Monday, February 29, 2016

Manic Leapday Bonus--Who Needs Wonder Woman's Lasso?

It turns out that Green Lantern has his own way of compelling crooks to tell the truth:




Wow!

Well, that seems to be even a bit more harsh than the Golden Lasso--it doesn't just compel people to tell the truth, it scares the bejeezus out of them to get them to tell the truth!! "Talk else the ring will crush you!"

And later, Alan Scott compels the criminal boss/police commissioner to confess--on the air!



Well, that was easy!

The question of any of these compelled confessions standing up in court aside, this was clearly a case where the creators went a little too far with a hero's power. Why the heck couldn't Green Lantern wrap up every case in about 3 pages this way? So, fortunately, they backed away from it, creators only pulling it out when they were lazy or had painted themselves into a corner.

And most importantly, there's no way we could let Hal Jordan have a power like that, right? I shudder just to think about it!

From All-Star Comics #3 (1940)
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2 comments:

  1. SallyPFebruary 29, 2016 at 3:30 PM

    It's okay...only a grown-up like Alan is allowed to do stuff like this. Hal had trouble with mustard for heaven's sake.

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  2. AnonymousFebruary 29, 2016 at 10:11 PM

    There was an excellent Batman backup story--one of the black-and-white ones--where Alan tells Batman his retirement from superheroics was for that very reason: he began to wonder why he didn't just command it to make all dead people be alive again, or all evil people everywhere just...stop. At which point he realized he needed a break, before he went full on "A God Am I".

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