This may be the Whatiest What that was ever Whatted.
Our story starts one week as Hal Jordan is asleep, and dreaming...
WRONG!!!
Yes, Hal's power ring acted on his dreams, and turned Tom Kalmaku into a seagull.
WAIT...WHAT?!?!?
You mean Hal's ring can change someone's species?!?
So he could, for example, turn a beaten Sinestro into a mouse? Or he could turn Aquaman into a normal human (or a camel!) if they were trapped in a desert, so he wouldn't die because of the one-hour limit? Or he could turn Batman into a gorilla, because, hell, who wouldn't want to turn Batman into a gorilla?!?!? Or he could turn Starro into a cute puppy? Or...
Obviously, DC kinda backed away from this ability. I suppose if a modern Green Lantern writer addressed this, she would say something like "Hal was dreaming. And only in a dream could he believe he could actually do it--so only while dreaming would he have sufficient willpower to make the ring do this." [This is why I'm not allowed to write comics].
And, indeed, at the end of the story, Hal commands his power ring to never act on one of his dreams again. Dummy.
Anyway, for this story, it's a damn good thing that Hal did turn Tom into a seagull. Because Hal kinda screwed up and knocked himself out while trying to stop a skyjacking:
Still, I think this portends a pretty cool Green Lantern/Sandman crossover, right? If a GL ring can make dreams come true, well, Morpheus may want to get involved, and...
Oops, there I go again. Not allowed to write comics, snell...remember, not allowed to write comics.
From Green Lantern #7 (1961)
Is there still an injunction about you writing comics?
ReplyDeleteA lifetime fatwa, I'd imagine.
ReplyDeleteThat has to pretty flimsy glass on that plane. Also hal really should just take poor Tom for a freaking ride. Or should I say, pie-face, his Eskimo grease monkey? can you possibly be more insulting DC?
ReplyDelete"who wouldn't want to turn Batman into a gorilla?!?!?"
ReplyDeleteRhetorical question!
Y'know, if they really wanted to, they could retro-fit the 'Pieface' moniker by revealing that it has nothing to do with the "eskimo"/inuit connotations and instead comes from an incident in which Thomas Kalmaku got creamed with a tasty fruit pie right in the kisser :D possibly as a show of playfulness between him and Hal as friends at, say, a surprise birthday party in playful retribution for smashing birthday cake in birthday boy Hal's face (and leading to a large-scale all-out food fight between the rest of the guests), or as a childhood incident/nickname that he grew up with and never abandonded as he became an adult :)
ReplyDelete