Green Lantern's ring was the most powerful weapon in the universe except against the color yellow. I'm not kidding, his weakness was the color yellow. You might think he'd try to keep something like that secret, but there is nothing Green Lantern liked to talk about more. He'd wave a fist at the bad guys and shout, "Justice will prevail today, villains! Unless you learn that my power energy cannot affect that which is yellow!" And to make Green Lantern the most unlucky person in the universe, his nemesis Sinestro had a ring that made things that were yellow. That's like twin brothers fighting, only one gets baseball bat with spikes and has a giant purple head.

Green Lantern got his super ring when a navy bean-headed alien crash landed on Earth and handed it to him right before he died. I guess in space no one makes out a will. When you think you're about to die, you pick up a phone book and give everything you own to whatever name your finger lands on. And if you're handing over a potentially universe-threatening weapon, even better that it goes to a randomly selected stranger!


Serious Fact: I keep a white board by my VCR, and marked down every time Green Lantern's powers worked against yellow. Out of 30 episodes where Green Lantern appeared, his powers worked against the color yellow 24 times. In fact, in 3 episodes, the stuff he made was yellow already. It had to be something wrong with my TV, since I figured if you made a yellow rocket that couldn't touch the color yellow, the world would explode. No, my TV was fine. Either the guys who colored the show had all their green markers dry up, or they got fucking hammered before they started.

The ring could make anything he could think of which usually wasn't much. Once or twice he'd go crazy with it and if he needed to knock something over, he'd create himself a crazy robot bulldozer and a viking hard hat, but most days he would just shoot green energy at the thing until it fell over. The Wonder Twins may have sucked, but when they needed to knock something over, they never took it out the easy way. At their most sensical, they'd turn into a giant lobster (with water backpack) or a rhino squid (in ice belt). Green Lantern would punch people with things as uncreative as a giant hand. He had to know kids were watching; he could have tried harder to make it more interesting. Like a giant hand with tits or a talking hamburger.

Continue to Green Lantern Part 2 ->