Green Lantern '94-'04

Green Lantern #57 (December 1994)

After months of foreshadowing, Kyle Rayner finally joins the New Titans... in a fight to the death!!! After his little detour through R.E.B.E.L.S. #1 and New Titans #115, Kyle is finally back on Earth and in his own damn comic, and the first thing he does is visit the grave of his recently murdered girlfriend, Alex. Kyle apologizes for missing her funeral just because he was busy helping save all of time and then getting lost in space (but her pissed-off family doesn't know that).

Actually, we find out on the next page that Kyle's been doing a ton of other stuff since he got back to Earth, like finding an apartment to rent in New York (this comic has taken place in Los Angeles so far) (well, and in space), sending all his stuff there, and even finding some freelance design jobs. Looks like the "superhero finds motivation in his dead girlfriend" trope worked so well on Kyle that it cured his ADHD.

After a tearful goodbye, we cut to Kyle already in New York. Once he finds his building (with some "Marvelous" help I'll go into in the plotlines section), Kyle meets his landlord, Radu, who also owns and operates a coffee shop on the ground floor (more on him below, too). Kyle spends his first night in his new place pulling an all-nighter on a design gig for a toy company, and by the time he's done, he's so tired that he sees a creepy face on his window. Of course, the fact that there was a creepy face on his window probably helped there.

("I was always told to display your best feature," replies Psimon, raising his robe to show his calves.)

The creepy face belongs to Psimon, a New Teen Titans villain who was last seen getting killed by Brainiac during Crisis on Infinite Earths. Somehow, he ended up as a disembodied entity in deep space; he's the weird helix-looking thing that's been trailing Kyle for the last couple of months. Psimon wants to steal Kyle's ring, but Kyle informs him that, as established last issue, he's the only one who can wear it. Psimon's like, "fine, I'll just steal your whole body then."

Kyle Losing His Ring Counter: 2.5? (Not sure if we should count this as a "Kyle losing his ring" instance, since it's technically still on his person.)

So, Psimon possesses Kyle and takes him to visit his old enemies, the New Titans, who are currently in the process of fighting their teammate Changeling, who is currently evil. Kyle drops by and takes out Changeling pretty easily, but the other Titans think it can't be the real Kyle because the last time they saw him, it sure looked like he was about to die (at the end of Zero Hour). Normally, this would be a foolish assumption, since superheroes die and come back all the time, but Kyle/Psimon confirms that it's spot-on when he starts attacking the Titans and announces his intentions to kill them.

TO BE CONTINUED! IN ANOTHER COMIC, AGAIN!

Plotline-Watch:

Arguably the most important event taking place in this issue is the first appearance of Radu Stancu, whose thick Romanian accent will grace these pages for many years to come. He's also the icon for this blog, just like Bibbo Bibbowski is the icon for my other one. This is not a coincidence, since I consider Radu to be another good-natured-but-tough supporting character in the Bibbo tradition. You might say Radu is my idol.

Kyle's new address is at 175 Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, which nerds will recognize as being right next to Dr. Strange's address at 177A Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village. The "Marvelous" cameo mentioned above is Dr. Strange's sidekick Wong, who helps Kyle find his place and even throws in a "strange" pun before disappearing. These little in-jokes happen in comics all the time, but let's overthink this, shall we? 1996's Green Lantern/Silver Surfer will reveal that Oa's destruction in GL #0 created a hole between the DC and Marvel universes, which causes characters to be randomly transported from one to the other (eventually leading to the DC Versus Marvel crossover). It's perfectly possible that Wong was one of the first people transported by the inter-company hole, especially since Ron Marz wrote or co-wrote all of these comics.

Wong warns Kyle that he should stay away from "the neighboring lot," which appears to be in ruins. This is a reference to the fact that Dr. Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum had been destroyed exactly one year earlier in Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #60 and the doc was still living in a new place at this point.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Kyle's building is an alley where, according to a crazy guy who accosts Kyle on the street, monsters materialize at night. Kyle, despite his well-documented love of alleys, declines going into this one. Radu calls the crazy guy "Felix the Cat" because he's always yowling. We'll hear his yowls again.

The New Titans present in this issue are Impulse, Damage, Terra II, Arsenal, and Changeling (in his evil gargoyle phase). You know isn't present in this issue? Donna Troy, even though she's on the cover, wearing her new Darkstars costume -- unless you count a small visual flashback of her as Wonder Girl when Psimon is talking about the old New Teen Titans, which I don't. She'll show up in the New Titans issue that continues this storyline, but still, pretty low to mislead Donna fans like that.

Another important development in this issue is that we learn which CDs Kyle listens to on his Walkman when he's pulling an all-nighter. I see Face Value by Phil Collins, something by Nine Inch Nails (must be an unofficial compilation), and... I can't place the one on the lower left here. Anyone recognize that cover?

Green Lantern-Related Titles Round-Up (November 1994)

This month: Guy vs. Dementor! Kyle vs. a baby! Alan Scott vs. stress!

Guy Gardner: Warrior #25

Double-sized anniversary issue! And I'm glad that some of those extra pages are devoted to something completely unrelated to the rest of the issue but that we needed to see: Guy finally reacting to the death of his beloved Tora "Ice" Olafsdotter (which happened four months ago, but he's been kinda busy). Guy makes his way into the magical winterland or whatever where Ice grew up, which requires throwing around a bunch of old dudes in robes, and collapses in front of the memorial statue that Ice's mom made back in Justice League International #91.

Ice's mom hears Guy talking about how much Ice changed him, making it clear to her that this rug-colored meathead really loved her daughter. Despite the whole "throwing old dudes around" thing, she invites Guy to stay here for as long as he wants, but he has to leave pretty soon so he can get to, you know, the actual plot of this issue.

The story really gets going when Guy goes to a hospital to visit his supervillain brother Mace and high school sweetheart Heather, both of whom are coincidentally in comas (Mace after his fight with Guy in GG:W #19 and Heather after a booze-related car accident in school). Things take a sudden Cronenbergian turn when a gross head somehow grows out of Mace's chest -- it's Dementor, the buff demon we met in GG:W #22, and whose origin was linked to Guy's in GG:W #0. Dementor is here to invite Guy to come to his realm, Comaville, if he doesn't want his bro and ex to "end up like bologna in a meat grinder."

(I guess if you end up like bologna in a meat grinder in Comaville, you end up like bologna in a meat grinder in real life.)

Before Guy has a chance to smash his head against a wall (or ask Batman to punch him unconscious again), he's visited by the Phantom Stranger, one of those mystical DC Comics guys who show up whenever a hero needs to travel to another realm. Guy rather impolitely accepts the Stranger's help and enters Comaville, where a quite badass fight with Dementor immediately kicks off. During the fight, Dementor keeps calling Guy his "brother" because of their shared Vuldarian ancestry, and reveals that he's the one behind Guy's personality changes whenever he went into a coma (like when he became an asshole during Crisis or when he turned into a sweetheart in JLI).

(How come supervillains don't reference Bewitched anymore? Is it because anyone who remembers the show is unspeakably old?)

Dementor's gross attempt to absorb Guy's body backfires spectacularly when Guy bursts from inside his guts and destroys him, causing this entire realm to collapse. Mace, Heather, and Guy make it out before the whole place is destroyed -- but by the time Guy is back at the hospital, Mace has already been violently kidnapped by his employers at the shady government organization known as Quorum. At least Heather is finally awake after, uh, however long it's been since Guy Gardner went to high school.

The issue ends with Guy's rich cowboy friend Buck Wargo calling him to say he's got a bar-sized surprise for him, and then we get some pretty cool Guy pin-ups by various artists... which I'll show in another post, because burying them down here wouldn't do them justice.

R.E.B.E.L.S. '94 #1

Continued from GL #56, which ended with the space-stranded Kyle Rayner bumping into a big spaceship belonging to L.E.G.I.O.N., the interstellar police force. In this issue, Kyle is taken into the ship and meets L.E.G.I.O.N.'s current leader, a green talking baby called Lyrl Dox (who happens to be Brainiac's grandson). Space Boss Baby tells Kyle he's arrested for "carrying an unregistered weapon" -- it probably didn't help that the first thing Kyle did in the ship was casually mention that he (thinks he) killed Hal Jordan, though at least he was smart enough to omit the part about blowing up a planet at the same time.

Lyrl tells Kyle he'd gladly let him go and send him to Earth, if only he could get rid of some nasty terrorists who are going around murdering innocent space cops. Kyle volunteers to go after the "terrorists"... unaware that they include Lyrl's dad, Vril Dox II, who was L.E.G.I.O.N.'s leader before his evil baby usurped the post. Vril, an "end justifies the means" bastard, intentionally crashes his ship under an alien village, knowing that Lyrl will order all the aliens wiped out to get to them. As Vril predicted, Kyle turns against L.E.G.I.O.N. when he sees this, in completely shock that cops can do bad things. Is that even legal??

Kyle meets up with the real L.E.G.I.O.N.naires at the site of the massacre, and seeing the big crater makes him understand why Hal tried to bring back Coast City (apparently Kyle had never imagined a big crater before). It sure looks like we're gonna get an extended crossover event about Kyle helping Vril and his friends take down the genocidal baby... until one of Vril's "friends," Strata, tells Kyle about the whole village gambit. Vril points Kyle in Earth's direction, and Kyle thanks him with a punch (which unfortunately did not send him into a coma and turn him into a sweetheart).

As Kyle leaves for Earth, Vril says they didn't need him anyway, because "his stomach's weak." Yeah, he's clearly not prepared for the kind of spicy food they eat here in space. He'd be on the space toilet the whole time.

Darkstars #25

John Stewart and Donna Troy finally meet up and double-finally help end that sloooooow plotline about Darkstar Colos being framed by his corrupt boss, Jeddigar. Jeddigar sends some Darkstars to fight some other Darkstars, but then all the Darkstars get together to fight him. Donna leads the charge because, well, she's pretty cool.

The issue ends with Colos chasing Jeddigar into a portal, but then the whole place blows up and John announces that Colos must be dead. Oh no! If only there was a portal or something he could have escaped through! Anyway, the issue also includes a mention of a "renegade Lantern on the prowl" and I'm honestly not sure if that's about the one who tried to restart the universe or the one who blew up a planet. Oh, and oddly enough, there's a reference to the following comic...

The New Titans #115

Most of this issue is about Changeling, who's been sorta-evil for the past issues, going full evil and hunting down the other Titans so he can bring them over to Raven, the one who's been making people evil (she's also evil now, if that wasn't clear). However, there's also an epilogue about Kyle arriving on Earth after his space adventure and going straight for an alley. That dude loves alleys.

Kyle is so tired that he never noticed the weird helix-shaped thing that tagged along with him last issue, which has followed him all the way to Earth, where it morphs into "mystery villain in a cloak" form. The weird helix thing/mystery villain, in turn, hasn't noticed that a little blue alien guy called Jarras Minion is following it/him in a spaceship, because the helix somehow destroyed Jarras' planet (this is what was referenced in Darkstars). I'm now imagining a planet full of Dreamworks Minions blowing up and smiling serenely.

So, to recap, while lost in the vastness of space, Kyle: 1) got spotted and followed by a mystery villain, 2) ran into a former GL, 3) bumped into L.E.G.I.O.N., then The Group Formerly Known As L.E.G.I.O.N., 4) got followed by a little blue guy following the mystery villain. Small universe!

Damage #7

This one's about Damage going on trial because he blew up part of Atlanta in the previous issue (as if superheroes aren't constantly blowing up part of Atlanta, c'mon). There's a scene where some scientists are studying the limits of his Atlanta-destroying powers, and Damage thinks he's gonna lose control and blow everything up again, but then a cool blond guy a teaches him some relaxation exercises that calm him down, likely saving everyone in the building.

What's that got to do with Green Lantern? That's what I was wondering (along with "why did I write down this issue for the GL blog?"), until it's revealed that the blond guy is Alan Scott.

While we're here, I might as well mention that Coast City's destruction is brought up during the trial, along with Metropolis' near destruction during the "Cadmus-LexCorp war," which makes sense because the one narrating this issue is actually Superman's Co-Worker, Ron Troupe.

In the end, Damage is banned from Atlanta and sentenced to... appear in the New Titans comic, basically. I guess that's kind of like doing community service for young heroes, which would explain why Kyle is about to join that team too (planet Oa was at least twice the size of Atlanta).

Green Lantern #56 (November 1994)

Kyle is in space. Kyle is in spa-a-ace. Whatcha doin’ out there man?

Kyle "Last of the Green Lanterns" Rayner was left in the literal middle of the universe after the destruction of planet Oa in GL #0, and now he has to figure out how to get back home. He walks into a space bar to ask for directions, but some people (well, aliens) there don't take kindly to his types around here. First, a furry creature punches Kyle for being talked to by his favorite space prostitute.

Kyle uses the ring to deal with jealous Chewbacca there, but that only attracts the attention of another guy who looks like a Predator but with worse manners. During the bar brawl that breaks out, Kyle doesn't exactly need help (see the cover, although his ring-generated muscles are much greener than what's shown there), but he gets it it anyway from a cloaked local who turns out to be... a Green Lantern?! Her name is Adara and, after the fight, she invites Kyle to talk at her favorite moons-watching spot.

Adara clarifies that she used to be a GL, but her ring died like all the others when Hal Jordan pulled a Parallax. Kyle looks weirdly smug when he confirms that he's the last one left.

"Yup! All your friends are probably dead!"

Adara tells him that she was in space when her ring stopped working and the only reason she survived is that space pirates took her hostage. She admits she isn't sure why she bothered escaping them, since being a GL was her whole life. Kyle is like "oh, hey, I also lost the thing that gave meaning to my life" (meaning Alex) and they bond over their shared misery. For some reason, Kyle decides it's a good idea to hit on her at this point by showing her a ring-generated puppy and some flowers. Even more bafflingly, this works, and they start making out on the green couch he also generated.

The next morning, Kyle wakes up to find no Adara, no GL costume... and no ring. Looks like whatever they did left Kyle so exhausted that he didn't even feel his body hitting the ground after she stole his ring and the couch evaporated.

Kyle Losing His Ring Counter: 2

After looking "everywhere" for Adara, Kyle ends up drowning his sorrows at that space bar where he met her. The giant bug-looking barman there is actually a pretty cool dude and, as they talk about how females be crazy, he offers him a drink by the enticing name of "two moons phizz." Hearing the words "two moons" makes Kyle realize there's one place he hadn't looked for Adara in: that double-moon gazing spot where they hooked up.

Adara is indeed there, crying. She says she tried to use the ring to help people, but it didn't work for her and she almost got herself killed. Kyle tries telling her that her life doesn't have to be over because she can't be a GL anymore, and even invites her to come with him, but she tells him to just take the ring and go. As he's doing what she asked, Kyle hears a gun blast coming from behind, and his reaction makes it clear that she did think her life was over.

So, Kyle goes back to roaming the cosmos, feeling extra shitty this time, not just because of Adara but because he's worried he'll die of old age before finding his way back to Earth. Then he bumps into a big spaceship with the L.E.G.I.O.N. logo. But those are good guys, right? SPOILERS: not anymore.

TO BE CONTINUED! IN ANOTHER COMIC!

Plotline-Watch:

The issue starts with Darkseid watching Kyle and calling him "a new star illuminating the [DC] universe" while Deesad pesters him like a neglected pet. Darkseid will appear again in coming issues, which makes sense since Ron Marz had at this point recently finished writing a miniseries starring his most famous ripoff, Thanos.

When I first read this issue I kinda wondered if Adara had shown up before, even if it was on a crowd scene with 57 other GLs. The DC wiki claims she hadn't, but she will make a couple of post-mortem appearances. I like to think her legacy also lived on in a different way through Kyle's predilection for green-skinned ladies.

I'd also wondered if these two L.E.G.I.O.N. members recapping the events of R.E.B.E.L.S. #0 (in which a despot baby takes over the organization and the protagonists are hunted as criminals) had appeared before, and they had! They are Davroth, who had actually appeared in this comic before when Hal Jordan was still sane, and Gigantus, who is called that because he comes from a planet where everyone else is really tiny.

I was confused by the fact that Kyle was able to talk to Adara and the barman (barbug?) when he was powerless, since I figured the ring had been translating their alien languages for him, but at the end of the issue he complains that "hardly anybody [in outer space] understands English," which implies some of them do. Why they'd know English out there, I don't know. Maybe they get SNL reruns? That's how I learned.

This issue is quite a dramatic way of showing that the ring only works for Kyle. Like Adara says: "You... this ring... you're it." I'm taking this as a way of telling older readers not to get their hopes up about the ring going to John Stewart or Guy Gardner or maybe a time-displaced version of that Earth GL who was a cowboy. You're stuck with this Kyle kid, so learn to love him!

1994 Green Lantern-Related Elseworlds

DC went all in on Elseworlds in 1994, not only making them the theme of their annuals (just like "aliens suck up people's spines" was the theme the year before) but also continuing to publish standalone specials showing DC heroes in situations that couldn't or shouldn't exist. And by DC heroes, I mean "mostly Batman." Several of those stories feature alternate versions of Green Lantern characters, so I feel compelled to round them up here and talk a bit about each, even if they have zero impact on the main continuity or are, you know, kinda stupid.

I already wrote about Hal Jordan's appearance as a shovel-themed freedom fighter called "The Gravedigger" in the 1994 Superman annuals, but that bizarre idea was actually pretty tame compared to the crazy shit going on in other GL-related stories, so strap in:

Batman: In Darkest Night

This one-shot starts with a page right out of Batman: Year One, with Bruce Wayne slumping on a chair as he asks his dad's bust for ideas on how to intimidate criminals more efficiently. However, the bat that was scheduled to break through Bruce's window is spooked away by some sort of green meteorite, and Bruce is instead confronted by a projection of a bald purple guy telling him he's "been chosen."

"Yes, father. I shall become a bald purple guy."

That bald purple guy, of course, is Green Lantern Abin Sur, who in this reality chooses Bruce to be his successor instead of Hal Jordan, for undisclosed reasons (maybe Hal was on the toilet and Abin didn't wanna embarrass him). Bruce's first mission as Green Lantern is to stop the Red Hood gang, which he does so efficiently that no one falls into any vats of chemicals or turns into a homicidal clown.

"I'm going to become the Sane Law-Abiding Person."

Next, the Guardians of the Universe send this untrained rookie to planet Korugar because the veteran GL there, Sinestro, has misused his power to make himself world dictator. Fortunately, Sinestro is kind of a chump in this reality, as signaled by the fact that he doesn't wear a pencil mustache, and Bruce deposes him within a couple of pages. Just like in the regular DC Universe, Sinestro is vanished into the anti-matter universe and gains a yellow power ring there. I don't remember regular DCU Sinestro ever using that ring to look up the guy who killed Bruce Wayne's parents and merging their minds together, though...

Naturally, this causes Sinestro to go insane (I'd argue he was already insane if he thought "I'm gonna merge my mind with some random criminal's" was a good idea) and he starts wearing a fancy purple suit. You know, like some sort of homicidal clown. He also starts referring to himself in the plural and regularly argues with his split personality, so he's like an amalgam between Sinestro, the Joker, and Two-Face. I'm gonna call him Jokernestro (Jokernestwo would be too much).

After being easily defeated by Bat-Lantern during their first fight (again: chump), Jokernestro decides he needs some "help." So, he turns a prostitute named Selina Kyle into some sort of cosmic dominatrix named Star Sapphire, and District Attorney Harvey Dent into an Eclipso-like villain called Binary Star. Wait, so there are two versions of Two-Face in this comic? I guess that's on brand for the character.

These two are defeated within a page, because there's no character more overpowered in all of the multiverse than a Green Lantern who is also a Batman. So, Jokernestro tries something else: he manufactures a crisis in another planet within Sector 2814, causing the Guardians to order Bruce to go deal with it. Bruce refuses, because he doesn't wanna abandon Earth with Jokernestro on the loose, and the Guardians are so pissed that they not only send four existing GLs to capture him (Kilowog, Arisia, Tomar Re, and Katma Tui) but they recruit three new ones from Earth: a Kansas farmboy, an Amazon princess, and a police scientist currently in the process of being bathed by chemicals.

While Bruce fights the other GLs, Jokernestro and his cronies infiltrate the Lantern-Cave to leave him a trap, but they run into the all-new Super Lantern, Wonder Lantern, and Flash Lantern there. During the ensuing confrontation, Alfred dies while sending a message to Bruce via his power battery, spurring Bruce to end the fight with the four GLs by simply snatching their rings away with his superior will. Uh-oh, I think I know where this is going...

By the time Bruce reaches the Lantern-Cave, Jokernestro has fled into space like the little bitch he is. Bruce decides to follow him, leaving Earth, and his cave, under the care of the three new GLs (let's call them Green Leaguers). When Tomar Re asks the Guardians if they should chase Bruce, they say no, "all proceeds as planned."

So, they planned for Jokernestro to murder Bruce's manservant and then escape into space in order to force their most powerful Green Lantern to roam the vastness of the cosmos, possibly forever? Solid plan! THE END. (Except for the time Bat-Lantern showed up in the Countdown: Arena miniseries, but that's outside the scope of this blog and thus someone else's problem.)

Green Lantern Annual #3

This one's set in a timeline in which the Third Reich won World War II thanks to a yellow power ring that Heinrich Himmler got by sacrificing twelve fellow Nazis to a demon. In the present (well, the '90s' present), Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner are high-ranking Nazis...

...while Oliver Queen and John Stewart are part of the forest-dwelling anti-fascist resistance, "the hooded Lanterns of the Green" (there's gotta be a snappier name for that). Just when Oliver is naming John as the new leader of the Lanterns, confusingly named "the Green Arrow," someone shoots Ollie in the head -- it's Guy and his gang of merry Nazis. John escapes the ambush and hides with his lover, a high society lady named Carol Ferris, who happens to be Hal's ex. I think we can rule out her being racist after this scene, though.

Meanwhile, Hal starts hearing mysterious voices in his head that guide him into an alley, where he meets Abin Strauss, a former Nazi officer and the current owner of Himmler's satanic yellow ring. We learn that Himmler was seduced by a sorceress named Karelia (that booby lady honoring Hal and Guy in the panels above), so Abin killed him before he could give her the ring out of pure horniness. Abin has protected the ring since then, but now he's old and tired, so he selects Hal to be the new Yellow (White Power?) Lantern.

Karelia, who has usurped and perverted the International Socialist party with her booby magic, sends Guy and his soldiers to retrieve the ring, but Hal doesn't wanna hand it over and kicks their butts. Karelia is like "fine, I'll just make another ring," which turns out to be a green one because the rebels she sacrificed to create it just happened to be wearing green, I guess.

Okay, so Guy is now "Green Lantern" and also an irredeemable Nazi in this comic, which was published on purpose by DC Comics. Maybe Hal will do better? Let's check in on him for a moment...

Oh. I don't know what "schwarze" means, but I think I can guess.

The voices in Hal's head encourage him to use the power of the ring to get Carol "on her knees" and make her love him again, but he resists them and flies away -- he may be a crazy, misogynistic racist, but he's no crazy, misogynistic rapist. So far. Three panels after Hal leaves John and Carol alone, Guy bursts in and arrests them for "racial pollution" anyway. Both get dressed up in S&M gear (a running theme in DC Elseworlds, it seems) and get pinned to giant swastikas so Guy can torture them by shooting green arrows their way.

That's when Hal drops by and starts fighting Guy, not because he's racist but because he thinks Karelia has corrupted him and "the dream" (the dream of being racist). Hal defeats Guy, but then Karelia reveals her true form: she's the demon who gave Himmler the yellow ring 50 years ago! Karelia is completely immune to the power of the rings -- but not, as it happens, to a single green arrow shot by John, which causes this ancient, all-powerful demonic entity to blow up.

With Karelia dead, Hal urges Guy to give up "the dream" and bury the hatchet. Guy replies by burying that green arrow inside Hal, killing him. While Guy is distracted harassing Carol, John takes the yellow ring from Hal's dead hand and puts it on, becoming... Green Lantern?

But the... yellow ring... SS logo... John's mustache... Okay, you know what, sure, why not. It would actually be weirder if this comic started making sense now.

As John fights Guy, the voices in the yellow ring start telling him to give up and bow to whitey -- but then they're overtaken by Hal's voice, which tells John he just has to "believe." This pep talk gives John the confidence he needed to defeat Guy, a formidable villain who has now had his ass kicked three times in one comic. As a result, the green energy from Guy's ring flows into John's yellow one, finally turning it into a proper Green Lantern ring! Well, except for the small fact that it still has Nazi ghosts inside it, as John freely admits.

But, at least those ghosts aren't so chatty anymore (John says "the whispers have been silenced") and the comic ends with John declaring the beginning of a new, non-racist age as he turns the Nazi symbol in a big eagle statue into a Green Lantern one. THE END. (Nazi-ghost-powered John Stewart was not invited to appear in Countdown: Arena, for some reason.)

Flash Annual #7

For the sake of completionism, I gotta mention Hal's brief appearance in the Elseworlds Flash annual, which is set in a timeline in which Wally West was crippled while he was Kid Flash and grew up to direct a movie about his dead mentor, Barry Allen. Other than a Justice League group shot, Hal only appears to say that he's hated Wally since he was a kid.

This is just not a good year for Hal Jordan representation, huh.

L.E.G.I.O.N. Annual #5

And finally, my favorite of the 1994 annuals, specifically because of the ridiculous "Elseworld Rejects" shorts on the back. I talked about the Superman-related ones at the appropriate blog, but there are two Green Lantern ones too: an "Emerald Twilight" parody where the L.E.G.I.O.N. kill Sinestro and become, well, the L.E.G.I.O.N....

(I would have gone with P.A.R.A.L.L.E.G.I.O.N.)

...and a parody of the classic Green Lantern/Green Arrow #85 (the very special drug issue) replacing Speedy the smackhead with a super-smart drug-addicted alien toddler.

(I hope little Lyrl Dox is shooting up heroin and not homeless person spinal fluid like his grandad, Brainiac.)

You may see these absurd gags as foreshadowing for the Green Lantern/L.E.G.I.O.N. crossover we're about to reach in the regular continuity, though the group has gone through a bit of a forced rebrand by now...

Green Lantern-Related Titles Round-Up (October 1994)

This month: Guy gets a new look/origin/species! Kyle doesn't join the Titans (yet)! John meets someone's grandpa!!!

Guy Gardner: Warrior #0

This issue is one big info dump, but that's okay, because that's what #0 issues are for. The gist of that info is: GUY GARDNER IS AN ALIEN... 's distant descendant. This is revealed to him by that diamond-shaped gizmo he got at the end of GG:W #23, which opens up in the middle of his living room and starts projecting a replay of the events of that issue, with some new scenes that must have gotten Men in Black'd out of Guy's memory.

FLASHBACK TIME: We see Guy drinking the fabled "Water of the Warriors" in GG:W #23 again, only this time, an armored dude called Cardone appears in front of him and takes him to a virtual arena where he's forced to fight a big lizard dude. In the middle of the fight, Guy starts having convulsions and his body starts morphing... sorry, morphin' rather painfully. Once the body horror sequence is over, Guy suddenly looks like he tattooed a tribal rug to his body, a shocking new look that Zero Hour #0 already spoiled for us.

Guy uses his unexplained new ability to morph his arms into weapons (also shown during ZH) to defeat the lizard dude, plus other nasty-looking fellows. Cardone declares that he's passed the test and stops this simulation, because it's backstory exposition time. Cardone explains that a loooong time ago, there was a race of capital "W" Warriors called the Vuldarians, who were devoted to protecting innocent worlds from being conquered by evil empires. They were able to do this due to their legendary Warrior ethos, and also the fact that they could morph their arms into weapons.

But then, one of those empires, the Tormocks, conquered and slaughtered them. The surviving Vuldarians went around the universe sharing their Warrior science with backwater species and, in return, taking samples from their mightiest fighters. The goal was to find a species they could merge with all this genetic knowledge in order to create a race of perfect Warriors to face the Tormocks... which sounds a lot like eugenics. But, you know, for good!

One day, the Vuldarians reached Earth and found out they were "anatomically compatible" with us (cue porno grooves). Unfortunately, the first attempt to produce a human/Vuldarian hybrid was sabotaged by a jealous shaman, resulting in a hideous critter who sure looks a lot like that dream monster from GG:W #22...

The Vuldarians realized that creating a successful merger between the races would take many centuries -- so many that they were all long dead by the time it finally happened. That "successful merger," as you might have guessed, was one Guy J. Gardner. In fact, his genetic "Warrior's instinct" is what led him to become a phys ed teacher, a social worker, and then a superhero. Guy doesn't take this revelation too well. He just hates retcons.

Cardone decides to delete this memory from Guy's mind and limit his power levels until the day he's ready to accept his true heritage. That day seems to be today, since, back in his living room, Guy reacts by simply saying "Aww, man... no way!" instead of throwing another shit fit. And with that, Guy reaches his final form for this series and will stop changing costumes/powers every two issues.

The way this whole "power quest" storyline was handled was obviously very improvised (and partly motivated by editors misunderstanding the point of mid-'90s Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers mania), but now that all the setup is out of the way, this book can finally focus on what it does best: Guy and pals kicking butts. Go Go Guy Gardner!

The New Titans #0

Kyle Rayner doesn't join the New Titans in this issue, nor does Mirage use her mirage power to turn into him, as the cover falsely promises, but he does show up at the end for exactly one panel. Most of the issue is about this Kyle-less new incarnation of the team fighting some super terrorists at the World Trade Center, which almost results in Damage blowing up the Twin Towers by losing control of his exploding powers. Or, as Terra puts it: by "blowing his wad."

Then, on the last page, we see what appears to be a DNA helix (an evil DNA helix) loitering in space right near the big ball of green energy that used to be planet Oa. The helix notices Kyle flying out of there (in GL #0) and decides to hitch a ride to Earth with him. Any GL fans who bought this comic based on seeing about 1/3rd of Kyle on the cover couldn't say they were totally cheated after that.

My guess is they wanted to have Kyle join the team in this issue but couldn't do it since he was in space, so they threw this scene in there to tease the fact that he will join in the near future. I feel like no one talks about that anymore, by the way. Kyle Rayner was in the (No Longer Teen) Titans! Granted, this was not the greatest or most popular or most attractively drawn Titans era ever, and the only iconic character in the team is almost unrecognizable (Beast Boy in his gritty "Dark Changeling" phase), but still. Kyle Rayner was a Titan! They should put him in the cartoon, is what I'm getting at.

Darkstars #0

All-New Darkstar John Stewart is on an urgent mission to confront Jeddigar, the corrupt leader of the Darkstars. So, naturally, he stops for several hours in Darkstar Colos' home planet, Zamba, so that Colos can recap his entire origin to his estranged grandfather. He also recaps all the events of this series so far and its crossovers, including Zero Hour. I'm not sure how reliable Colos' memory is, though, since he remembers Hal Jordan's hair being black.

(Also, Guy is wearing his short-lived yellow armor when he should be wearing his short-lived red armor.)

Upon hearing that whole story, Colos' grandpa is like "Cool. You're still banned from this planet and family, though" (because all violence is forbidden in Zamba, even violence against crazy people trying to reboot the universe). Colos pretends he isn't crying inside and tells John they can resume their mission to stop Jeddigar, asking "What are we waiting for?" You! They were waiting for you, dude.

Justice League Quarterly #16

This issue is all about General Glory (you know, that guy who's like Captain America meets Captain Marvel/Shazam), so of course his #1 fan Guy Gardner plays a role in it. After the General has a heart attack in his elderly Joe Jones identity, Guy visits him at the hospital and brings along some comics from his extensive General Glory comic book collection, the big nerd.

Guy is asked to leave because visiting hours are over (and because he's Guy), so Joe is left alone in that hospital room with a cop who just got crippled taking a bullet for a kid. Joe tries to raise the cop's spirits by reading him stories from the comics Guy brought, which have absolutely nothing to do with his predicament: a Jack Kirby-style Golden Age story, a Curt Swan-style Silver Age story by the real Curt Swan, a gritty '80s Frank Miller pastiche, and an EXTREMELY '90s Rob Liefeld-style slugfest (yes, they did a '90s parody during the actual '90s). Three of these stories feature the General's sidekick, Ernie the Battling Boy, whose fashion sense is the in-universe explanation for Guy's classic bowl cut hairdo.

Since old Joe can't switch back into General Glory without dying from another heart attack, he decides to pass on his powers to the cop, and then… dies anyway? Wait, this is how General Glory dies?! This guy appeared in like 50 Justice League and Guy Gardner comics over the past three years, yet no one seems to have noticed his death in those series (to be fair, Guy had a lot on his mind at this point, including plenty of other deaths).

Green Lantern #0 (October 1994)

Kyle Rayner fights Hal Jordan! And also, Kyle Rayner (bless his idiot heart) helps Hal Jordan. Hold on, didn't these two die when one got an arrow to the chest and then the Big Bang happened all around them? (The second simplest explanation of Zero Hour #0 you'll find this side of the Milky Way.) Nope, because Hal was able to use his dwindling Parallax powers to transport himself back into the timestream, and Kyle got dragged along because he happened to be right behind him. Now they're back on planet Oa, which is just how Hal left it in GL #50: littered with dead little blue people.

Hal wants to refuel his Parallax Powers with Oa's energy so he can go back to destroying and un-destroying the entire universe, but he soon finds out he can't do that without a GL ring to channel the power (I bet he regrets stepping on two rings over the past few months). Kyle is in full "take down the genocidal villain" mode and gives Hal a good beating, but Hal doesn't seem to be fighting back. At one point, one of Kyle's attacks leaves him next to Kilowog's skull (right where Guy Gardner left it in GG:W #20) and Hal has a meltdown about what he's done. Like, you know, turning one of his friends into a skull.

"Yeah, man, don't worry about it."

When Hal starts crying, Kyle stops punching and actually feels sorry for him, saying he didn't realize "all the pain you went through." Kyle opens up too and, after briefly recapping his origin, says that being GL seemed like a fun gig until his girlfriend Alex got fridge'd, and now he isn't so sure it's worth it. Hal muses that if he had the ring again, oh boy, he'd be so much at better at it this time around.

So, Kyle thinks for a second and just... gives him the ring.

Kyle: "No more chances." (four pages later) "Okay, one more chance."

Green Lantern is back, baby! And he's done trying to remake the universe! R-Right? Uh, no. The first thing Hal does after thanking Kyle for this chance is start drilling into Oa's core so he can absorb all of that green juice and "go back to fixing things." Kyle quickly realizes he fucked up and tries to reason with Hal to get the ring back, but Hal is back to acting like, well, someone who killed a bunch of his friends. In fact, when Kyle throws Kilowog's skull at him (it was the closest thing to a weapon he had at hand), Hal pulverizes it without shedding a tear. RIP, Kilowog's skull.

(Hal's got a point there, though.)

Now, our boy Kyle may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he's pretty resourceful without a ring. When a blast from Hal makes him fall down into the crypt where all the dead GLs are stored, Kyle hides in there, manages to surprise Hal by dropping a dead GL slab on him, and steals the ring back while he's pinned down. Hal doesn't care much, since he already refueled himself and is powerful enough to kick Kyle's ass again. Despite having the advantage, Hal tries to win Kyle over to his side by summoning a green version of Alex, who tells him that they can be together for real if he just lets Hal win.

Kyle tells Fake Green Alex that he'd do anything to bring her back... except this. He regretfully dissolves her with his ring, then says it's about time he did what that little blue guy told him to do when he gave him the ring: "what you must." And "what you must," apparently, is "destroy a whole planet so that Hal Jordan can't get even more powerful." Hal is like "You wouldn't!" But yes, he would.

Hal tries to stop him, but it's too late: Kyle overloads Oa's core and causes the planet to blow up. Kyle emerges from the explosion feeling strangely triumphant and determined for someone who gave up his ring mere pages ago, but destroying a planet to stop (and possibly kill?) a cosmic villain will do that to you. He promises he'll try to live up to the role of One True Green Lantern... if he can figure out how to get home before starving to death in the literal middle of the universe, anyway.

Kyle Losing His Ring Counter: 1

I'm going to count this as the first instance of Kyle losing his ring, even though he gave it up willingly, because he immediately regretted it and had to fight to get it back. The start of a grand DC Comics tradition!

Plotline-Watch:

Oa's destruction will have dramatic repercussions across the DC Universe... and beyond! I'll just say that if you liked the Amalgam comics, you have this issue to thank for it.

This has to be the shortest origin recap sequence among DC's Zero Month issues (whose entire purpose was recapping/rebooting origins). Superman got several pages across four issues, while Kyle only gets half a page... but that's understandable given that his actual origin only happened six issues ago.

Kyle tells Hal that "growing up, all the kids on my block wanted to be you." (He wanted to be Superman.) He might be fibbing there, since Kyle didn't even remember that "Green Lantern" was a thing in GL #51. Or, it's possible that he remembers his friends talking about GL but was so into Superman that he never bothered finding out what his costume looked like.

Upon giving Hal the ring, Kyle admits that this was "probably bound to happen sooner or later anyway." With that attitude, sure!

Hal is surprised that Kyle was able to surprise him by dropping that slab on him at the GL crypt, since the ring should have stopped the attack. So that's another way Kyle's ring is different from the old GL rings: no yellow weakness or 24-hour battery limit, but also no auto-defense system. We'll find out another difference next issue, and to be honest I'm not sure how it squares away with Hal using the ring in this one...

The dead GL in that slab was Hal's predecessor, Abin Sur, unless there's some other bald purple guy I don't know about. Poor Abin: not only was he used to pin down Hal, but Hal then throws the slab back at Kyle to attack him, causing it to break. They were practically playing ping pong with his corpse for a second there.

Blowing up Oa is easier than I would have imagined. Could Sinestro have done it at any of the points when he had a GL ring? I guess the lack of Guardians or dozens of GLs around to prevent it did help Kyle in this instance.

I may rag on Kyle for just giving his ring to a mass murderer who just tried to erase all of creation, but I do love the moment in this issue when he sits down with Hal and they start relating to each other. That brief respite for the insanity feels to me like the foundation for an eventual mentor-mentee relationship.

Zero Hour 30th Anniversary Special #1 (October 2024)

OH NO! A residual time vortex left over from Zero Hour has transported us from October 1994 to October 2024! Before a Linear Man comes to take us back to our proper time and/or shoot us with a giant gun, let's look at the Zero Hour 30th Anniversary special that came out this month, and absolutely nothing else. (Not because I don't wanna learn too much about the future to protect the integrity of the timestream, but just because it looks kinda depressing...)

The issue starts with the Kyle Rayner of 2024, who looks exactly like the '94 model, right down to being drawn by Darryl Banks. I'm gonna take this to mean that no dramatic events have happened in Green Lantern comics during the past 30 years and the status quo is pretty much the same.

The one difference seems to be that Kyle can't access Sector 2814 or Earth, for some reason, so he's stuck Green Lanterning in alien planets. He's in one of those planets when a portal opens in front of him and Wally "Flash" West (or a version of him, anyway) comes out, begging for Kyle's help with some sort of universe-destroying threat.

Wally pulls Kyle into the portal, which leads them to a reality where there's a big statue of Batman in front of Wayne Manor. Apparently, they've landed in Earth "Bruce Wayne Doesn't Give a Shit If Anyone Figures It Out." Wally says something about a "Crisis-level event" coming -- which is confirmed when two members of the Fatal Five (the 31st century supervillain team) show up, kill him, and peace out.

Yep, that's a Crisis alright.

In the next section (drawn by Kelley Jones), Kyle has a run-in with Gotham City's protector: Batgirl, who's kind of a gritty badass in this reality and gives Kyle a beatdown because she thinks he killed Wally. However, no amount of prep time can make Batgirl more powerful than a ring that can create anything you want, so Kyle easily traps her in a green bubble and flies her back to Wayne Manor to figure out what the hell's going on. There, they meet a version of Bruce Wayne who never recovered from that little "Bane" incident in 1993, meaning he's still crippled and depressed. But hey, on the upside, he now owns a cool sci-fi wheelchair and sports an even cooler beard.

Kyle ditches the belligerent Bat-people and heads to Metropolis to look for Superman. And sure enough, he finds Superman... 's grave, because, in this world, he never came back after Doomsday killed him. You might notice a pattern emerging here. (This section is drawn by Tom Grummett, who has some experience drawing dead Supes.)

Instead, Kyle meets Supergirl, who's wearing a very "Reign of the Supermen" black costume and immediately starts punching him. We learn that Batgirl called every hero she knows and told them that this green weirdo killed Flash and is probably to blame for the fact that reality seems to be collapsing around them. Supergirl is joined by Azrael, The Ray, and Wonder Woman -- a.k.a. Donna Troy, who, we're told, is someone Kyle once dated (uh, spoilers for post-1994 GL comics!). Donna has no idea who Kyle is, but at least her Lasso of Truth establishes that he's not some Flash-killing reality destroyer.

Obsidian, son of the Golden Age Green Lantern, joins the party. He tells everyone that he (somehow) used his shadow powers to peek across time and found out that other eras have been erased, from Viking times to the Middle Ages to the 1940s. This provides a convenient excuse for this section's artist, the legendary Jerry Ordway, to draw the Justice Society of America for the 1940th time.

The far-future has also been destroyed completely, except for exactly five baddies who escaped in a time bubble (the previously seen Fatal Five). At this point, Kyle should have said "Hey, that's just like in Zero Hour!" but he still doesn't understand what's going on. Thankfully, he gets a little nudge in the form of... oh shit, it's Hal Jordan as Parallax!!! (Please pretend you didn't see him on the cover.)

After seeing Parallax, Kyle finally starts putting things together: looks like this is the "perfect world" Hal wanted to create in Zero Hour, where Coast City was never destroyed... but all the other '90s calamities still happened to the other heroes, because screw those guys. Now this universe is decaying, but Hal thinks he can keep it going if Kyle hands over his GL ring. Kyle doesn't wanna, so it's Lantern vs. Lantern time (as drawn by Paul Pelletier, who'd be great on a storyline featuring GLs fighting GLs, hypothetically speaking).

Hal sics his new lackeys, the Fatal Five, on Kyle. More '90s heroes show up to help: Connor "Green Arrow" Hawke, Jack "Starman" Knight (who I really hope is being used with James Robinson's blessing; presumably Tony Harris is okay with it, since he has a pinup in this issue), and Guy "Guy Gardner" Gardner (in his red armor, which probably hasn't been seen in non-flashback form since the '90s).

Meanwhile, Supergirl reluctantly visits her asshole ex, Lex, to ask him how to stop their universe from decaying (I wish they'd used his long-haired Lex Luthor Jr. look, but I guess that was ruled out because it ended right before Zero Hour). Lex confirms what Parallax is saying: they have to give him Kyle's ring.

So, Supergirl joins Hal's side, while Donna sticks by Kyle and other heroes stand around wondering what to do. Soon enough, Hal manages to get his hands on Kyle's ring, something he claims would be "next to impossible for most." Yeah, Kyle losing his ring to a villain? When has that ever happened?

Now that he has double the power, Hal saves this universe by... screwing Kyle's. As in, he takes all that entropy that's eating this reality and channels it to the regular DCU via the portal that brought Kyle here. The heroes aren't sure how they feel about that, but Kyle argues that their universe is less important than his multiverse because it's smaller. Also, that unimportant universe has a name now: Splinterverse! Not to be confused with the Earth where everyone is a martial artist rat.

(Also also, Howard Porter is the artist now!)

You might wonder where Linear Men, the time police, are during this whole mess. The answer is "trapped in a cube." Turns out Waverider found out about this Splinterverse at some point and traveled here to deal with it, but Hal imprisoned him in said cube. Luckily, Wavey's found by the Legion of Super-Heroes' Invisible Kid, who stowed away in the Fatal Five's time bubble by... being invisible. Before he's freed by Invisible Kid, Waverider delivers some (Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding-drawn!) exposition that reveals the precise moment when the Splinterverse was created: the part at the end of Zero Hour #0 when he slipped the heroes back into the timestream, at which point Hal sneakily dispatched "a splinter aspect of himself" to create a smaller-scale version of his "perfect world."

Waverider helps convince the conflicted heroes that it's worth it to let their little universe die so that trillions more people can live. Even Guy Gardner, who was initially going "screw you, I'm saving myself" and punched Kyle, begrudgingly stands down. With Starman and Obsidian's assistance, Kyle is able to get his ring back from Hal, causing the entropy to flood back into the Splinterverse. Kyle is convinced that there must be some way to save this place, but Waverider is like "nope" and drags him back to the DCU as the Splinterverse is erased. The only thing that remains of it is a nice necklace that Wonder Donna gave Kyle to remember her by.

Kyle is mighty pissed at Waverider for not even trying to save the Splinterverse, but at least they're back home and it's all over... or is it? The special ends with the revelation that something Kyle did in this issue somehow freed some sort of big, yellow space bug. Wonder what that's about. Looking forward to reading the resolution to that cliffhanger in 30 more years!

As a '90s kid, I am physically incapable of disliking this special, which was aimed squarely at me. The 14-year-old Kyle/Donna shipper in me especially appreciates the focus on those two, with Kyle even mentioning that he doesn't really understand why she was suddenly written out of his life (the answer is "because John Byrne").

However, I think there are several missed opportunities here:

The Splinterverse doesn't look a whole lot like the "perfect world" Hal wanted to create in Zero Hour. Coast City is there, but it only appears for a few panels and doesn't really play any role in the story. Everyone else is kinda angry and miserable, or pretty much the same as in the DCU. It would have been interesting to see if the utopia Hal had promised, where no tragedies happen and one needs to grow old or die, would have been sustainable over time.

I really hoped the female Time Trapper from the end of ZH #0 would be addressed, but nope. Dan Jurgens has said that he intended that to be the alternate timeline Batgirl who died in ZH, which I find a really intriguing idea. On that note, the Batgirl in this issue is clearly not the one who died in ZH, not just because, well, she's alive, but also because she acts like a totally different character and makes no reference to anything in ZH.

I was gonna say that I'd hoped the Hal/Parallax in this issue would be the one that was left as a loose end at the end of Convergence, especially since Jurgens was also involved in that series. However, the DC wiki informs me that this version has actually appeared in other comics since then, as recently as 2023, and his further misadventures sound a bit confusing from the write-up there, so I can't really blame Jurgens and Ron Marz for looking at that and saying "You know, let's just make another one."

Green Lantern-Related Titles Round-Up (September 1994)

This month: Zero Hour! ZERO HOUR! ZERO HOUR!

Guy Gardner: Warrior #24

This issue is wild, man. As seen in Zero Hour, Guy Gardner (who suddenly has the ability to grow handguns out of his arms) has decided that the current crisis afflicting the DC Universe is the perfect opportunity to go back in time and undo the destruction of Coast City, thus preventing his frenemy Hal Jordan from going insane and turning into a full-on enemy. We start with Guy having already assembled an unlikely team for that mission: Supergirl, Steel, and an alternate-timeline Batgirl who still has her spine intact. I'm pretty sure the rationale behind these selections is "the writer of this comic likes 'em" (I know Beau Smith is a big Supergirl guy especially).

(Note that Guy and Steel are supposed to be old college buddies, but that isn't acknowledged in this issue beyond Guy saying "reminds me of..." when Steel makes a football-related comment.)

Anyway, Guy and pals are at that monument the superheroes built in what used to be Coast City, when a time vortex opens and sends them to the past, just as Guy wanted. Unfortunately, the vortex overshoots it a bit and they all end up in dinosaur times. There, they run into... well, dinosaurs, but also Extant, the guy who is totally the main villain behind Zero Hour and not just a decoy one.

By the way, here are all the names Guy calls Extant in this issue: Ex-Lax, Timex, Extinct, Ex-Man (don't wanna speculate about what Guy, a macho dude in the '90s, might have meant by that last one).

Extant makes the heroes go through a bunch of different time periods -- and art styles, since this issue has five different artists. First up is the old west (drawn by Phil Jimenez), where the Guy Gang teams up with an assortment of DC western characters to take on Extant and his posse of mind-controlled gunslingers. Two notable events here are: 1) Guy turning his arms into the "Toastmaster" guns that Steel designed, and 2) Supergirl shapeshifting into Extant to try to trick him into thinking she's his future self, but it doesn't really work out and we get this panel:

Next, Extant briefly sends them to the far future (drawn by future superstar Howard Porter), leading to cameos by the Space Ranger and a time-displaced Lady Blackhawk, who joins the Guy Gang. The time rollercoaster then sends them to Coast City's relatively recent past (fittingly drawn by Mike Parobeck), where Guy not only sees Hal Jordan in his prime but also... himself, looking like a well-adjusted adult and hanging out with his precognitive ex-girlfriend Kari Limbo.

Being close to his own past self causes Guy to freak out and lose control of his still-undefined new powers. Hal assumes that this shapeshifting weirdo must be a supervillain who wants to "destroy Coast City" and tries to take him down with one punch™.

(I like how Hal's whole vibe in these retroactive appearances is "if anyone ever tries to destroy Coast City I'm gonna LOSE MY SHIT.")

Another time vortex opens, this time sending Guy alone to the day Coast City was destroyed in a Superman comic (drawn by Jackson Guice, the artist in another Superman comic, but close enough). Guy once again bumps into Kari, who finally realizes that he was the shapeshifting weirdo who ruined their date that day years ago. Extant appears and makes Guy watch as the city explodes, killing Kari and millions of others. Then everything fades to white and...

...you guessed it, TO BE CONTINUED IN ZERO HOUR!

Darkstars #24

New Darkstar Donna Troy has been sent on a mission to arrest cosmic murderer Hal Jordan before he does anything else crazy, like trying to restart the universe or something. Donna and her new teammates follow a huge Green Lantern-related energy signature and find not Hal, but a time-displaced Entropy/Krona, the ancient Guardian who accidentally created the DC Multiverse and went crazy. What is it about GL characters and poor mental health?

Oh yeah, that GL up there is Abin Sur, Hal's long-dead predecessor, who pops up in the middle of the fight due to the ongoing time wackiness. Donna considers telling Abin that he shouldn't give his ring to any dudes named Hal because they'll eventually kill the GL Corps, but then she's like "wait, no, that's dumb" upon realizing that trying to change history would be wildly irresponsible, not to mention dangerous (see: the GG:W issue up there).

Once the time-lost characters have been sucked into a black hole and returned to their respective times, a Superman hologram appears in front of everyone and asks them to come over to the Zero Hour series and help out with the time crisis (but only Donna ends up going). Meanwhile, John Stewart makes his debut as a Darkstar...

...and makes sure to mention right away that he's no longer a GL or a Guardian, just in case anyone was worried about his sanity. John tells Darkstar Colos that his sham trial last issue was indeed a sham trial and the guy running the Darkstars is corrupt, so they should probably do something about that. Unfortunately, they don't have time for that, since everything fades to white at the end of the issue (again).

So, for Donna anyway, this will be CONTINUED IN ZERO HOUR!

Justice League America #92, Justice League Task Force #16, and Justice League International #68

Young Hal also appears in the "Return of the Hero" storyline, which introduces the Justice League's forgotten founder, Triumph. The first part reveals that Triumph was actually the one who first brought Hal, Barry "Flash" Allen, Black Canary, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter (plus guest star Superman) together as a team to fight an alien invasion, though he was kind of a dick about it.

That first adventure ended with Triumph using his magnetic powers to stop the aliens, which somehow "trapped him out of phase with the timestream" and caused everyone to forget him. Now, thanks to Zero Hour, he's back and wants to lead the current Justice League against the also-returned aliens, but they're like "nah."

After a lot of drama and in-fighting, the JL does agree to join Triumph against the aliens. In the end, it turns out that the aliens only wanted to talk but didn't know how, so they expressed themselves via superhero fight scenes. One of the ways in which they try to communicate with Triumph in the last chapter is by turning into Hal:

Yep, that's Phil Jimenez again; dude was pretty busy this month.

Anyway, once Triumph learns to work on his interpersonal skills and gets through to the aliens, they instantly go away and the day is saved. The League welcomes Triumph (back) into the team, and then... everything fades to white. NOT TO BE CONTINUED IN ZERO HOUR, BECAUSE EVERYONE HAS CEASED TO EXIST!

Green Lantern #55 (September 1994)

Zero Hour is here, and so is Green Lantern! A different, much older Green Lantern, despite him looking about as young and buff as Kyle (we're in the '90s DCU, where even graphic designers and aging businesspeople have six packs). But first: the conclusion of Kyle Rayner's fight with Major Force, the nuclear-powered government agent who murdered Kyle's girlfriend Alex last issue. When we left them, Kyle's power ring had just flaked on the "power" part and the fight was going predictably poorly for him.

Before killing Kyle, though, Major Force asks him to clear something up: what the hell is that green rock his bosses found in the alley where Kyle got his ring in GL #50? Kyle, of course, has no clue -- but when his ring gets close to the rock, it causes it to morph into a sort of lantern. A lantern that is green. Suddenly, the ring has power again and Kyle quickly turns the tables on MF.

When MF makes it clear that no amount of green torture will make him rat out his bosses, Kyle is like "okay fine, I'll just kill you then." He seems willing to do it, too, but then some cops show up to arrest MF and they end up saving his life. Naturally, they also have some questions for Kyle about that body they found stuff in a nearby fridge, but Kyle wants to be alone right now and just flies away.

Poor Kyle doesn't even get a minute to mourn Alex before noticing that some dude in a green cape broke into his apartment and is just standing in his living room. Understandably, Kyle is no mood to deal with that nonsense right now.

Kyle produces a Cable-from-the-X-Men-sized gun and threatens the home invader. However, the guy turns out to have a power ring of his own and is much better at using it than Kyle, based on the fact that Kyle ends up pinned to the wall by a giant skeleton hand within like a second. Once Kyle has agreed to hear him out (not like he had much choice at the moment), the man introduces himself as Alan Scott and says he's also Green Lantern. Or was, anyway.

This whole "multiple Green Lanterns" thing is confusing to Kyle, so Alan tells him about the Green Lantern Corps, Hal Jordan, and how Hal Jordan went crazy and destroyed the Green Lantern Corps. He even projects some cool splash pages with his ring, maybe because he knows visual aids are appreciated when you have ADHD like Kyle.

(I like how Alan projected that image of himself tied up and looking like that, which I don't remember from that issue.)

Alan says he's here because he knows he'll eventually have to go up against Hal again (his first attempt wasn't too successful, as seen above) and he thinks Kyle, as the last of the Green Lantern Corps, should be there to help. Kyle was just saying he didn't even want to be GL anymore after he failed to prevent his girlfriend's death, but then he remembers how Alex was always trying to get him to be more responsible. After Alan has left and Kyle finally gets some time alone, he decides to continue Green Lanterning, as scared and out-of-his-depth as he is, because that's what Alex would want him to do now that he has that power ring. In other words: with great power rings there must come great responsibility (rings).

Just then, Kyle runs into his new pal Superman and a guy in a floating hi-tech chair, Metron, who say they need his help. Despite being so depressed, Kyle is still polite enough to compliment Metron's "cool chair." Anyway: IT'S ZERO HOUR TIME, BABY!

Plotline-Watch:

That "cool chair" scene continues in Zero Hour #4 (the first issue), in which we find out why Superman and Metron came to see Kyle: they need him to act as cameraman, basically, and project an image of Superman that Metron can redirect to "all of Earth's heroes" to ask for their help with the Crisis™ that's been causing all the time-related weirdness we've seen lately (like the futuristic city in last issue, the Nazi dinosaurs in Guy Gardner: Warrior, and all the Batmen in Superman: The Man of Steel #37). That green Superman projection would show up in several other DC titles from this month. So that was Kyle Rayner's first great contribution to the DC Universe: helping Superman butt into other comics.

Incidentally, Zero Hour's Dan Jurgens really nailed Kyle's crabface mask. Not all artists from this era did, as we'll see.

The cops who interrupt Kyle say they're from the Los Angeles Special Crimes Unit. I guess the one in Metropolis was so successful that they started franchising? We'd already seen Washington SCU in the Hawk & Dove series. I hope they're paying Maggie Sawyer some royalties.

Would Kyle have killed Major Force if the cops hadn't stopped him? We'll find out when there's a whole-ass crossover storyline devoted to answering that question ("Capital Punishment").

The reason why Alan Scott looks so spry for a World War II vet was revealed in Ron Marz' Green Lantern Corps Quarterly stories starring the character. Those stories also mentioned the title of "Sentinel," but Alan hasn't adopted that name yet, even though he says in this issue that he isn't currently calling himself Green Lantern either. So I guess he's just "Alan Scott" right now.

The DC Wiki claims that Alexander Luthor from Crisis on Infinite Earths appears in this issue, which doesn't sound that far-fetched since it's a Crisis-related crossover with cameos from like 50 characters (in Alan's flashback), but nope, he's not there. How did they get that impression? I think I know: it's Guy Gardner's fault (and his short-lived yellow armor's that kinda looks like Alex's).

So, to recap, in this issue Kyle: 1) defeats the guy who murdered his girlfriend hours earlier, 2) finds his GL battery and quickly learns how to use it, 3) learns about the GL Corps and the whole mess with Hal Jordan, 4) selflessly decides to continue being Green Lantern despite his original motivation (getting back together with Alex) no longer being applicable, and 5) immediately gets involved in a cosmic crisis. Pretty big day for Kyle! Let's hope he gets some time off after this.

Green Lantern-Related Titles Round-Up (August 1994)

This month: Guy gets new powers! John gets a new job! The Spectre gets belated news about Coast City!

Guy Gardner: Warrior #23

Continued from last issue, in which Guy joined his new pal Buck Wargo's expedition into the South American jungles to search for something called "the Water of the Warriors." After escaping the exploding bar from last issue's cliffhanger via a convenient trapdoor, we find out that Buck's crew isn't the only group searching for the Waters: there's also those dinosaur-riding Nazis we already saw, a gang of local mercenaries (who get killed off right away), and some guys in turbans with an army of zombies. Oh, and the turban guys also turn out to be shape-shifters and morph into big monsters. Morphin' was all the rage in the '90s, it seems.

Guy and his friends aren't doing too well against the monsters, but then they're rescued by yet another group called the Warrior Women of Nabba, who are like "Oh, the Water of the Warriors? Yeah, we have that, here you go" and just hand it to the shape-shifters in exchange for leaving Guy alone. The shape-shifter leader, who currently looks like a giant snake, drinks the Water right there, but instead of giving him cool powers like he expected it just makes him blow up.

The Warrior Women say they've been waiting "centuries" for Guy and even show him some temple art that sure looks a lot like him, but with weird markings on his face (as if Guy would ever sport something so "fruity"). Before they can explain what's going on, they're ambushed by the Dino-Nazis and Guy falls into a pit, where he meets an alien-looking fellow who calls him the "promised one." Guy finally reaches the Water and drinks it, despite the foul smell.

(TMI, Guy.)

At first, nothing seems to change... but, when he's punched into a wall by a shape-shifter who had infiltrated Buck's crew as their sexy guide lady, Guy emerges wearing some sort of red armor and seems a lot stronger. Just when it looks like this issue's bonkers-ass plot is settling down, the skies turn all weird and all the dinosaurs and Nazis start fading out, which Buck identifies as "a time-rip ... takin' everything that don't belong." Sure, why not.

As you might have guessed, TO BE CONTINUED IN ZERO HOUR!

Darkstars #23

Another issue of John Stewart being zipped around the universe without knowing why! This time, that pushy Controller who kidnapped John two issues ago takes him to a bar in some shithole planet so he can talk to a mercenary who claims that the guy running the Darkstars, Jeddigar, just let him and his buddies enslave a whole world. Side note: it's kind of jarring seeing John still in his Green Lantern duds four months after the Green Lantern Corps died, especially since no one's told him the Green Lantern Corps died.

The mercenary realizes he probably shouldn't tell random people that stuff and tries to kill John, but the Controller takes him away again before the fight can really get going (wouldn't want John doing anything actually exciting in this comic). Meanwhile, that Jeddigar guy is holding a sham trial for the Earth's Darkstar, Colos, just to get rid of him before Colos exposes his corrupt ass. Colos loses the sham trial (that's how sham trials work) and Jeddigar wastes no time introducing his replacement, Donna Troy. Her first mission: arresting Hal Jordan for crimes against the universe.

Good luck with that. TO BE CONTINUED IN ZERO HOUR, TOO!

Justice League America #91

Featuring Ice's funeral, which Guy failed to attend because he didn't even know she was dead, having been too busy being in a coma and going to South America in his own comic. The other League members briefly talk about who's gonna tell Guy the love of his life has died before moving on to the usual JLI banter.

As part of the funeral, Ice's mother makes a big ice statue of her, which we'll see in a heartbreaking GG:W scene once Zero Hour is over (have I mentioned Zero Hour is about to start?).

The Spectre #21

One of the fascinating things about storylines like "Death of Superman," "Knightfall," and "Emerald Twilight" to me is when a totally different series acknowledges them. We've seen Darkstars and Green Arrow reference "Emerald Twilight" so far and now it's The Spectre's turn -- though I guess this is technically a "Reign of the Supermen" reference, since it's about the title character finding out that millions of innocents were murdered in Coast City and he didn't notice, even though "avenging murders" is his whole deal.

The Spectre's priest buddy wonders if perhaps he just wasn't meant to avenge those murders, or if there's "a hidden agenda at work." This is interesting to me given The Spectre's future association with Hal Jordan and his role in, you guessed it, Zero Hour. This is a weirdly DCU-connected issue in general (for what was usually a pretty insular title) due to the appearance of characters from series like Sandman, Suicide Squad, Firestorm, and Superman, which I wrote a bit more about at the '90s Superman blog. And speaking of which...

Adventures of Superman Annual #6 and Superboy Annual #1

This two-part Elseworlds story is basically Seven Samurai or The Magnificent Seven but with superheroes. One of those "Super Seven" is Hal Jordan, who in this timeline watched Coast City get obliterated by aliens and didn't turn genocidally insane. Instead, he did what any sane person in his situation would do: spend years protecting the bones of his friends from aliens, armed with nothing but a shovel. The other heroes convince Hal to dig up his GL ring and join the anti-alien resistance, but his shame over failing Coast City leads him to adopt a different costume and name ("The Gravedigger").

Hal spends most of the story being miserable and suicidal, but he does at least contribute to the resistance and doesn't murder a single one of his friends, so he's a paragon of mental health compared to "our" Hal. (I wrote more about these annuals at the Superman '86 to '99 Patreon and newsletter, if you're curious!)