But there's something missing. It needs more scenes like these:
Lots of them. Like, at least one per story.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
What "Green Lantern" is Missing
I really am enjoying the new Green Lantern series (probably because I'm a boring person; I'm told boring people like Geoff Johns's work). That's a big surprise to me because, let's face it, I'm not exactly known as a big Hal Jordan fan.
But there's something missing. It needs more scenes like these:
Lots of them. Like, at least one per story.
But there's something missing. It needs more scenes like these:
Lots of them. Like, at least one per story.
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27 comments:
I think Johns has is a polarizing figure in comics because it seems like he writes half the freaking books in DC. Hell, I'm half convinced he runs the company. Now I just need to threaten him till he agrees to keep Batgirl going, what was I talking about?
Oh yeah, I think it's just because he's everywhere. The people who liked all along still like him, the people who weren't sure are probably sick of feeling like Johns is being crammed down their throats.
Most of the Johns-haters I've encountered dislike old-school superheroics in general, which is what Johns does.
See, Scipio, you want me to think Hal's just a stupid putz for slipping on a waxed floor and knocking himself unconscious, but I happen to know that he slipped on a waxed floor and knocked himself unconscious because a giant yellow space tapeworm made him do it.
Speaking of which...
I think Johns has is a polarizing figure in comics because it seems like he writes half the freaking books in DC.
That's pretty much it. I can ignore most any other single DC writer, and don't deny that half of them are worse than him, but it's damn hard to get around him these days. He's the Bendis of DC: his stuff is workmanlike, ubiquitous, and is filled with a number of tics that drive me batty. I'd be happy not to read either of them ever again - and I haven't for months, honest - but they both keep doing stuff to characters I do want to read. I don't want to wish them harm, so here's hoping they both land sweet movie deals and end up writing wildly successful, horribly shitty action flicks.
And no, Scip, of course you're not boring, you're just prejudiced against yoctospheres. You realize that's bigotry, don't you - bigotry against yoctospheres - and it's just plain wrong. When Leo Quintum reveals himself in issue #12 to be an Nth-grade fictioneer sent by Editrons to penetrate the masturbabrane into Superman's worldpanel to perform an emergency plot-o-suction, we have to accept that that's just the condition he was born with and it's not for us to judge.
Ah, Geoff Johns.
Every Geoff Johns book I've read has this terrifying flatness to it. It's not as bad as James Robinson - we're not made to feel like bad humans for not appreciating a movie reference from the 1950s - but it's still so lifeless, like a day-old chunk of herring deposited in my martini while I wasn't looking. He's almost readable but not quite, and in a time when Pete Milligan is alive, that's just not good enough.
I don't like to beat a dead horse, but Johns is just not zarjaz.
That said, nobody who could display a man falling on his arse with such infinite grace could be boring. You're too beautiful for this modern world, that's your trouble.
"When Leo Quintum reveals himself in issue #12 to be an Nth-grade fictioneer sent by Editrons to penetrate the masturbabrane into Superman's worldpanel to perform an emergency plot-o-suction"
Oh my god, that is TOTALLY where Morrison must be going with this!
How could I have been so blind!!!!
giant yellow space tapeworm
Why take the complicated explanation? I'm actually guessing Hal slipped on a pat of butter.
By the way, for the record....?
This post was for RAGNELL.
I'm actually guessing Hal slipped on a pat of butter.
Butter is yellow, after all.
Seems to me that it is really in the insular world of the blogosphere that Johns is polorizing. He is what he is, a solid, workmanlike writer with an appreciation for classic characters and lots of ideas that are finding a receptive audience in Dan Didio. He's not Alan Moore, he's not Grant Morrison, he's not even Gardner Fox... and he'd probably be the first to say so.
I always thought the perfect trap for Hal would be if he was sealed in a glass vat of urine. It would be yellow. And the taste would distract him fatally.
Of course, it would only make dramatic sense if the urine had been passed by SINESTRO.
I always assumed that Sinestro's urine would be a bright, unearthly shade of pink, thus leaving his micturarial stream vulnerable to a well-placed blast from a GL ring - in yet another terrible twist of Comic Book Irony.
If Hal is constantly getting hit in the noggin by ceiling tiles, airplanes, and the floor, why doesn't he use his power ring to create a safety helmet? Even bicyclists wear them.
He's not Alan Moore, he's not Grant Morrison, he's not even Gardner Fox... and he'd probably be the first to say so.
He's Roy Thomas.
And I really liked Roy Thomas.
Thank you, Scipio!
Hal Jordan's head falls,
collides with the floor like an
empty coconut
Imagining the sound makes me feel all fuzzy inside.
My very first Haiku -- what do you think?
Genius!
Though it isn't haiku, there's some poetic metre in Carol's reaction.
Oh my, he fell
slipped on the floor
knocked himself out
(Sorry about the comments above, btw. I'd been drinking and some of them look very snide and unpleasant in the cold light of day. Hope I didn't cause any offence.)
The Great Hal Jordan
Emerald Gladiator
None Can Defeat Ground
Green Lantern versus
that waxy yellow build-up:
Over in one panel
Johns's big flaw is predicability. He writes JSA like he writes Teen Titans and like he wrote Avengers. After a while you know to expect that a long-forgotten character will be reintroduced, someone will start talking about their gimmick metaphorically, and how many "is ___ really dead?!" moments there will be. And of course the Goeff Johns Shocking Last Page Reveal.
You can set your watch by a Johns plot.
Nice one, Daniel; VERY nice.
Um I hate to be a hate to be a stick in the mud, but that isn't Hal Jordan slipping. It's the evil fake green lantern, they even un-mask in the next page. On the plus side it shows how fickle Carol is, because when she see's how ugly he is she dosn't like him any more.
Geoff Johns has written bad stuff. Red Zone in Avengers, for example.
But generally, he's just a really dull writer. And it's not that I don't like old-fashioned superheroics, because I like Busiek's writing a lot.
His run on The Flash was damn good for a while. He got too entangled in the minutia of continuity and ended his time with the slurry of nonsense that was "Rogue War," but man, those first arcs were good.
Besides, he was the first person to give Keystone City any damn character. I love when writers make the fictional cities unique. Keystone is now a blue-collar manufacturing town big on hockey? Nice. And it matches the character of the Flash himself.
Bitchin', yo.
Tim: Shhhh!!!
Geoff Johns made the Flash's Rogues' Gallery into the villains they ALWAYS should have been. He finally gave them depth, respect, and some serious oomph.
For that, he has my eternal gratitude.
Well it's not like you don't have a plethora of other things to choose from. Getting knocked out by a lamp, the 84 billion times he's taken out by guys who can't even shoot well, or how all the aliens who aren't green lantern look like they defected from the Rannian army, or how he almost lost to a guy because he was wearing a yellow shirt.
And thats just the first half of showcase...
"Geoff Johns made the Flash's Rogues' Gallery into the villains they ALWAYS should have been. He finally gave them depth, respect, and some serious oomph.
For that, he has my eternal gratitude."
Yeah, but Cary Bates did it first.
(Which is my general problem with Geoff Johns. I always have this beeeen there, doooone that, bought the T Shirt, fought the Super-Gorilla
feeling after reading his work.)
Although I'm liking his recent stuff better. His dialouge, previously often rip-my-hair-out-and-bash-my-head-on-the-window in PAIN terrible has gotten much, much better in Infinite Crisis 'n
the last Flash trade than it was in, say, the first few JSA books.
IT WASN'T A PAT OF BUTTER...IT WAS A YELLOW BANANA SKIN!
PAUL K. S.
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