might be a new plotline. It's pretty much the same origin we already know, except that Ganthet trains him a bit before taking off and Kyle's soon-to-be-refrigerator-stuffed girlfriend is nowhere to be seen.
Back in the present, yellow, red, and violet ring-bearers are "decommissioned" in the middle of battle and their rings search for replacement sentients. One of the former-Star Sapphire's colleagues saves her life and vows revenge on whoever "stole" the ring.
On Earth, Kyle Rayner saves a bunch of people from a collapsing crane and is taunted by a small boy for not being Hal Jordan and for making his uniform look like he was wearing a green bib. Does anyone like scenes like these (an ungrateful mundane taunting the hero who just saved his life for not being as cool as another hero?) Because I find them super-annoying. Rings of every other color appear and choose him, and he barely has time to feel surprise or dismay when violet, yellow, red, and indigo Lanterns appear to reclaim their colleagues rings by force.
Thoughts:
If the end of this issue was the beginning, it would be a fantastic issue. Instead, nothing much happened and I'm going to have to buy issue two just to find out the premise of the new series. I suppose the flashback was supposed to remind us that Kyle Rayner was a messiah figure for the Green Lanterns and suggest that that's why he may have been chosen by the other rings, but it went on too long and was confusing. I hate scenes where fan replacements yell at superheroes. First of all, they never answer the criticisms, just have the critics act so wholly inappropriate that they seem ridiculous. Second, in the world of the comic, people ought to be grateful to the hero of the comic and just shut up about him not being as cool as that other guy because he's saving lives - making them angry-fans stand ins implies that angry fans should shut up and be grateful because the writers are...making comics in the first place? I don't even know. It's stupid, and, as we'll later see, almost the entire plot of Aquaman. The writers also missed a golden opportunity here to fix the Star Sapphires. Because other corps are gender-neutral in hiring, the Star Sapphires could stop being ridiculous love-obsessed-female stereotypes and start being a goofy, satirical look at the irrational nature of romantic love with just a few small changes: make the costumes less absurdly revealing, and add some men to the corp. (Making them actually violet instead of clearly pink would help as well.) Apparently, DC decided that while all marriages are atrocities that need to be edited out of continuity immediately regardless on their effects on characters and past storylines, having an entire corp of flying female stereotypes was an ain't-broke, don't-fix-it situation. I would really like to learn more about what is going on with Kyle and all the rings, but I'm so annoyed that I got so little story out of this issue that I'm considering not buying the next one out of spite.
I have to work now, so it looks like I will continue being late and will finish up this batch of comics some time tomorrow.
Green Lantern: New Guardians
We rehash Kyle Rayner's origin story, but with no indication that this is a flashback or in any way occurring in the past. Way to confuse new readers DC; even I double-taked at all the dead guardians, thinking for a second that it might be a new plotline. It's pretty much the same origin we already know, except that Ganthet trains him a bit before taking off and Kyle's soon-to-be-refrigerator-stuffed girlfriend is nowhere to be seen.
Back in the present, yellow, red, and violet ring-bearers are "decommissioned" in the middle of battle and their rings search for replacement sentients. One of the former-Star Sapphire's colleagues saves her life and vows revenge on whoever "stole" the ring.
On Earth, Kyle Rayner saves a bunch of people from a collapsing crane and is taunted by a small boy for not being Hal Jordan and for making his uniform look like he was wearing a green bib. Does anyone like scenes like these (an ungrateful mundane taunting the hero who just saved his life for not being as cool as another hero?) Because I find them super-annoying. Rings of every other color appear and choose him, and he barely has time to feel surprise or dismay when violet, yellow, red, and indigo Lanterns appear to reclaim their colleagues rings by force.
Thoughts:
If the end of this issue was the beginning, it would be a fantastic issue. Instead, nothing much happened and I'm going to have to buy issue two just to find out the premise of the new series. I suppose the flashback was supposed to remind us that Kyle Rayner was a messiah figure for the Green Lanterns and suggest that that's why he may have been chosen by the other rings, but it went on too long and was confusing. I hate scenes where fan replacements yell at superheroes. First of all, they never answer the criticisms, just have the critics act so wholly inappropriate that they seem ridiculous. Second, in the world of the comic, people ought to be grateful to the hero of the comic and just shut up about him not being as cool as that other guy because he's saving lives - making them angry-fans stand ins implies that angry fans should shut up and be grateful because the writers are...making comics in the first place? I don't even know. It's stupid, and, as we'll later see, almost the entire plot of Aquaman. The writers also missed a golden opportunity here to fix the Star Sapphires. Because other corps are gender-neutral in hiring, the Star Sapphires could stop being ridiculous love-obsessed-female stereotypes and start being a goofy, satirical look at the irrational nature of romantic love with just a few small changes: make the costumes less absurdly revealing, and add some men to the corp. (Making them actually violet instead of clearly pink would help as well.) Apparently, DC decided that while all marriages are atrocities that need to be edited out of continuity immediately regardless on their effects on characters and past storylines, having an entire corp of flying female stereotypes was an ain't-broke, don't-fix-it situation. I would really like to learn more about what is going on with Kyle and all the rings, but I'm so annoyed that I got so little story out of this issue that I'm considering not buying the next one out of spite.
I have to work now, so it looks like I will continue being late and will finish up this batch of comics some time tomorrow.