* Can somebody explain to me who else besides Tucker Stone thinks the idea of a rainbow of Lantern Corps is a bad idea? Is there anyone who’s even the tiniest bit open to the idea of “Green Lantern” who’s like “Oh hell no, RED Lantern? Bullshit, that’s where I’m drawing the fucking line”? Who is the target audience for anti-Red Lantern snark? I actually want to know.
* We are living in the New Golden Age of Comics.
* When AICN, ground zero for fandom, spends its entire recap column driving Range Rovers through your show’s plotholes, you’re in real trouble. Couldn’t have happened to a more irritating phenomenon.
* I was going to post about what a bummer the very public falling out between Aqua Leung creators Mark Andrew Smith and Paul Maybury is, but Dick Hyacinth said much of what I would have said about it already.
* The New Yorker’s Ben Greenman offers his candidates for the five scariest movies ever. Nice to see The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on there. (Since you asked: The Blair Witch Project, The Shining, The Exorcist, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and then…I’m not sure. The Ring, Hostel, 28 Days Later, and Lost Highway were all very frightening to me.) (Via Bryan Alexander.)
* Topless Robot’s Chris Cummins takes a look at ten (mostly non-Chick) Jack T. Chick tracts.
* Also via TR, ten solid minutes of awful, awful Batman & Robin moments. This is at least on par with that batshit Wicker Man video.
* Check out this terrific zombie poster Sammy Harkham made for his Family Store’s October horror movie festival.
* Craig Thompson carves, is carved out of wood
* The real world is awful and this headline (via Carnacki) is proof:
Md. Mother Jailed After Bodies Of 2 Children Found in Freezer
I don’t know, man–I thought that the various colored lanterns were a stupid idea from the minute I heard about it. I think it’s still possible to have no strong opinion about Geoff Johns, but he seems to be an increasingly polarizing figure. And it’s all down to his work, since he seems like a likable enough guy in the interviews I’ve read.
In an industry where names like “Superman” and “Batman” are considered the heroic apex and it’s not ridiculous for the living symbol of American patriotism to have little chicken wings on the side of his head, the concept of rainbow lanterns is just fine with me.
If it’s executed poorly, then we’ll all judge it so, but crikey, it’s not even out yet aside from a rad-tastic double splash page of goodness!
Stuff’s supposed to be fun, y’know?
I do not like Geoff Johns, but neither do I see why a Red Lantern is inherently sillier than a Green one.
Next time I’ll preface any criticism of Red Lantern’s, or Violet, or Blue, by including an acknowledgment that I think Green Lanterns are just-as-super-fucking-stupid.
Tucker: Ha! Okay, that makes sense. But it begs the question: Why go out of your way to write about it, then?
Dick: What do you think is stupid about the idea?
Comixology asked me too, and I figured that a DC Nation panel might have something interesting to offer, since I do like reading some of their stuff. How was I supposed to know that it was going to be a 90 minute slide-show of upcoming covers?
Well, I did kind of know that. I just didn’t expect it to be so goddamn boring.
I side with the “stupid” camp on the Lantern question. Not because I have a particular chromatic bias, really. I just don’t get the idea that entire legions are being built on a color = emotion basis. If a Blue Lantern gets really angry, does he just change color or does he have to retire and then sign up with the Red Lanterns? If a Green Lantern gets a boyfriend, does she have to swap her outfit out for new blue love togs? It comes off a bit Care Bear-ish for a bunch of intergalactic military institutions.
I’m also in the “Green Lantern is pretty stupid” camp, possibly because as a child I never thought his power was very interesting, and as an adult I don’t think the character is very interesting (I don’t buy that a dude who travels through space fighting aliens and robots is going to get his kicks from being a pilot). I think Green Lantern works best when he’s standing in a crowd, as though to signify that this is Serious Shit and Everyone’s Invited. It’s a cool costume, though. One of the great, streamlined Silver Age costumes. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I always thought Guy Gardner was so lame–you have access to one of the best superhero costumes available, and you choose to wear that turtleneck thing?
CRwM is pretty close to my line of thinking on the Colorful Lanterns. I was thinking more like the Dinobots (“Hey look! A bunch of new characters you didn’t know about, and you can buy all their action figures!”), but the Care Bears seems more apt. I’ll also say that, while I don’t think the idea of a galactic police force is quite as mind-bogglingly awesome as some people, it’s a useful concept for a shared universe. Making Sinestro a fallen angel figure is also pretty effective; giving him his own “corps” is not a bad idea for a single storyline. By adding in a whole spectrum of lanterns, you’re really hurting the core concept. It’s like finding out that there’s five or six other pantheons of New Gods fighting on other planets.
God, I hope this doesn’t end up on that “Variations on a Theme” column at Blog@Newsarama.
Thompson is, like, “American Ninja” cut. Those little bumps of muscle on his sides. Reminds me of me, mostly.
I get weird about a rainbow brigade the same way I’d get weird when people on Battlestar would use Earth slang. What does color mean to different civilizations? Red and green mean totally different things between the western and eastern hemispheres of Earth. How could they mean the same to civilizations on, say, a Hell planet as they do to Earth? Or Qward? Or wherever.
That’s what Alan Moore’s F-Sharp Bell story dealt with. That some beings just don’t perceive color, light, sound, etc. the same as others. So what if on some planet, red is a peaceful color? Would they have any reaction to a Red Lantern Corpsman rolling into town?
But, yeah, like Ben said, it’s all supposed to be fun and not meant to be thought through to that level, so whatevs. Spider-Man, Hawkman, giant Batcave pennies…it’s all good.
I for one think it’s perfectly normal that DC does something along the lines of reminding their hardcore fans what their upcoming products are. Those of us who write about this shit for a living might know all the upcoming solicits inside and out, but I really don’t think the average fan is super up on all this, so a panel like DC Nation is a bit more fun for them than it is us.
As far as the lanterns thing goes, I don’t think it’s fair to try and put a massive amount of thought into how practical any of this stuff is in comparison to our own lives. Sure, a guy who flies in space wont get his jollies as a test pilot and alien cultures won’t have a similar cultural connection to colors. But in real life, someone who could fly in space would probably not spend his time trying to defend the innocent, and space aliens wouldn’t look just like humans but with fins. These ideas are suppose to work as metaphors, and if the central metaphor of GL is that a man has to be strong of will and free of fear to control a powerful ability, I don’t think it’s too far of a stretch that there would be a pantheon of adversaries who indulge in different emotions for a similar effect.
I agree, Kiel. My hangup isn’t even really a hangup. It’s just a thought across mediums and genres when it comes to intergalactic culture. Which, I mean, is all made up anyways. In the end, I’m gonna read and almost def enjoy very much what Geoff’s writing.
Count myself in the “Geoff Johns needs therapy” camp.
I’ve read my lifetime’s allotment of Green Lantern comics, but I remember when I was a kid I was disappointed when they called all the people from different planets “Green Lanterns” because I had read enough sci-fi to assume that “Green Lantern” was some sort of rough, parochial earth substitute for what must have a better, cooler name on other planet.
How did they explain where all these different Lanterns have been all these years?
If red = rage, what does green represent? Greed? Nature?
Tom,
I can field this one. The Orange, or paranoid, Lanterns have been around for years; they’ve just refused to work with anybody all this time because who can trust a Green freakin’ Lantern, am I right?
The Pink Lanterns were, until recently, not allowed to serve in the Corp. They can do now only if they agree to not explicitly state that they are Pink Lanterns.
The Gray Lanterns, who are the embodiment of confusion, were called out for the first time during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, but they never showed up and to this day nobody is quite sure where they are.
The Brown Lanterns, who embody a critical attitude characterized primarily by pretending that your world has been just completely rocked by the obvious stupidity of of people you disagree with (though they might have perfectly acceptable, even rational reasons for disliking something you enjoy), have mostly been to busy blogging to handle Corps tasks.