Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from February, 2023

Fatality: Love and Vengeance

Over the years, there have been many, many Green Lantern villains with close ties to the hero they fight.  Sometimes it’s a former colleague gone rogue, other times it’s a loved one acting under the influence of a malevolent force…but sometimes, the most dangerous villains are the ones created by the hero, personifying that hero’s greatest failure. She’s known as Fatality, a bounty hunter who’s sworn to hunt and kill everyone who’s ever worn a Green Lantern ring.  Over the years, countless Green Lanterns have died trying to fight back against her onslaught, as she carves a bloody path of revenge across the universe. In order to talk about Fatality, we first have to talk about the planet Xanshi, which was destroyed in the pages of Cosmic Odyssey #2, published in 1989.  The short version is that the Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern John Stewart were sent to disarm a bomb before it could blow up the planet, but John went off on his own, confident that he could handle ...

John Stewart and the Will to Make a Better World

Today we're talking about a story form Green Lantern 80 Page Giant #1, an anthology published in 1998.  The framing device for this issue is Guy Gardner, John Stewart, and Alan Scott sitting around in Guy's bar after hours, trading stories from their glory days as Lanterns in the Golden and Silver Ages.  The story we're focusing on this time is titled "Before I'd Be A Slave...", and is written by Denny O'neil, with art and colors by Rodolfo Damaggio, and letters by Bob Lappan. John Stewart finds himself wandering into an unnamed city that appears to be in the Southern United States, and stumbles onto a political rally.  Standing behind the podium is a politician talking about equality, claiming to love and accept black people, as long as they know their place.  He thinks that black kids should go to black schools, and only learn what they need to get jobs that suit them, leaving higher education and better jobs for white people. We’ve all herd this kind ...