The Super Bowl's over, so I'm late with "Two Minute Warning."

While I'm buying a pile of Green Lantern figures, and will give the movie a shot when it gets here; I haven't been regularly reading the Green Lantern comics. Partly, I think the recent adventures of the Technicolor Lantern Corps have been a bit overblown and humorless. (The other part? Pick up the new issue of GL and tell me how many multiple-murderers you see. Sinestro, the Cyborg Superman, Hal-as-Parallax, Larfleeze and the Star Sapphires have killed a few people, even John accidentally blew up a planet once...)

But then, I've read a good chunk of stories about other Green Lanterns, besides the earth boys we know. They were usually back-ups in the regular book; Alan Moore did a couple that have since become major plotpoints some decades later. Often, they'd involve the adventures of alien Green Lantern of Planet X and their trials and trevails for six pages or so. Because these stories usually don't involve established characters like Hal or John or Guy; the alien GL's often meet their demise in unfortunate or ironic ways, which underlines the inherent danger of being a Green Lantern, but also makes the collective Corps look a bit thick. Several are killed for not being told, or ignoring, the restriction on yellow. Well, they are chosen for fearlessness, not SAT scores...

Which brings us to today's story! From Green Lantern Quarterly #2, "Two Minute Warning" By Mark Waid and Ty Templeton, with inks by Al Gordon.






I love the happy little tree aliens in the background of the last page here. See, this was not only a clever little mockery of Green Lantern, but a nice summary of the then-current rules for the power rings. Do the rings still talk to their wielders? During Steve Englehart's run on the book, they were positively chatty. It's also an open question of whether the ring's voice is the ring's operating system or such, or a manifestation of the wielder's subconscious, which would really say something about poor Breeon in this story.

(Somewhat off-topic, but I had the same questions in Transformers: Beast Wars, where the Maximals and Predacons would talk to their own onboard computers all the time; which would be like you asking your internal organs how things were going.)

This kind of story is probably why, in continuity, Kilowog has been retconned to be the Corps' trainer; because a lot of these stories involved alien GL dies, new goober gets the ring, fools around with a bit with no guidance or instruction whatsoever, often gets killed, ring passes to someone else. Typically, you wouldn't want a weapon to train it's new user; but the rings are smart enough to pick a worthy ring-bearer, they could be a little more helpful afterwards...

The framing device in Green Lantern Quarterly was the (Big) Book of Oa, where you could see tales of the Corps history; and possibly apocryphal ones at that. I'll be curious to see if DC brings that back for another book they can tie-in to the movie; or if everything has to be in continuity and matter these days. Ah, I think I know the answer to that one already...