How Green Lanterns can overcome their weakness of yellow

Before Geoff Johns made an interesting use of why the Green Lanterns were weak against yellow, it seemed to me quite a silly weakness, laughable even. The original comics only said it was a "necessary impurity" and left the matter there. In this blog entry I will be outlining how the Green Lantern Hal Jordan overcame this weakness in the early comics.

DC Showcase Presents (Issue 22) Green Lantern: Stopping a yellow car: In the first adventure of Green Lantern way back in the '60s, before Green Lantern issue 1, a group of evil doers who assembled some sort of radiation gun were challenged by Hal Jordan. Coincidentally the evil doers had a yellow lamp in their apartment base. Excuse my Geordie pun: he was lamped.

When Hal recovered he chased after the fleeing ruffians who were escaping in a yellow car. The wheels however were black so Hal turned his emerald beams into ice picks which deflated the wheels. The criminals tried to run away but Hal caught them with beams shaped as lassos.

A similar thing happens in Showcase Presents (Issue 24). A rollercoaster car gets derailed, sending its passengers flying in the air. Hal wills spring constructs in place under the crashing car which alongside the passengers is saved.



In a second story of Showcase Presents (Issue 22), Green Lantern Hal Jordan encountered a yellow missile headed towards Coast City. Hal realises at the last minute (or to quote the issue "with split seconds to go") that the missile has a red tip. Hal traps the red tip and thus the whole missile in a green net he creates. The city, or possibly just a building or two (the exact potential of destruction wasn't stated) is saved. Hooray.

DC Showcase Presents (Issue 23) Green Lantern: The second Green Lantern adventure before his own comic featured Hal Jordan fighting a yellow pterodactyl. Forgetting the inability of his ring to work against yellow things Hal attempts to fire an emerald beam at the creature. This doesn't work so he tries to punch it on the nose to no avail. Hal then uses his Green Lantern ring to summon a giant hawk construct. He uses the hawk to lure the pterodactyl and its mates (friends to Americans reading this) into a cave which he seals off.

Green Lantern Issue 1: In the first proper Green Lantern issue, Hal has to fight a man in a yellow outfit. How does he beat him though? He uses his ring to create a small green arm which grabs ropes that bind his foe.

Green Lantern Issue 2: When good explanation is companion to the use of the yellow weakness, a Green Lantern story can seem cool and clever. In Green Lantern issue 2, Hal fights a man wielding yellow thunderbolts. In their first encounter Hal turns invisible so his foe won't know where to aim. Using this confusion "Green Lantern casts a power lasso over him" (quoted from the issue).

Unfortunately Hal notices his friend Telle-Teg, (who he was protecting from the man) was hurt. The man with the bolts AKA The Destroyer bolted (excuse my pun again non-British readers, it means ran away). When Hal caught up with The Destroyer, how did he then save the day? To quote from the issue once more: "From the power beam emerges a charging football player of huge bulk, to strike The Destroyer from behind before he can loose a bolt!"

Green Lantern Issue 3: Members of the Quardian people from the anti-matter universe of Qward stole Hal Jordan's Green Lantern Power Lamp. Each Green Lantern has a Power Lamp they must use to charge their rings when they have been in use for 24 hours, or need to be charged regardless after 24 hours, the continuity on this varies.


The Quardians put Hal's Power Lamp in a yellow dome. Hal spots a pin hole in the dome structure and sends a beam of his power through the hole transforming it into a hammer construct within, smashing the dome open. Fortunately for him, the Quardians hadn't thought far ahead enough to make sure the dome was yellow inside.

Green Lantern Issue 7: Hal Jordan allowed himself to be captured by Sinestro and a bunch of Quardians in exchange for the safety of the lives of 100,000 people. He was imprisoned in a yellow bubble until a clock hit a certain time. His captors calculated his ring would run out of power at that time so they released him.

Hal used his power to strike and pin down Sinestro. He swept the Quardians away with a green tidal wave. How did Hal screw up the calculations of the Quardians? To quote him in his explanation to Sinestro: "...My ring could not pierce your yellow bubble, but I discovered one thing that could get out-- the subparticles of carbon dioxide from my own breath! And what I did was use my green beam... To propel the invisible Co2 particles out of the bubble at the clock..."

Hal tells Sinestro his inner monologue before he was freed: "They don't suspect what I'm up to! But if I'm right, these particles I'm shooting at the clock will speed up its atomic mechanism-- and make it run fast!" He concludes his explanation to Sinestro: "So you see I still have plenty of power in my ring!"

Green Lantern Issue 9: This time Sinestro traps Hal Jordan in a cage construct created from his yellow lantern ring. I think this is the first example in a Green Lantern comic of the weakness of yellow being overcome due to manipulation of the language from the verbal command of how a construct is created. To put it simply: Sinestro used the cage command on the name Green Lantern, not Hal Jordan. Hal takes off his Green Lantern ring and outfit, thus can escape the cage.

Finally over to Norman Osborn for his approval.



Thank you Geordie Green Lantern. Today I approve of: the colour yellow.

DC top 3 reads of 2010

In the chronological order I read them:

1. Rage of the Red lanterns: it was good to experience the pre-Blackest Night war from the eyes of the corps who were neither green or yellow. This was my first taste of the other corps, the second important entry for me into the Geoff Johns rebooting of the Green Lantern mythos, the first being Green Lantern Rebirth.

2. Agent Orange: Pretty much the same as above but this time from a corps with only one member, Larfleeze the avatar of greed.

3. Blackest Night: tales of the corps volume 1: Same as the two descriptions above but with a difference. This great volume focuses on the origin stories of several corps leaders.

Over to you Norman Osborn!

My thanks Geordie Green Lantern. Today I approve of Geoff Johns.

Games which I love but which can be irritating: Part 2: Shinobi and Sonic

Shinobi (Game Gear)

I never got far into this game but it was one of my favourites as a child, I think I mainly liked it because you could switch between different coloured ninja who had unique powers depending on their colour code. I guess I have liked colour coded heroes ever since I got into the power Rangers and Captain Scarlet, neither of which I am into anymore. I outgrew them but the colour coded aspect still remains, this was a major factor of me becoming a fan of Green Lantern comics when I read Geoff Johns' "Rebirth" arc.



Go go Power... oops I mean lantern Corps!


Anyway I digress. These ninja had different powers but you could only use their special powers so many times before you had to find a power up to restore your ninja magic meter, or whatever it was called. Sometimes it was difficult to work out which ninja to use in a situation but there were also times where you knew which ninja to use but don't switch in time so you fell into some bottomless cavern, acid pit or spikes. It was made even harder as was the case with other older games, the lack of a save point.


Sonic (Megadrive, Master System, Playstation 2, Gamecube, Nintendo DS)


The classic Sonic games are amongst my favourites. Generally with the classic four (1, 2, 3 and Sonic and Knuckles), the lack of savepoints was a problem, because with a bit of practice you could do it in stages even if you are crap like I was. Even without using the save function (a permanent save rather than just checkpoint saves) I was with practice able to get to the ending of the first Sonic game with all 6 chaos emeralds in one go without saving.

However I couldn't finish Sonic 2 or 3 at all never mind get all 7 Chaos Emeralds without saving. In Sonic 2 the chaos emeralds are harder to get the more you get. You need more rings in each progressive Chaos Emerald minigame. I managed to finish the first 3 Sonic games but even though I enjoyed Sonic and Knuckles I could never finish it. The levels were too long and the game got really hard at about the Egypt themed level.

And now over to my regular guest and his approvals: Norman Osborn!

My thanks Geordie Green Lantern. Today I approve of: colourful but deadly ninja and chaos emeralds.