July 11, 2011

• Stay Classy, Coast City

  Recently a friend lent me the Green Lantern chronicles, volume 1. It is a compilation of issues from the 1960′s when DC decided to revamp the character for the next generation. I had never read comics from the Silver Age before, but I highly recommend it for the simple reason that the comics are so appalling you can’t help but laugh. As someone living in an age of excessive entertainment options, it is almost difficult to believe that people considered the plots, dialogs, and villians of that age entertaining. No wonder people en masse were flocking to drugs. 

  The Green Lantern is weak to the color yellow. Yes, the color yellow. We’re talking about a super hero who can be defeated by a taxi that fails to yield to him in a crosswalk, or a dastardly Chiquita banana, or simply a heavy bottle of yellow mustard, or a urine test. This weakness means that every issue breaks down to this: Green Lantern has to fight something that is yellow…

  

   

  And then 10 pages later it resolves when he discovers a non-yellow part of whatever he is fighting…

  

   

  Now that you’ve seen those two panels, you’ve basically read every Green Lantern story and you can resume moving on with your life.

  But by far the best part of reading Silver Age comics is the sheer amount of blatant sexism and racism in them. For instance, Hal Jordan (aka Green Lantern) has a tubby Eskimo sidekick he calls “Pie Face”. And at work he is always just flat out trying to bone his boss. He is constantly one panel away from humping her face off. His second alter ego is probably a serial rapist…

  
  Hal Jordan, keeping it classy.

  Public Service Announcements by the Green Lantern would have been creepy as hell. ”Hi, kids. I’m Hal Jordan. The key to a non-creepy sexual advance is offering a dinner followed by a harmless ‘ride in the country!’ What could a woman possibly see wrong with that? Remember kids, she can’t put out if you don’t take her out… to the woods.”

  And last of all, there are massive loads of ambiguous panels…

  

  • 4:06 am
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