Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Green Lantern (Vol. 4), Issue #1 – “Airborne”!

Hot off the heels of the Green Lantern: Rebirth limited series, Geoff Johns continues his epic tale with Issue #1 of a brand new Green Lantern reboot! In the Rebirth storyline, we see Hal go from being possessed by an evil entity known as the Parallax to eradicating it with the help of a few Green Lantern buddies: Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, and Kilowog. Plus Green Arrow. Sinestro shows up for an issue or two for no reason to try to kick Hal’s ass, but Hal gets rid of him too. For now. We haven’t seen the last of him.

Now that Hal Jordan is back from being dead or whatever the hell was wrong with him, he intends to start living a normal life. A normal life with some Green Lantern powers.

But there’s some vegetable in prison who has a giant head and a Salvadore Dali mustache. He appears to be the next bad guy, but we’ll have to see what we get. Oh boy, are you excited? I’m excited! Let’s crack this bad boy wide open!

Green Lantern (Vol. 4), Issue #1 [July, 2005]
Written by: Geoff Johns
“Airborne”

“Do you know what happened to him?”

“You mean, do I know what he did? Hell. Everyone does.”

A couple of schmoes at the Ferris Airfield are talking about Hal Jordan. He did some insane maneuvers with the jet and “he’s lucky he wasn’t arrested”. Maybe he flew into the World Trade Center and died! That would certainly be cause for a slap on the ol’ wrist.

“They say Hal Jordan was an ace. But there’s no way Ferris will let him fly again.”

Meanwhile, Hal Jordan is doing maintenance on one of the jets. I know this because he is holding up a wrench and frowning! SUDDENLY, a beam of green light hits him like a UFO abduction. “Hal Jordan. You have been chosen.”

Jordan literally gets beamed up. “I am Abin Sur. Green Lantern of your space sector. Sector 2814. I am dying. The brightest day becomes the blackest night…” yada yada yada. Here’s your ring. Don’t fuck up.

Abin Sur, still manifested as a beam of green light, transports Jordan to another part of Earth where a plane has crashed in the desert. All the while, he reads him the instruction manual for the ring. It’s fueled by willpower. You need to charge it with a green battery. Don’t get it wet. Keep it at room temperature. “But there is a flaw in the battery. An impurity located within your visual spectrum. The power is ineffectual against yellow.”

The crashed plane contains a beefy red, bald man. He presents the ring in his hand, the battery close by. “Hal Jordan of Earth. Do you accept this duty?”

Long story short, Hal Jordan accepts this duty.

Can the ring conjure up a couple of hamburgers to celebrate the occasion proper?

Then the plane fades away and disappears…

I suppose this was all a flashback! The nerve of these people hella blindsiding me like this! Well, now let’s catch up to the present day. Hal Jordan and another pilot are flying around the very same desert. One flies upside down right over the other one, flashing a card hand at each other through their cockpit windows.

“Two pair, high ball,” says Shane, flashing Q Q 10 10 7.

“Jack high, Colonel,” says Hal, flashing Q Q 10 10 J.

POKER! The Cool Man’s Game.

It’s Edwards Air Force base. Hal had signed up the day he turned 18, and he met Shane Sellers the very same night. They fought over a redhead at the bar. Fingers were broken. They never fought again since. Some lieutenant colonel fucked the redhead.

Anyway, everyone had thought Hal Jordan died the day Coast City was razed to the ground, but no. He was “on the road”, and now he wants to just fly again. I suppose this is all part of the not wanting to be a Green Lantern anymore thing. “Do you know how many strings I had to pull today?” Shane tells him. “This wasn’t a requal flight. It was a favor.” Hal needs to run through training again. Test pilot school. And Jordan’s ok with all of this. More than ok. Things are getting back to normal.

“Why’d you do it anyway, Jordan? What happened that day?”

“I couldn’t quit.”

Flashback again! I think. This must be right after he received the ring from Mr. Beef? Or later? Or earlier? Or before? Or after? Oh, this is after the poker game in the present day. He takes it out of his locker at the airbase. It rings like a telephone. “Jordan. Hey, I’ve got a zero-zero.” That means an abandoned spacecraft! Not to be confused with a zero-zero-zero, which is a zipper caught on the penis like in There’s Something About Mary. “In a geosynchronous orbit over northern Nevada.”

I believe this is John Stewart talking, who is one of Jordan’s Green Lantern buddies! Hal Jordan wastes no time conjuring up his Green Lantern suit and flying to, where was it again? Northern Nevada? Yeechhh.

In Bartsow, California, an Air Force guy is hitting on the cashier at a diner. The jeep out front has a large tarp over the back, hiding something. The cashier finds it fascinating, but the Air Force guy won’t tell her what it is. “It’s top secret,” he says, handing her money and rubbing her palm with his finger.”

“Hey, Private. That’s my girl you’re trying to recruit,” approaches one of these trucker hat motherfuckers. A real MAGA-asshole looking tall drink of water. The Air Force guy remains calm, thanks the woman for the coffee, and leaves without another word.

The Air Force guy is named Johnson. When asked by another soldier what the weird moaning sounds are under the tarp, Johnson tells him to shut his trap. Suspicious stuff! I hope it’s Jabba the Hutt.

Good to know that all it takes is a little fisting to get in Hal Jordan’s good graces.

Hal Jordan and John Stewart didn’t really get along until they realized they had a mutual goal: challenging authority. Of course, as we know from Rebirth, John Stewart is a pussy. All that “challenging authority” is in the form of crying in his bed.

They discuss the lack of activity in the Green Lantern Corps. Only five officers, all operating in the same sector. Well, maybe it’s not even five anymore. Stewart wants to try restarting the Corps, but Hal Jordan is like “eh”.

They come across the abandoned spacecraft: a big, glowing yellow monstrosity. A real eyesore of a thing. “And I’d guess whoever built this thing wanted to keep Green Lanterns out.” No shit, sir. Green and yellow don’t mix. Keep your mustard out of your salad.

The impurity is trapped in the power battery again. Huff! But this time they know how to beat it. They use their rings to drill a large hole in the side of the craft…

There’s no life support system. No navigational computer. Not even a chair! No life signs! No signs of organic anything. Empty fuel cells. That can all only mean ONE thing: It’s a GHOST ship! Barring that, whoever flew here had no intention whatsoever of flying back.

Back over in Barstow, California, Mr. Big Guy is giving his fiancee the business about hitting on Air Force dudes. While this happens, a big, bald alien-looking man has locked in on “trace radiation” and flies himself to the diner. “Who the hell is this?” Mr. Big Guy yells as the bald alien stares menacingly. “This another one of your boyfriends from the base, Kristy?”

He picks up a large pipe, intending to bash Mr. Bald Guy’s head in. “SYSTEMS THREATENED” says a robotic voice, and Mr. Bald Guy turns Mr. Big Guy into Mr. Skeleton Guy.

Oh man, that hurt. How bad does it look? Is it going to leave a scar?

Kristy cries in the corner and begs for her life. “PRIMARY DIRECTIVE. LOCATE PREDECESSOR. SECONDARY DIRECTIVE. TERMINATE ALL LIFE.”

*skeleton*

Without any real leads, John Stewart heads back to Justice League HQ aka a Giant Toilet. Hal Jordan heads back to what’s left of Coast City. Located between Los Angeles and San Francisco, Coast City boasts the largest population of disease-ridden seagulls and heroin-addicted muskrats. It where Jordan grew up after his dad died. He lived there almost all his life… until Mongul destroyed it. Two million people were killed, but who’s counting? The government was supposed to build it back up, but fuck the government.

Hal is about to enter his apartment when a smiley sunglasses man named Jim shows up to say the ol’ hello. “Bro? I thought you were dead.”

Jim Jordan, eh? Not to be confused with the loathsome politician? Jim lives in Sacramento now with the wife and the kids. Coast City is the pits. For one thing, it was destroyed. Second of all, he hates getting bitten by muskrats suffering withdrawal symptoms. They’re slowly building the place back up, sure, but less than 1,000 people currently live there. “And I doubt it’s going to grow.” The ghost town vibe gives him the willies!

“Dad would’ve moved back,” Hal says like a sourpuss.

“Mom wouldn’t have.”

Jim cuts to the chase! “Are you still a Green Lantern or what?” A bold question! Hal checks his pockets for his Green Lantern Diners Club Card, but before he can answer at all they are rattled by a couple of large BOOOMs! Well, a BOOOM and a SHOOOM, to be more precise.

I’m gonna punch the shit out of this thing.

An out-of-control jet blasts across town. The wing is on fire. The BOOOM/SHOOOM has shattered windows. Hal Jordan powers up his Secret Decoder Ring and Green Lanterns his ass up! Flying after the jet, he instructs the ring to tell him to scan the radio frequencies to hear the distress calls. “…abort, Captain. Engine’s stalled. Systems are shorted out and offline…”

The pilot’s jet is breaking apart, and he is kindly advised to eject from the fireball that is the aircraft. Luckily, a Green Lantern – the best Green Lantern – uses his magic ring to grapple onto the jet and help land it safely. The fire department has already arrived to put out the flames. Hal hopes the pilot is ok as… SHE exits the plane?!? “Thanks for the save, superhero,” the beautiful blonde woman smiles at him.

“Yellow,” Hal Jordan smirks. “My one weakness.” KEEP IT IN YOUR PANTS, HORNY BOY. There’s not even a scratch on this woman, by the way. She just exited a flaming airplane. She should be dead of smoke inhalation, leaving behind a sexy corpse!

“You would’ve blown past Mach 7 if you kept the wing.”

“They say the X-2020’s gonna do 10 by the time we’re done.”

“Sorry I had to intervene.”

She smiles like she didn’t almost die fourteen seconds ago. “Funny. Ya don’t look sorry.”

Disgusting. They’re giving each other the ol’ fuck-eyes and I’m not interested. Keep it out of my my burly, manly comic books.

Her name is Captain Jillian Pearlman, and, like everyone else on the planet, she thought Hal Jordan was dead. Very much alive, baby. That’s how Hal Jordan operates!

A crowd starts gathering around the plane, where broken areas of the fuselage expose the engine. “Whatever kind of engine is inside this monster,” Jordan thinks, “it isn’t from Earth.”

Oh boy! Space engines! What a hook! *fart*

We end at Edwards Air Force Base, where the truck with the tarp has been dropped off. Glowing red eyeballs appear in the darkness under the tarp. Slowly, a bright light fills the area. “NN. NN-NO. M-M-MAN. …ESCAPESSS…

Final Thoughts

Sounds like an epic doozy of a storyline is underway! I can’t wait to see Hal Jordan bone the new lady and then John Stewart gets into a pissing match with Batman and then I want to see Carol Ferris throw acid in Hal’s face. Then I wanna see Kyle Rayner get a cucumber stuck in his butt and then Edwards Air Force Base get hit with an asteroid.

All this and more awaits!