#zero month

[greenlantern94to04]

Green Lantern #0 (October 1994)

Kyle Rayner fights Hal Jordan! And also, Kyle Rayner (bless his idiot heart) helps Hal Jordan. Hold on, didn't these two die when one got an arrow to the chest and then the Big Bang happened all around them? (The second simplest explanation of Zero Hour #0 you'll find this side of the Milky Way.) Nope, because Hal was able to use his dwindling Parallax powers to transport himself back into the timestream, and Kyle got dragged along because he happened to be right behind him. Now they're back on planet Oa, which is just how Hal left it in GL #50: littered with dead little blue people.

Hal wants to refuel his Parallax Powers with Oa's energy so he can go back to destroying and un-destroying the entire universe, but he soon finds out he can't do that without a GL ring to channel the power (I bet he regrets stepping on two rings over the past few months). Kyle is in full "take down the genocidal villain" mode and gives Hal a good beating, but Hal doesn't seem to be fighting back. At one point, one of Kyle's attacks leaves him next to Kilowog's skull (right where Guy Gardner left it in GG:W #20) and Hal has a meltdown about what he's done. Like, you know, turning one of his friends into a skull.

"Yeah, man, don't worry about it."

When Hal starts crying, Kyle stops punching and actually feels sorry for him, saying he didn't realize "all the pain you went through." Kyle opens up too and, after briefly recapping his origin, says that being GL seemed like a fun gig until his girlfriend Alex got fridge'd, and now he isn't so sure it's worth it. Hal muses that if he had the ring again, oh boy, he'd be so much at better at it this time around.

So, Kyle thinks for a second and just... gives him the ring.

Kyle: "No more chances." (four pages later) "Okay, one more chance."

Green Lantern is back, baby! And he's done trying to remake the universe! R-Right? Uh, no. The first thing Hal does after thanking Kyle for this chance is start drilling into Oa's core so he can absorb all of that green juice and "go back to fixing things." Kyle quickly realizes he fucked up and tries to reason with Hal to get the ring back, but Hal is back to acting like, well, someone who killed a bunch of his friends. In fact, when Kyle throws Kilowog's skull at him (it was the closest thing to a weapon he had at hand), Hal pulverizes it without shedding a tear. RIP, Kilowog's skull.

(Hal's got a point there, though.)

Now, our boy Kyle may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he's pretty resourceful without a ring. When a blast from Hal makes him fall down into the crypt where all the dead GLs are stored, Kyle hides in there, manages to surprise Hal by dropping a dead GL slab on him, and steals the ring back while he's pinned down. Hal doesn't care much, since he already refueled himself and is powerful enough to kick Kyle's ass again. Despite having the advantage, Hal tries to win Kyle over to his side by summoning a green version of Alex, who tells him that they can be together for real if he just lets Hal win.

Kyle tells Fake Green Alex that he'd do anything to bring her back... except this. He regretfully dissolves her with his ring, then says it's about time he did what that little blue guy told him to do when he gave him the ring: "what you must." And "what you must," apparently, is "destroy a whole planet so that Hal Jordan can't get even more powerful." Hal is like "You wouldn't!" But yes, he would.

Hal tries to stop him, but it's too late: Kyle overloads Oa's core and causes the planet to blow up. Kyle emerges from the explosion feeling strangely triumphant and determined for someone who gave up his ring mere pages ago, but destroying a planet to stop (and possibly kill?) a cosmic villain will do that to you. He promises he'll try to live up to the role of One True Green Lantern... if he can figure out how to get home before starving to death in the literal middle of the universe, anyway.

Kyle Losing His Ring Counter: 1

I'm going to count this as the first instance of Kyle losing his ring, even though he gave it up willingly, because he immediately regretted it and had to fight to get it back. The start of a grand DC Comics tradition!

Plotline-Watch:

Oa's destruction will have dramatic repercussions across the DC Universe... and beyond! I'll just say that if you liked the Amalgam comics, you have this issue to thank for it.

This has to be the shortest origin recap sequence among DC's Zero Month issues (whose entire purpose was recapping/rebooting origins). Superman got several pages across four issues, while Kyle only gets half a page... but that's understandable given that his actual origin only happened six issues ago.

Kyle tells Hal that "growing up, all the kids on my block wanted to be you." (He wanted to be Superman.) He might be fibbing there, since Kyle didn't even remember that "Green Lantern" was a thing in GL #51. Or, it's possible that he remembers his friends talking about GL but was so into Superman that he never bothered finding out what his costume looked like.

Upon giving Hal the ring, Kyle admits that this was "probably bound to happen sooner or later anyway." With that attitude, sure!

Hal is surprised that Kyle was able to surprise him by dropping that slab on him at the GL crypt, since the ring should have stopped the attack. So that's another way Kyle's ring is different from the old GL rings: no yellow weakness or 24-hour battery limit, but also no auto-defense system. We'll find out another difference next issue, and to be honest I'm not sure how it squares away with Hal using the ring in this one...

The dead GL in that slab was Hal's predecessor, Abin Sur, unless there's some other bald purple guy I don't know about. Poor Abin: not only was he used to pin down Hal, but Hal then throws the slab back at Kyle to attack him, causing it to break. They were practically playing ping pong with his corpse for a second there.

Blowing up Oa is easier than I would have imagined. Could Sinestro have done it at any of the points when he had a GL ring? I guess the lack of Guardians or dozens of GLs around to prevent it did help Kyle in this instance.

I may rag on Kyle for just giving his ring to a mass murderer who just tried to erase all of creation, but I do love the moment in this issue when he sits down with Hal and they start relating to each other. That brief respite for the insanity feels to me like the foundation for an eventual mentor-mentee relationship.

N.E.X.T.: R.E.B.E.L.S.!

[taiblogcomics]

Zero Effort Origin

Hey there, weed shop owners. It's more New 52 junk today. In fact, we've once more cycled back around to Zero Month. Yeah, can you believe Ravagers got a zero issue, despite being only four issues in at this point? But I guess we were all burning to hear worse backstories for the two characters we actually cared about~

Here's the cover:

Ugh, god, this cover. You know, I (like most of the internet) rag on Rob Liefeld for his inability to draw feet a lot. But if this is the alternative, I say bring on the Liefeld! Like, this is bordering on some creepy fetish shit. I hate it. This cover is awful. Other than that, it follows the design of literally every other Zero Month cover. The only other complaint is, like, why has Terra got her top zipped down like that? A) That's not how she has it in the comic, and 2) she's a teenager. God, this cover makes me feel gross just holding it. Let's move on~

So we open in Harvest's base down in the Antarctic. We've got Garfield Logan strapped down to a table, and Harvest tells his minion (a never-before-seen purple weirdo named Non, and I don’t think it’s Zod’s minion either) to hurry it up already. Never thought I'd side with Harvest, but yes, let's hurry up and get this issue over with. Non turns up the dials (they go to 11), and this causes excruciating pain in Gar, turning him red and causing him to partially turn into Sam the Eagle. Harvest and assorted goons note that the new Beast Boy's stats are really great. They hope to find a way to access his weird powers for themselves, then decide to move on to their last subject.

The other subject, of course, is Terra. They note that in this case, probably only a psychological motivation is needed to trigger her geokinetic powers. So they dump a bunch of rocks on her. This eventually works, and she bursts out of the landslide using her newly awakened powers. This is all part of the plan. When Non finishes Beast Boy's genetic enhancements, he'll move on to Omen's "care" as well. Presumably they won't drop rocks on him, though. Problems being, they don't understand the Red enough to access it and make BB's powers reliable. Sounds like it's a real red mark on their report, eh~?

We also get some brief coverage of them also awakening the powers of Thunder, Lightning, and Ridge. Since they're good to go, they move them into the Colony's gen-pop. This ends up a bad idea, since some of the local goons decides to bully them. See, they're butthurt that they turned into monsters from the experimentation and our heroes still look human. The main guy here, Kevin, is now a cyclops with some arm implants. His friends are other World of Warcraft rejects. He tries to bully Beast Boy for screaming a lot, but Terra uses her powers to throw dust in his eye. While he runs off to find an emergency eyewash station, Terra tells Beast Boy he'd better toughen up, or he'll be torn apart in here.

I'm assuming we've jumped ahead a few days, because suddenly Beast Boy is being ushered along to "the Pit". There's a typo not a single word balloon later where Beast Boy repeats "The Pitt?" Please don't bring Pitt into this, this comic sucks enough already. But yeah, that really shows you how much care the editors gave this book, eh? Anyways, the Pit is their gladatorial arena, and they're gonna drag Beast Boy into it. When he refuses, Terra steps in to tell them they wouldn't even get a good fight out of him. This, of course, breaks one of the Colony's rules ("No love"), and they throw Terra into the Pit instead.

Well, now Terra's in the Pit, and our friend Kevin is here to fight. She tries the same pocket sand technique, but he reveals that he's learned to wear eye protection. This also reveals him to be Fistpoint from the first part of The Culling arc. Because I know everyone was just clamoring for Fistpoint's origin. And watching Terra get beat up, Beast Boy gradually loses more control until he turns into a giant red tiger and leaps into the Pit. He and Terra beat up all the goons in the arena, and Harvest cackles to himself that this is perfect. They're finally awakened, and all his Ravagers should be this powerful. And when they're ready, the Culling will begin! No, please, I can't sit through that again~

This issue sucks. For one thing, it doesn’t actually answer anything about these characters. We already know they were in Harvest’s little club. If it was actually how they were targeted by NOWHERE, how they were kidnapped and brought here (which Beast Boy alludes to in his rage breaking point moment), that would at least be something. But this isn’t anything. Hell, we learn more about Fistpoint here than anyone, in that we learn he’s a cyclops. If you know anything about Beast Boy’s pre-New 52 origins, you know it’s a lot better than this~

[ufonaut]

Zero Month ad in October 1994′s Hero Illustrated #15.

[taiblogcomics]

Robin the Readership of Plot Development

Hey there, beta chat programs. Looks like it's time again to review another terrible issue of the New 52's Teen Titans. But not just any issue, as I intoned at the end of last week's review! No, my friends. We've got a gimmick to this issue~

So, it's the anniversary of the New 52's beginning. Like, not today. Back in September, actually. But in the comic's timeline that we're following. It'd been a year of publishing their reboot, and I don't know if you remember this from the last time we covered it eight years ago when it was new, but what they did to celebrate was this: Zero Month. All of the comics--at least, all of the ones that hard survived as far as 12 issues--spent the anniversary month putting out a 0th issue to explain some backstory. It helped it some cases! Others... not so much~

Here's the cover:

So every cover of the Zero Month was like this: washed-out grey background, character breaking on through to the other side, and not much else. Some folks who remember back that far might remember Catwoman #0 having an infamous pose, but otherwise all these covers were identical in composition. There's really not much to say about it. When every issue released that month had roughly identical covers, none really stood out, which is not what you want in a cover~

So the comic opens with the taunting phrase of "Before the New 52"! Which it's really not. "Before the New 52" would imply the old continuity. But all they really mean is "before the events of issue 1". Anyway, this is an origin story for Tim Drake. We start with three full-page splashes of him doing a bunch of gymnastics for a crowd, which includes his parents. I was afraid it was going to jump right into the essential parts of Dick Grayson's origin, but with Olympic prospects instead of circus stuff. Fortunately, nothing happens here, and he finishes his routine with no ill effects and heads out to meet his parents.

Like in the previous continuity, Tim starts with both parents. Which is noted by the person watching him in secret--Batman. Yes, in this continuity, Batman's already scouting Tim rather than Tim seeking out Batman of his own will. Batman notes that he doesn't want to recruit a new Robin, not so soon after Jason, and not while Tim still has a family. That's... kind of ominous, Batman. ...Are you the villain? Speaking of Tim's family, though, his dad meets him in an extremely ominously-lit room and tells his son that it's okay to want more and be bigger than just this family. Come on, Dad, that foreshadowing is way too much.

Just to prove me wrong, Tim sneaks out of his room that night to go apply for a job: Batman's apprentice. Heck, he'll even settle for an unpaid internship. He's deduced that Batman's HQ is in the old Gotham Aviary. He's wrong, but Batman is content to let him think he's right. In fact, every clue he's followed has been something Batman's planted. Tim puts out the armour-piercing bit, though: what happened to the previous Robin? Batman scowls and disappears, telling Tim he'll never see him again. That seems highly unlikely, given how many comics Batman was appearing in at the time~

Tim's not ready to give up, though. See, he wants to follow his dad's advice and become something bigger than not only his family, but than himself too. And so he keeps trying to find ways to get Batman's attention. Unfortunately, he gets someone else's as well. See, he's been using his hacker powers to transfer money out of criminals' accounts into charitable organisations. This is pretty cool. The problem is, he's now targeted the Penguin's stash. The Cobblepot fortune has been stole, and the Penguin is big mad about it.

The Penguin traces the activity back to Tim--I guess he's not that good of a hacker--and sends some goons to his house. Batman arrives just in time to save Tim from a shootout. And to this book's credit, it doesn't end in the tragedy you think it will. Tim's parents both survive the gunfire and are placed in witness protection. But to keep them safe--and to give Tim that "life bigger than this family" they keep talking about--they agree to have Batman look after Tim instead. And Batman decides that the best way to keep an eye on Tim is to make him his partner, just like he wanted. Superman may be the Man of Steel, but Batman is the man of irony~

And so, Tim Drake forges his own identity as Batman's partner. He opts not to wear Jason's old uniform, mostly out of respect for Jason, but also because have you seen Jason's old Robin uniform? In fact, to set him aside as his own identity even more, he opts to call himself Red Robin rather than just Robin. Sorry, Tim, but "Batman and Red Robin" will never catch on as a popular name. Anyway, he's already begun his research, looking into stories of metahumans his own age. And... that's the end! It ends on yet another splash page, depicting him and Batman as crime-fighting partners, even though this is the zeroth issue for a team book without Batman in it~

This issue... is not that bad. It’s a fair origin for Tim Drake, I suppose. I’ve never actually read A Lonely Place of Dying, which was Tim’s origin in the pre-New 52 continuity, so I don’t know how it compares. At the very least, this one surprised me for a New 52 origin. I’m very glad they didn’t kill off Tim’s parents, even if they more or less removed them from the story anyway. That’s always what made Tim unique, that he still had supportive parents around. And while they may no longer be around in the technical sense, at least it didn’t end in gunshots and tragedy.

The other major change is mostly Tim’s motivation. In this, it seems Tim’s doing it more or less to prove something to himself, to make himself into something bigger. In the original? Again, I haven’t read it, but my impression of the story was that Tim noticed something change in Batman’s demeanor after Jason Todd’s death. He thought Batman needed a Robin to balance himself out, and volunteered himself for the job. And that’s what impressed Batman: that Tim volunteered for it, rather than letting tragedy lead him there like it did for himself or Dick Grayson. And that, I think, is a bit of what’s lost in this origin. And that Batman’s so pissy about it. “You didn’t discover anything that I didn’t let you find out” and all that. That’s dangerously close to the same rhetoric as Harvest~

Next week, we’ll get back to the main story, and the story will get back to sucking~

[splooosh]

Manhunter - 94

Vince Giarrano