Lantern love

I’ve had a good experience with DC Infinite (their digital comics service) for the most part, but their failure to collect is abysmal. There are massive gaps in Batman and Detective Comics up until the goddamn 70s. Not some obscure issue from 1951, which I would still have a problem with, but reading that starts getting into the “actively relevant” territory. Denny O’Neil shit. Many of the missing issues contain the Robin mini that ran after, which is some of the first solo work Dick ever got, and most of his time at Hudson. They even cut out one of the issues from the Dala/vampire arc, even though they have the rest there. There’s just a one-issue hole that robs critical context for the rest of the arc.

A full 60ish issues of World’s Finest — basically the entire 1960s — are gone. Poof. 117 to 173 is absent. Other, more obscure releases from the same era are treated worse. Some have less than half their original content.

And even for more recent publications, like all those fun bizarre 90s events, some are simply gone. I know because I’ve been trying to read all the weird stuff lately. You know what’s never been collected properly? Bloodlines. They have the aftermath two-parter, Bloodlust, but no proper collection linking the different tie-in issues. You have to seek them out. And for events like Judgement Day, they have the fucking one-shot Batman tie in, but not the event itself. None of it.

If I’m paying $15 a month for access to old comics while supporting their producers, only to have to use a piracy site for them anyways, I’m beyond annoyed. This stops becoming a convenience issue and starts becoming a media preservation concern. Honestly, you could just upload the existing scans and I’d be happy. Being able to access them without getting flooded with ads is the whole reason I use the service, not for fancy digital recoloring. But instead, not only are these events not preserved, the services that do preserve them are targeted and taken down.

The justice league hurriedly responds to a call for backup at a little in the middle of nowhere place by the name of Amity Park. 

The situation had seemed so simple. 

A Star Sapphire had suddenly shown up on Earth which isn’t immediately cause for concern but she was unidentified, so a lantern was definitely going to have to look into it if only just to make sure that nothing bad was going on. There are two planet side green lanterns, Simon and Jessica. So they responded to handle the potential situation. 

Things rapidly spun out of control when they realized it wasn't just a Star Sapphire. 

"I hate to say this but we're gonna need backup" Simon tells Cyborg, "the Star Sapphire has brought something with her. My first guess was a white martian but..." The other one can do some manner of density shifting, and he can go invisible, but they know ways around that. Whatever this one is doing isn’t that though.

"Why isn't this working!?!" Comes Jessica's slightly panicked voice in the distance, "he keeps just going through my creations! dammit, think think Jess" She tried to contain him with a flamethrower construct but he just ignored it, like he’s seemingly ignoring everything else she’s throwing at him.

"Our constructs have zero effect on the other one, the alien, meta? man I don’t know he’s human shaped" 

"What is the situation other than the two hostiles?"

"Uh we got some government agents who are retreating because of the Star Sapphire wrecking their stuff. And the civilian people here seem to be falling under her influence, so she must be human. She's from here, she needs emotional connection to pull that stuff off."

The people are furious, the violet glow around them clearly indicates that the girl is using her ring to amp them up but if Simon didn’t know any better he’d say this was red lantern stuff.

Well there are more ways to whip people up into a frenzy, by hurting their loved ones for example.

There is a brief moment where it can be heard that Simon and Jessica try to get into a more advantageous position. 

Simon grunts, "dammit, those agents seemed to have weapons that actually worked on the other guy but the Star Sapphire used her violet constructs to shield him and destroy their guns and we've been struggling since" this whole situation stinks, he has a weird feeling about all of it.

"Simon this is really really bad, i can't keep restraining all these civilians, we're running out of energy fast!"

Cyborg tries to get a visual on the situation from his position in the Watchtower while he’s notifying any league affiliated heroes who are nearby and available. 

But all of a sudden he realizes there is just nothing, just a big lap of void where the two lanterns are supposed to be, there is no cctv footage, no cell towers, no internet connection. Just what the hell is going on here.

Then the audio transmission starts to violently crackle.

A new voice laced with static can suddenly be heard, "There you two are"

"Shit"

"Is the justice league coming yet? Are they finally going to do something?" the staticy voice continues.

"Stay back you-"

"Or maybe they still need more of a reason to act" 

The audio cuts out. 

"Jessica! Simon! Come in!" ... "Shit!" 

Cyborg finally gets a clear picture with the satellite cameras and now sees the entirety of Amity Park has been covered with a crystalized violet dome. It’s then that he remembers the story Hal told quite some time ago now about a Star Sapphire who managed to put a whole planet into love stasis.

They are gonna need more help with this one he thinks.

Meanwhile Jazz is still shakily trying to figure out how her new pink powers work, now that all the fighting is over (for now), the GIW forcefully expelled from Amity, and the two Justice league people captured and restrained.

Everything happened so fast, one moment the GIW had knocked out her brother and were forcefully taking him away and while she saw them drive off (she was pretty sure she was screaming) a pink thing just froze her in place, She was pretty sure someone said something about “great love in her heart” and then she was… well she was flying and- and there wasn’t really any time to question things then so she may have kinda gone and ripped into the van that had Danny.

She’s pretty sure she healed him, and then things just completely spiraled out of control from that point on. and now she’s here.

She’s pretty sure this is crazy villain behavior, she’s going to get put on some sort of watchlist and then she’ll never get to be a psychologist but it’s fine.

funniest scene so far.