The Virgin Read: She Wants A Prelude To Your Prelude, Green Lantern Something Something

Green Lantern Corps # 34
Written by Peter Tomasi
Art by Patrick Gleason, Rebecca Buchman, Christian Alamy & Randy Mayor
Published by DC Comics

Let’s start with the usual, “Hey Nina, why did you choose this comic?’ Well, my friend, I had another comic in my little paws, but at the last minute decided to flip through this Green Lantern one.  It fell open to what a colleague refers to as “the boning sequence.”

SOLD!

I don’t know what it is. It’s not the sex.  Well.  It's not the sex by itself. It’s seeing people drawn in their underwear and the scene set for a “relationship moment” that always intrigues me.  I’m a girl.  (I'm not a stereotype, but I do wear dresses and shave my armpits, I don't get turned on by gore.)  What’s that old joke about the meatloaf?  Like, a woman wonders how long the meatloaf will last, while the man wonders what’d it feel like to put his dick in it?  I’m a total woman in that respect.  I've never wanted to have sex with meat.

Anyhow, if you should never judge a book by its cover, than you should never judge a comic by the inclusion of a boning sequence.  It had very little to do with the comic.  That's true for many of the sequences in this issue.  I have no utter clue as to what each individual sequence had to do with the other.  Am I alone here?  The cover said "prelude", which is supposed to be the beginning, right? Do comics have another definition of that word?  If they don't have another definition, why does the inside say "Part Two"? 

The first sequence, with Sodam working out his mommy and daddy issues (with his actual mommy) under the threat of the imminent destruction of Daxam--okay, that was intense.  It was well done enough that I followed what was going on even though this was the first time I heard of any of these people or planets. The level of intensity, was so, well, intense.  These characters were committed to their view points and belief systems, which were mostly about being angry at each other.  That can be the difference between a so-so story and a bad one, at least when you're dealing with something that the audience is supposed to accept as a Big Deal.  If Jack Bauer wasn’t so committed to his country and to justice and the American Way, and killing lots of people, every episode of 24 is going to seem ridiculous. But he takes it really seriously, so yeah, only about 75% of them are ridiculous.  The rest are pretty spot on.

I guess what I'm trying to say is "Nice opening"?  See, I'm not really sure, because we never go back to those people.  Sure, we’re taken to Daxam and see what’s going on.  Insanity.  Insanity is what is going on.  That's it.  Just a bunch of crazy destruction.  All that internal drive that was motivating the characters in the first sequence is followed up by Mongul, and Mongul’s just pure, unbiased free-for-all violence.  It’s just weird.  And the drawing in this….it was really hard to follow.  Apparently he pulls out the other guy’s tongue.  Even though he says, “my good friend Arkillo here will be seen and not heard from this moment forth,” I didn’t get it.  I asked, and that's how I found out that what I was looking at it was a guy with his tongue ripped out.  And he's really relaxed about it, he has his hand on Mongul's leg like he's a Golden Retriever that's really tired.

I move past that, because here it is, The Boning.  Soap Opera-y Green Lanterns! You know, it might have been interesting if I ever saw them again.  I mean, maybe this comic is setting the scene, or many scenes for upcoming issues, but as a single issue, nothing flowed.   I have no idea how or why all these things are connected.  Except by jewelry.  They all wear rings.  I got that.

Then there’s the blue page and the pink page with crying babies?  Or fetuses? Or I don’t know.  And I don’t care.  I can't care, because it doesn't really follow or make sense, but even if there's a way to care, like if I'm supposed to use google or something, why would I?  This is confusing and kind of gross.  It's already got more of my time than it deserved.

Which is why I was really pleased that, as my interest started truly waning, there was an alien with mouths in her eyesockets and an eye in her mouth.  Yet she still talked out of the conventional mouth space, even though there’s an eyeball in it.  That’ll keep your mind active while you try to read the rest of this comic. Wonderful.  I'm learning so much about myself, thinking about that.

And you know what, I don’t even know what happens next.  Can’t remember, and don’t feel like re-reading it to have something to type. Something confusing? Something gross?  Probably just more confusing, I would remember gross.  I just found the whole experience of this comic weird.  Better storytelling would have involved using the first sequence well and telling the stories of what’s happening on Daxam, what’s happening with Sadam, with his father and with his mother. But, apparently, that’s just not vast enough for these people who make this comic.  I guess since it’s called Green Lantern Corps, they feel they have to focus on the entire Corps every issue.  I wouldn’t be upset if they didn’t though. At the same time...I don't know that you could've won me over anyway.  Eye in the mouth? Yanking out tongues?

More boning, please.

-Nina Stone, 2009

Comments

[Chris Jones]

I've heard the argument that Patrick Gleason's art is hard to follow more than once and I just don't get it. It always flows perfectly fine to me.

GLC is one of my favorite superhero comics at the moment because it has moments where the characters act like people every now and again, which is a big change from most superhero comics, which DON'T have moments like that.

Also, technically THAT ISSUE isn't a prelude to anything, the STORY ARC is a prelude to this bigass thing called the Blackest Night that's happening this summer. It is kind of a confusing header, now that you mention it.

[seth hurley]

How can there be any boning when they rip out tongues & put eyes where mouths should be?

Unless they are going to use those rings to create, I don't know, some sort of Flesh Lantern?

[Tim O'Neil]

I guess it says something about my expectations regarding Green Lantern comics in this day and age that when you said "boning sequence", I immediately assumed you meant someone having their skeleton ripped out.

[Sean T. Collins]

I think this is Green Lantern Corps, not Green Lantern, fwiw.

[Tucker Stone]

That was me. Fixed!

[revD]

'FLESH LANTERN' FOR THE EW, WIN

[Green Girl]

This is a fleshlantern:
http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Flesh-Pal-Light-Masturbator-Mouth-Butt-Pussy-Vagina_W0QQitemZ220507303718QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item3357426f26