I hate Superdickery. It's because of that site that I wanted to read some comic books again. But I didn't wanna read anything new, especially with all the angst and drama stuff going on in most of them, so I decided to read some old ones. I picked up The Flash Archives Vol. 1, thinking I would read some fun adventures. I wasn't expecting the Justice League/Unlimited goofy Flash, but I was sure he'd still, in a sense, be light-hearted. He was, but the stories, even though they were goofy in nature, still came off as being a bit too straight. Almost serious. It was still a nice read, though.
Then I decided to buy The Green Lantern Archives Vol. 1 expecting to read some pretty straight adventure stories about Hal Jordan. The irony. He was, well, basically... goofy. And it's mostly because of his obsession with Carol Ferris, his boss at the Ferris Aircraft Company. She used to show interest in Hal, but since she was put temporarily in charge of the company for two years, like a light switch, she didn't care anymore. Well, that didn't stop Hal from trying to win her over in almost every story. Hell, he even sexually harrassed/attempted raped her in one instance:
To make matters worse, Carol began to fall in love with Green Lantern, Hal's alter ego. Hal wasn't having any of it, he'd rather win her over as himself than his other-self. It's because of this absurd love triangle that the actual superhero/supervillain "fights" were usually be overshadowed. It wasn't a bad thing, because, well, watching Hal Jordan compete with himself in every story was hilarious.
However, the absurdness went to epic heights later on in the volume in the story The Leap Year Terror. Carol, in previous stories, for some silly reason, assumed Green Lantern was gonna propose to her, but it never happened. So, here, on leap year, she decided to propose to him. She told Hal. Of course, he flips, and wants to try to avoid her as GL as much as he could, but it was impossible since he had to go to a charity party that day. Oh, yeah, his fanclub has also been chasing him around that same day, too. I'm not making this up:
So, Carol finally gets a chance to be alone with GL, but only because he wanted to get away from those girls. Carol tries to pop the question to GL, but he delays it by going on and on about how beautiful she is. Eventually, they sit down at a park bench, and at this point, GL is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He resorts to the most drastic thing he could think of at that moment, by creating a monster with his ring as a distraction:
Amazingly, it didn't work. Hilariously, at that exact moment, GL gets whacked on the head by a toy plane, which knocks him out, leaving the monster to terrorize the city while he's at the hospital. Unintentionally. After a few panels, GL wakes up and puts a stop to this confused, friendly monster... by blowing his head off. Afterwards, the city's inhabitants gather around him and thank him for saving their lives. His thoughts on the fact that he was the one that caused the destruction and was receiving all this gratitude? "I feel a little funny accepting all these congratulations..." A little funny? Wonderful guy. Anyway, Carol catches up to him again and finally asks him. At the same moment, the fanclub appeared and they all asked as well. He used that as an excuse to turn everyone down and fly away. Story ends.
So, thank you Hal Jordan, thank you for providing all these stupid moments. I'd doubt most of these stories would be half as good without them.
Oh yeah, did I mention GL eventually gets an Eskimo sidekick that's basically useless and screams "GREAT FISH-HOOKS! whenever he gets the chance?
Now I did.
