You Just Know Me Too Damn Well

There was a time when making the hard decisions didn't always mean that John was going to kill you...

Green Lantern #24 (vol.3), 1992

A Time Before Constructs

It's hard to believe now but there was a time back in the early days of the Silver-Age that Green Lanterns didn't create anything they could imagine using only Will and an innocuous looking decorative bauble.  Back then power rings deployed a solitary green beam possessing all manner of wondrous properties which were often very different to the abilities we are familiar with today.

I was amused to stumble across this panel in a reproduction of Green Lantern #6 (vol.2), 1961, showing an incapacitated Hal Jordan on the plant Aku .  He must complete his mission to rescue the local populace from the snares of tyrannical doppelgangers and so he conjures up a perfect double of himself using his ring's energy.

The editor, credited as Julius Schwartz, is careful to point out that creating an image "out of thin air" is something we should not expect a Green Lantern to be capable of under normal circumstances.  It is only thanks to the unique properties of the "super-magnetic field" of the planet Aku that we are able to witness such an extraordinary feat here.

I wonder what old Julie along with writer John Broome and penciller Gil Kane would say if they knew that, in a future version of the mythos they'd pioneered, making constructs would be the first thing that every new recruit to the Green Lantern Corps would learn at rookie school?

Construct of the Week #22

 

Construct: Meteor Pool 

 

Generated by: Hal Jordan

 

Appeared in: Green Lantern #172 (vol.2), 1983



Guy Gardner's space pinball has nothing on these skills...

B’ZZD REVIEW – RED LANTERNS #16

Brightest:

- Possibly due to his reluctance to completely relinquish the hold on his human side, Rankorr has the unique ability among the Red Lanterns of generating constructs.  Unlike the Green Lanterns Corps he does not have complete control of his creations.  He is attacked by a giant manifestation of his late grandfather made real by the insecurities of his own mind.  He realises the power he possesses and refuses to fall for Bleez’s seductions when she tries to manipulate the male Lantern so as to share his dubious gift.  She would make a formidable force if she managed to couple her singularly venomous rage with the potential to produce deadly weapons with a mere thought .

- Another exciting element of Red Lanterns #16 is the hook of slowly introducing the Inversions again.  In this issue they confront Ratchet who stumbled into their lair.  They are hugely ominous.  Peter Milligan has excelled himself in conjuring a dread around these creatures that leaves us with little doubt of the danger they pose to Atrocitus and his followers.   And with the sudden appearance of Krona’s ghostly projection on the final page I am at last on board with the cliff-hangers in this book.  I want to know what comes next.

Blackest:

- The art was a bit ragged at times.  It had none of the horror that we have been spoiled with by Miguel Sepulveda.  The fill-in penciller was Andres Guinaldo.  He didn’t seem overly familiar with the characterisation we’ve had previously.  Rankorr and his compatriots lack their usual menace as do the Inversions.  I was slightly confused when there appear to be six members to the notably named the ‘Five Inversions’.

- The Manhunters.  I can’t quite explain this one which I realise is of very little use in a written medium but there was something that just seemed a little off.  They chatter witlessly like some two-bit henchman from a Batman book.  Like one of the Riddler’s goons.

Beware its power…

- The original Sepulveda cover is staggering.  Atrocitus cuts the figure of a tyrannical war lord, clutching an enflamed Green Lantern flag - or Guardian tabard perhaps!  His terrifying Manhunter army fly in formation behind him.  They stretch out into the distant and each one brandishes a decapitated skull.  Explosions of blinding red and green energy light the sky behind them all.  This is a cover that demands attention.