1994 Green Lantern-Related Elseworlds
DC went all in on Elseworlds in 1994, not only making them the theme of their annuals (just like "aliens suck up people's spines" was the theme the year before) but also continuing to publish standalone specials showing DC heroes in situations that couldn't or shouldn't exist. And by DC heroes, I mean "mostly Batman." Several of those stories feature alternate versions of Green Lantern characters, so I feel compelled to round them up here and talk a bit about each, even if they have zero impact on the main continuity or are, you know, kinda stupid.
I already wrote about Hal Jordan's appearance as a shovel-themed freedom fighter called "The Gravedigger" in the 1994 Superman annuals, but that bizarre idea was actually pretty tame compared to the crazy shit going on in other GL-related stories, so strap in:
Batman: In Darkest Night
This one-shot starts with a page right out of Batman: Year One, with Bruce Wayne slumping on a chair as he asks his dad's bust for ideas on how to intimidate criminals more efficiently. However, the bat that was scheduled to break through Bruce's window is spooked away by some sort of green meteorite, and Bruce is instead confronted by a projection of a bald purple guy telling him he's "been chosen."
"Yes, father. I shall become a bald purple guy."
That bald purple guy, of course, is Green Lantern Abin Sur, who in this reality chooses Bruce to be his successor instead of Hal Jordan, for undisclosed reasons (maybe Hal was on the toilet and Abin didn't wanna embarrass him). Bruce's first mission as Green Lantern is to stop the Red Hood gang, which he does so efficiently that no one falls into any vats of chemicals or turns into a homicidal clown.
"I'm going to become the Sane Law-Abiding Person."
Next, the Guardians of the Universe send this untrained rookie to planet Korugar because the veteran GL there, Sinestro, has misused his power to make himself world dictator. Fortunately, Sinestro is kind of a chump in this reality, as signaled by the fact that he doesn't wear a pencil mustache, and Bruce deposes him within a couple of pages. Just like in the regular DC Universe, Sinestro is vanished into the anti-matter universe and gains a yellow power ring there. I don't remember regular DCU Sinestro ever using that ring to look up the guy who killed Bruce Wayne's parents and merging their minds together, though...
Naturally, this causes Sinestro to go insane (I'd argue he was already insane if he thought "I'm gonna merge my mind with some random criminal's" was a good idea) and he starts wearing a fancy purple suit. You know, like some sort of homicidal clown. He also starts referring to himself in the plural and regularly argues with his split personality, so he's like an amalgam between Sinestro, the Joker, and Two-Face. I'm gonna call him Jokernestro (Jokernestwo would be too much).
After being easily defeated by Bat-Lantern during their first fight (again: chump), Jokernestro decides he needs some "help." So, he turns a prostitute named Selina Kyle into some sort of cosmic dominatrix named Star Sapphire, and District Attorney Harvey Dent into an Eclipso-like villain called Binary Star. Wait, so there are two versions of Two-Face in this comic? I guess that's on brand for the character.
These two are defeated within a page, because there's no character more overpowered in all of the multiverse than a Green Lantern who is also a Batman. So, Jokernestro tries something else: he manufactures a crisis in another planet within Sector 2814, causing the Guardians to order Bruce to go deal with it. Bruce refuses, because he doesn't wanna abandon Earth with Jokernestro on the loose, and the Guardians are so pissed that they not only send four existing GLs to capture him (Kilowog, Arisia, Tomar Re, and Katma Tui) but they recruit three new ones from Earth: a Kansas farmboy, an Amazon princess, and a police scientist currently in the process of being bathed by chemicals.
While Bruce fights the other GLs, Jokernestro and his cronies infiltrate the Lantern-Cave to leave him a trap, but they run into the all-new Super Lantern, Wonder Lantern, and Flash Lantern there. During the ensuing confrontation, Alfred dies while sending a message to Bruce via his power battery, spurring Bruce to end the fight with the four GLs by simply snatching their rings away with his superior will. Uh-oh, I think I know where this is going...
By the time Bruce reaches the Lantern-Cave, Jokernestro has fled into space like the little bitch he is. Bruce decides to follow him, leaving Earth, and his cave, under the care of the three new GLs (let's call them Green Leaguers). When Tomar Re asks the Guardians if they should chase Bruce, they say no, "all proceeds as planned."
So, they planned for Jokernestro to murder Bruce's manservant and then escape into space in order to force their most powerful Green Lantern to roam the vastness of the cosmos, possibly forever? Solid plan! THE END. (Except for the time Bat-Lantern showed up in the Countdown: Arena miniseries, but that's outside the scope of this blog and thus someone else's problem.)
Green Lantern Annual #3
This one's set in a timeline in which the Third Reich won World War II thanks to a yellow power ring that Heinrich Himmler got by sacrificing twelve fellow Nazis to a demon. In the present (well, the '90s' present), Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner are high-ranking Nazis...
...while Oliver Queen and John Stewart are part of the forest-dwelling anti-fascist resistance, "the hooded Lanterns of the Green" (there's gotta be a snappier name for that). Just when Oliver is naming John as the new leader of the Lanterns, confusingly named "the Green Arrow," someone shoots Ollie in the head -- it's Guy and his gang of merry Nazis. John escapes the ambush and hides with his lover, a high society lady named Carol Ferris, who happens to be Hal's ex. I think we can rule out her being racist after this scene, though.
Meanwhile, Hal starts hearing mysterious voices in his head that guide him into an alley, where he meets Abin Strauss, a former Nazi officer and the current owner of Himmler's satanic yellow ring. We learn that Himmler was seduced by a sorceress named Karelia (that booby lady honoring Hal and Guy in the panels above), so Abin killed him before he could give her the ring out of pure horniness. Abin has protected the ring since then, but now he's old and tired, so he selects Hal to be the new Yellow (White Power?) Lantern.
Karelia, who has usurped and perverted the International Socialist party with her booby magic, sends Guy and his soldiers to retrieve the ring, but Hal doesn't wanna hand it over and kicks their butts. Karelia is like "fine, I'll just make another ring," which turns out to be a green one because the rebels she sacrificed to create it just happened to be wearing green, I guess.
Okay, so Guy is now "Green Lantern" and also an irredeemable Nazi in this comic, which was published on purpose by DC Comics. Maybe Hal will do better? Let's check in on him for a moment...
Oh. I don't know what "schwarze" means, but I think I can guess.
The voices in Hal's head encourage him to use the power of the ring to get Carol "on her knees" and make her love him again, but he resists them and flies away -- he may be a crazy, misogynistic racist, but he's no crazy, misogynistic rapist. So far. Three panels after Hal leaves John and Carol alone, Guy bursts in and arrests them for "racial pollution" anyway. Both get dressed up in S&M gear (a running theme in DC Elseworlds, it seems) and get pinned to giant swastikas so Guy can torture them by shooting green arrows their way.
That's when Hal drops by and starts fighting Guy, not because he's racist but because he thinks Karelia has corrupted him and "the dream" (the dream of being racist). Hal defeats Guy, but then Karelia reveals her true form: she's the demon who gave Himmler the yellow ring 50 years ago! Karelia is completely immune to the power of the rings -- but not, as it happens, to a single green arrow shot by John, which causes this ancient, all-powerful demonic entity to blow up.
With Karelia dead, Hal urges Guy to give up "the dream" and bury the hatchet. Guy replies by burying that green arrow inside Hal, killing him. While Guy is distracted harassing Carol, John takes the yellow ring from Hal's dead hand and puts it on, becoming... Green Lantern?
But the... yellow ring... SS logo... John's mustache... Okay, you know what, sure, why not. It would actually be weirder if this comic started making sense now.
As John fights Guy, the voices in the yellow ring start telling him to give up and bow to whitey -- but then they're overtaken by Hal's voice, which tells John he just has to "believe." This pep talk gives John the confidence he needed to defeat Guy, a formidable villain who has now had his ass kicked three times in one comic. As a result, the green energy from Guy's ring flows into John's yellow one, finally turning it into a proper Green Lantern ring! Well, except for the small fact that it still has Nazi ghosts inside it, as John freely admits.
But, at least those ghosts aren't so chatty anymore (John says "the whispers have been silenced") and the comic ends with John declaring the beginning of a new, non-racist age as he turns the Nazi symbol in a big eagle statue into a Green Lantern one. THE END. (Nazi-ghost-powered John Stewart was not invited to appear in Countdown: Arena, for some reason.)
Flash Annual #7
For the sake of completionism, I gotta mention Hal's brief appearance in the Elseworlds Flash annual, which is set in a timeline in which Wally West was crippled while he was Kid Flash and grew up to direct a movie about his dead mentor, Barry Allen. Other than a Justice League group shot, Hal only appears to say that he's hated Wally since he was a kid.
This is just not a good year for Hal Jordan representation, huh.
L.E.G.I.O.N. Annual #5
And finally, my favorite of the 1994 annuals, specifically because of the ridiculous "Elseworld Rejects" shorts on the back. I talked about the Superman-related ones at the appropriate blog, but there are two Green Lantern ones too: an "Emerald Twilight" parody where the L.E.G.I.O.N. kill Sinestro and become, well, the L.E.G.I.O.N....
(I would have gone with P.A.R.A.L.L.E.G.I.O.N.)
...and a parody of the classic Green Lantern/Green Arrow #85 (the very special drug issue) replacing Speedy the smackhead with a super-smart drug-addicted alien toddler.
(I hope little Lyrl Dox is shooting up heroin and not homeless person spinal fluid like his grandad, Brainiac.)
You may see these absurd gags as foreshadowing for the Green Lantern/L.E.G.I.O.N. crossover we're about to reach in the regular continuity, though the group has gone through a bit of a forced rebrand by now...
NEXT: A post about the guy this blog is supposed to be about! Karl Raiden or something?