The time John Stewart blew up Xanshi
Posted: 05/06/2014 Filed under: Characters, DC 9 CommentsSpider-Man’s error in saving Gwen Stacy from a fall will forever haunt him the rest of his natural (then dead, then resurrected, then dead again, then resurrected again) life. After all, he made a mistake and an innocent woman died because of it.
And then we have Green Lantern John Stewart. His error killed millions. Maybe billions. If Gwen Stacy is a ghost in Peter’s closet of skeletons, the exploded planet Xanshi is Aragon’s entire ghost army from Return of the King. We’ll witness the extremely well-done heartbreaking story today in Cosmic Odyssey #1-4, written by Jim Starlin and drawn by Mike Mignola.
Allow me to try to explain the basic premise of Cosmic Odyssey. A being made of a substance called Anti-Life let loose four “aspects” of itself into the universe, each landing on a separate planet (Earth, Rann, Thanagar, and Xanshi). If any two of these four aspects gets destroyed, the universe will collapse on itself and we all wave goodbye to the universe. Eight superheroes group in teams of two to defend these planets from total destruction. We pick our story up as Team Green Lantern & Martian Manhunter approach the Anti-Life aspect’s base.
Detect Stewart’s fatal personality flaw yet? It’s total mind-numbing arrogance. He wields a weapon that essentially acts as a permanent genie with infinite wishes. And when you can do anything, why bother taking along a Martian with Superman’s powers plus shapeshifting and intangibility. Stewart knows Martian Manhunter’s green with envy, and not just because that’s his natural skin color.
Back in the day, the Green Lantern ring still bore one glaring weakness. A flaw that dwarfed Superman’s Kryptonite and other superhero weaknesses, like Aquaman being out of water for too long or Captain Marvel trying to get into an R-rated movie. Watch this brilliant tirade by Stewart (“I’m the best and nothing will ever be able to stand in my way!”) and then his immediate fall into the deepest pits of horrified despair:
The planet’s death scene lasts for seven pages. It’s wildly melodramatic, fairly poetic, and I’m going to show it to you in its entirety uninterrupted. While Green Lantern’s no longer fear the color yellow (or in Alan Scott’s case, wood), this blow to the conscience’ll last for the rest of Stewart’s life. My goodness, get ready for some emotional brutality. Oh, and remember that scene in Justice League Unlimited where Lex Luthor — possessing Flash’s body — defeats Green Lantern with a well-placed throw of banana pudding? Some superhero weakness can be really silly.
So Stewart’s going to have some trouble sleeping for a few decades, but you can rest assured that his repertoire’ll now forever include healthy doses of modesty. It’s one thing to mess up physics like Spider-Man’s tragedy, but y’know, this is Green Lantern swinging around his magic jewelry with delusional confidence like he’s Justin Bieber at a middle school. The dude did this to himself, and Martian Manhunter — whose emotional range spans from calm to relaxed — uncharacteristically and deservedly digs his furious claws into Stewart’s already flayed back.
Martian Manhunter has probably forgiven him by now. Though it could just be one of those be-friendly-because-we-work-together things where he waves hello but then sends mean telepathic thoughts about Stewart to the rest of the Justice League whenever Stewart leaves the room. We sometimes forget that for all the immense power of the Green Lantern ring, the person wielding it is still just a normal man. He may be relentless in the presence of fear, but that doesn’t help Stewart’s very much human conscience.
The one who rescues Stewart from this overwhelming guilt? Martian Manhunter, of course, because even with boiling hatred for the man, superheroes still have to do the right thing. That includes not letting accidental genocide-ers die. It’s why they’re better than us — and also because they can punch through walls.
I grew up on the Justice League cartoon, and I consider John Stewart to be “my” Green Lantern. I’m glad to report that he currently continues rocking out as the baddest, toughest dude in the Green Lantern Corps. That and he only blows up one more planet after this.
Green Lantern and the Fatality problem
Posted: 05/04/2014 Filed under: DC, Fights 2 CommentsIt all started in 1988’s Cosmic Odyssey. Green Lantern John Stewart, in a moment of weakness, chose ego over help and doomed the planet Xanshi to destruction. It’s a long story and I’m sure we’ll cover it soon. But one sole survivor still traveled the stars — Yrra Cynril, now known as the warrior named Fatality. And when you name yourself Fatality, you’ve pretty much resigned yourself to supervillainy. Now she travels around and slaughters Green Lantern. That’s her entire life plan. While it’s totally Stewart she should be hunting down, she’s fought Kyle Rayner far more. Here’s one of those times (and my favorite battle between the two) in Green Lantern #177-178, written by Ron Marz and drawn by Luke Ross.
After a really bad day for Rayner, where he loses both his girlfriend and apartment, he must have realized what was about to happen next — every bad day for superheroes must contain a certain quota of bloodshed.
This is their fourth or fifth fight which Rayner has won every time, including two separate fights she loses one of her arms and replaces it with a robot version. I guess like if you hit a tree with an axe enough times, it’ll eventually fall over. Fight Rayner enough times and hopefully you’ll win one. Maybe get robot legs too.
I always admire the arrogance of supervillains. They never win. Not once. Yet every time they meet their respective superhero, the man or woman or alien who has defeated them in the dozens of encounters they’ve faced over the years, they still feel like they should gloat and talk trash. In a way, I’m jealous of that wildly high level of (albeit fictional) self-esteem/delusion.
Poison. If a battleaxe won’t work, try a subtler method. Or maybe a battleaxe made of poison. This is probably why I’m not asked to write comics.
Willpower’s a tricky concept, it being an abstract concept and all. Sure, a bad guy could null Green Lantern’s willpower, but that’s the same idea as Scarecrow’s fear gas. Anything that doesn’t have a numerical value can be changed or manipulated back to normal at any time. All it takes is a writer to have his or her character announce, “I’ve overcome these feelings!” and we buy it because we don’t have a choice. Anyway, Rayner gets smacked around a bit more.
Have you noticed Rayner’s constructs lean on the cartoon-ish side? Former artist turned space cop cliché. Oh, let’s talk a bit about Fatality. Soon, she joins the Star Sapphires, the New Guardians, and totally began a real relationship with Stewart — the Green Lantern who genocided her people. If I’ve gotten messages from match.com girls who won’t date me because I’m Jewish, how the hell does she get over her boyfriend killing all of her people? Sure, it was an accident and we’ve forgiven him for it, but for me, I’d find it’d hard to look past his faults and develop any romantic feelings for, say, someone like Hitler. Like full-on making out in public with the Führer — it would never happen and his mustache would tickle. Look, I get the symbolism of their coupling and I’m totally willing to suspend disbelief, but we all agree it’s a bit weird, right?
Victory once more goes to Rayner, as it always will. Truthfully, I picked this article mainly because of the giant cartoon throwing an airplane at Fatality. I made a good choice.
Norman Osborn’s recruiting drive: Mystique
Posted: 05/01/2014 Filed under: Characters, Marvel 2 CommentsNorman Osborn’s X-Men team completes its roster today — a team assembled full of morally ambiguous, lied to, and unwillingly-forced-into-servitude superheroes/supervillains. The full group led by Emma Frost consists of Namor, Mimic, Dark Beast, Cloak, Dagger, Weapon Omega, Daken, and finally our wildly unpredictable shapeshifter Mystique. Y’see, recently Wolverine and Mystique settled some differences (bloody, explosive differences) and the encounter left Mystique dying and abandoned in the desert. She survived. Let’s not worry about how. Now that she’s unemployed, Osborn figures she could use a gig obeying his every command as part of his pseudo-PR-stunt X-Men. At least he doesn’t have to manipulate Mystique — there’s a respect/open rudeness between supervillains of their caliber. Today, we’ll take a look at a scene from Dark X-Men #3, written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Jock.
Makes sense Mystique would want to sully Wolverine’s reputation after the hell he put her through (and he does eventually come back to finish the job he left a few years after this). But how much more damage could Mystique inflict? Wolverine’s mental state holds up about as well as tissue paper in a rainstorm. He snaps and massacres groups of innocent people at least once a solo series, blaming everything on mindwipes or memory repression or no more beer. The superhero community just accepts that all the good Wolverine does is worth him flying off the handle and killing bears with his bare hands while he runs around the woods naked every once in a while.
It’s almost impressive how long Osborn held onto his sanity during Dark Reign. The dude handled nonstop problems and issues — the same issues that undid Iron Man’s rule — and yet until Siege he never reverted into his Green Goblin crazy pumpkin-chucking persona he triggers as quickly as stepping on Bruce Banner’s foot turns him into the Hulk. Well, I don’t think he Green Goblin’d publicly. I mean, not around cameras and stuff. So Mystique, who battles foes mainly by immediately detecting and hitting all the right emotional nerves, now gets to argue with a man as uncaring and vindictive as herself. In a sick way, it’s refreshing to see a completely honest Osborn.
Y’know how I mentioned earlier that Mystique defeats her opponents with emotional manipulation? I’m sorry, I meant kung fu.
The problem with an extended lifespan, like Mystique possesses, is that after her hundred plus years of life, not much is left on her bucket list. She reverts back to a teenager whose iPad broke: she just sort of wanders around, joins random groups of dubious people, and finds out what trouble she can get into. Her current goal? Totally murdering Wolverine for leaving her for dead in the desert tops the list. And what’s the best way to get to Wolverine? Besides free back hair waxes? His family, of course.
To be fair to Mystique, Wolverine has lots of sons. Most he doesn’t know about. But the Japanese name could only indicate the mother’s identity being Itsu, the woman Wolverine loved with all his heart and soul. Osborn just uttered the magic words.
With Osborn’s team now complete, it’s time for him to begin the mission: annoy the real X-Men.
Arousing Grammar 