Tuesday, January 04, 2022

Blogging this issue would be inappropriate.

I have to wonder how many races of Green Lanterns are just utter dicks. Besides humans, I mean. But today's make Salaak seem like a charmer. From 2018, Green Lanterns Annual #1, "The Lost Lantern" Written by Andy Diggle, art by Mike Perkins.
Newbies Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz are meeting Hal and John in sector 0004, home of the Vaikeans. Or former home: their sun had exploded, but they had spread out into space enough that many survived. They had been one of the first races to join the GLC...maybe. Or maybe that was a myth, since records of a mostly-lost empire were sparse. Still, it's a ceremony to honor the Lost Lantern, and Simon and Jessica were invited as speakers. They are greeted by the Vaikean Lantern, Yli'Laatua; who is both somewhat creepy looking, and officious and protocol-obsessed. There may be a mis-wording in one panel as Jess discusses the Vaikeans, where she says humanity has "been sentient for a couple million years" but I think that should have been the Vaikeans.
Simon kind of wings his speech, with a hokey joke; seemingly not really caring if Yli'Laatua considers it appropriate or not. His disapproval shakes Jess, though, who gives a trainwreck of a speech; then ditches the reception to clear her head, which gets another call from Yli'Laatua about how inappropriate that was. Smashing a rock, Jess is then attacked by ring constructs, that don't seem to recognize her as an "inducted corps species." Worse, while Jess can manage 96% willpower, the constructs are at 255%. Since fighting wasn't working, Jess decides to try listening. Shortly thereafter, Hal, John, and Simon go looking for her; and are also captured, with the constructs at 1,487%!
In a cell, Jess talks through the answer with her power ring, remembering how updating her OS bricked her old phone: she had to re-install the old system, or cough up to Queen Industries for a new phone! She talks her ring into running an older system, so the constructs recognize it as a fellow ring. In a massive cavern, she finds millions, maybe billions, of Vaikeans, in stasis fields; kept there by the colossal willpower of the Lost Lantern. He's in a seeming feedback loop, which Jess interfaces with her ring: the Lost Lantern was put in a bind by his planet's leaders. They held order more dear than individuality or democracy; so while all good rule-obeying Vaikeans went out into space, the Lantern was tasked with imprisoning the rule-breakers and iconoclasts. He didn't really want to, but couldn't disobey; so he kept them all in stasis, even after the sun when nova and compressed most of the planet around his shame. Jess says imprisoning all those people wasn't okay; but he had at least kept them safe, and could let them go now. (How he maintained a charge all that time--especially since in continuity we've seen the green power go out seemingly entirely more than once--is a mystery, especially since I didn't even see his battery.)
The Lost Lantern is put on trial, but let off with time served. Jess and Simon are going to take care of him, and his people, the more open and free-willed Vaikean outcasts. Which they may or may not; and I don't know how well they would get along with the stick-up-their-collective-asses mainstream ones. You occasionally see Green Lanterns that might be a little abrasive--I don't think I warmed to Kilowog immediately, and he's frelling Kilowog--but I don't see the Vaikeans winning anyone over anytime soon.

1 comment:

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

I mean, props to that lost Lantern for holding all those people in stasis for that long, but he's still a dick though regardless right, haha.
Damn good question about issues with recharging unless he was about to use his ring to use the fallout from the sun and convert it into a rudimentary form he was able to recharge off, idk.