Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Green Lantern: Rebirth, Issue #4 – “Force of Will”! In the previous installment, we get the whole backstory (and I do mean the WHOLE backstory, jesus christ) on Hal Jordan’s possession by the Parallax, Hal Jordan’s possession by the Spectre (who is trying to eradicate the Parallax), the Guardians’ attempt to contain the Parallax in a power battery hundreds of thousands of billions of thousands of hundreds of years ago, and why all this turned to shit.

Also, Sinestro.

Personally, it’s a whole lot to take in. But the Internet collectively agrees that this IS where a Green Lantern newcomer starts to break into one of this series’ greatest runs, so here I am for the ride. A run so great I’m getting the runs myself just thinking about it!

Green Lantern: Rebirth, Issue #4 [March, 2005]
Written by: Geoff Johns
“Force of Will”

Ahh, Mr. Mustache Wax Green Arrow and Flat Top Rayner are the stars of today’s installment! What a couple of knuckleheads! I’m tired of Hal Jordan, I hope he stays dead and they just continue with this DYNAMIC DUO!

Sinestro hovers above the three of them: Green Arrow (with yellow arrows stuck in his arm), Hal Jordan (dead in a casket), and Kyle Rayner (Kyle Rayner). Apparently, Sinestro’s involvement makes everything come together here.

Sintestro used to be the greatest Green Lantern the Corps ever had… until Hal Jordan came along and rubbed the ring on his magic penis and became Green Lantern Super Saiyan. Sinestro just so happened to let the power go to his head and fancied himself as the King and Lord of All Shit, so he was stripped of his ring privileges and booted out of the Corps with a comically large boot. And since Hal Jordan helped the Guardians do this, Sinestro has a little beef with Mr. Dead Guy over here. *jabs thumb in Hal Jordan’s direction*

But his beef goes even further than that. He wants to destroy all Green Lanterns. Seems a little silly and vindictive, but hey, I’m not a supervillain! Sounds like a lot of work! I’d rather stay home and eat spaghetti and write about comic books!

Most of Hal Jordan’s enemies are wusses. Sinestro isn’t a wuss. He’s big stinky jerkface.

“…Kyle Rayner… you should have let it burn out,” Sinestro says crisply, his brow furrowed to show about seven-hundred million forehead lines. Thinking quickly, Rayner sets up a green shield and stops a barrage of yellow arrows in its path. SHUNK SHUNK SHUNK SHUNK SHUNK, etc.

Rayner tries to counterattack, but he’s a wuss like Hal Jordan’s enemies and Sinestro shatters his makeshift shield. Now they draw swords of light. You might call them light swords. And these light swords may be saber-like, if you catch muh drift.

Here’s more to add to the Parallax stuff: Hal Jordan “killed” Sinestro, and Sinestro’s “death” was the final straw that broke the camel’s back with respect to Jordan’s “susceptibility” to the “impurity”. Did you “get that”?

Don’t make me stigmata you again, Rayner.

“Green Arrow. The fool’s friend,” sneers Sinestro.

“Sinestro. The egghead ego maniac,” sneers Green Arrow.

Ah, you’ve met already! Good!

Sinestro hates hates HATES the color green! Rarrghh! He fashions a large, bony, yellow claw and grabs Green Arrow with it. “I hear Ollie’s ribs crack like wood on a fire,” Rayner thinks as he watches his fair-weather friend get fucked up by the Big Bad Yellow Energy.

They are both having problems stopping this Vincent Price-looking motherfucker. “I can barely hold it together, Ollie,” Rayner grunts, trying to pull the yellow stake out of his own hand, “Parallax is infecting the rings…”

“Kyle…? Don’t let him get near Hal!” Green Ollie urges. Maybe because Sinestro’s gonna fuck the corpse? Get all up in its guts? Oh baby…

So Sinestro has a “Qwardian” ring. Or, the comic book editor had a mild stroke. The Qwardian ring was tapping into “sentient fear”, meaning the Parallax was “alive and well”. The “impurity” as it were. “Quotation Marks”. Sinestro didn’t know all that until he himself was trapped in the power battery, and he and the Parallax had a nice, friendly chat in the battery prison. Sinestro commands the fear now! Watch! *yellow light* AAAAHHH HA HA HA HAHAAA!! *yellow light* TAKE THAT, PUNY MORTALS! *yellow light*

But, if you’re game, I hear Sinestro’s doing a little hmm hmmm hmmmmm with that sexy corpse of his!

Coast City, the home of coasts and cities and once Hal Jordan, Parallax is taunting Sprectre with claims that he is, and has been, thoroughly unaffected by his influence. “The charades are over,” he says, and then a thunderous BAKOOOM of fiery, yellow light blows the apartment up to smithereens. Smithereens, I say!

And I’m glazing over at the next bits: Hal Jordan’s psyche may be stronger, but it’s all just emotion. It’s all just Parallax Food. Then Kilowog enters for about two seconds to rebut that emotions are more powerful than Parallax could possibly imagine, then Parallax slams Kilowog to the ground. Then Guardian McJones floats into the scene and informs Parallax that Kilowog cannot be influenced by him, and any memories that were stolen from the Guardian are now the Guardian’s again, and soon it will be back in the battery for you!

Parallax doesn’t believe a word of this poppycock! Parallax is EVIL, and without EVIL the Guardians can’t exist! They have no reason to!

And then Guy Gardner and John Stewart FLY IN under the influence of Parallax to help fight the Guardian! “Burn Ganthet and anyone that tells us what to do,” John says with conviction and fire in his eyeballs. Like X-Men’s Cyclops, I guess, but with less whining.

With one wave of his hand, Guardian Ganthet McSmith knocks the Parallax possession right out of the two of them. All like WHAZZIT WHAT JUST HAPPENED OH MY GOD WAS I JUST BEING RUDE THERE FOR A MINUTE? Both of them sweat, and they now realize what happened to Hal Jordan.

He died! lol

The Dashing Duo spot Kilowog on the ground, who tells them to pipe down because he has a head-smashed-into-the-dirt hangover.

Ganthet, Guy, John, and Kilowog now hover in formation. Across from them is Parallax. Four against one. “You have made many an enemy in Sector 2814,” Ganthet warns. And they may just keep coming. They’ll keep coming and everyone is going to fuck you up, good sir.

That’s when a full page spread of all 780 members of the Justice League fly in. Even the ones that can’t fly! They fly in too. Some bat guy who isn’t Batman is spread-eagle, daring Parallax to gaze into his sweaty crotch.

“I’ve never felt this before. Every time Sinestro strikes. My body rots from the inside out. My blood turns to poison,” Rayner soliloquizes as Sinestro frikkin’ tears into this sad-sack. “John tried to explain it to me more than once. What it felt like to have a yellow weakness. A crack in the armor, he said. And Guy swore it was good for the pain threshold. I used to laugh at it…”

“…Yellow. What could that do?”

Shouldn’t have quit barber college, Rayner! Now you got NOTHING to fall back on!

“I’m still…a Green Lantern!” Rayner shrieks as he clocks Sinestro in his red mug. A grunting and groaning Green Arrow Ollie Ollie Oxen Free drags his withered self across the crumbled floor, reaching desperately for the green power source that is there for reasons I don’t remember. He holds his ring up to the source to try to charge it like an iPhone.

“In brightest day, in blackest night… no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who… who… CRAP. How the hell’d the rest of–”

So, instead of finishing the magic chant of green ring power-up points, Ollie punches the power source and it seems to start doing the trick! *bangs jukebox* Ayyyyyy!

Rayner and Sinestro keep doing some hugging among crackling yellow and green light. “Don’t think I can’t hear you, Green Arrow,” Sinestro snarls. “You’re wasting your time.”

“Leave the kid alone,” Green Arrow readies his ring while Rayner, who just got punched out, writes on the ground like a sniveling little wormy worm. But HA! Sinestro can smell it a hundred miles away. Green Arrow’s will is cynical. Skeptical. Such emotions cannot power the greenest of rings! What are you smoking, bozo? Crazy pills?!

Green Arrow is like “YOU did this to Hal!”

Sinestro is like “Go thoroughly fuck yourself. YOU made matters worse by your betrayal.”

Green Arrow is like “Nnrr.”

Sinestro is like “Puny Earthling! Boo hoo, poor Hal Jordan. He has no one left, the loser.”

Green Arrow shakes and shivers and trembles and quivers, says “…yes, he does.”

Then, straining with an unbelievable stupid face, Green Arrow goes “AAAARRRGG” and blasts a concentrated beam of the most gloriously green light you’ve ever seen on this side of the Mississippi. So very splendorous. Get your camera.

The green light becomes a green arrow. A literal green arrow.

Well, that was pretty anticlimactic.

“Is that all you have, Earthman?” Sinestro taunts, revving up another yellow blast from his yellow ring of, I don’t know. Piss. “Is that all your pitiful will can accomplish?”

Then the arrow explodes and Ollie and Rayner get out and maybe Sinestro has been obliterated and broken into 1000 gorey pieces and he’s gone and dead forever?

Using the ring even once to make a measly exploding arrow took a lot out of Ollie. He’s exhausted. It’s like he just had a 10-minute orgasm without the orgasm part. Being a Green Lantern is too much work, man. Too much damn work. You gotta give it your all? I hate giving it my all!

OK, so the Justice League are cavorting around doing flips and cartwheels and trying to defeat Parallax with acrobatics and harsh words. It’s not working. Wonder Woman says as much. Then the Batman agrees.

John Stewart runs toward them, and Batman basically goes “oh god, no, not you again”. Take it easy, Batman! John’s a good guy again! See? *smiles*

So they all look defeated and sad and unhelpful already. Then Guy Gardner shows up and everyone’s wondering where the hell this guy came from alive and well. Doesn’t matter. This guy can’t help either!

All the while, Hal still seems to be unable to separate himself fully from this Parallax guy. I mean, I knew that. I knew that a while ago. If the Justice League are so capable then why don’t any of them know that??

Anyway, here’s a lovely picture:

Hahaha! Don’t even bother, I’m not afraid of y– JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!

“No,” says a voice, stopping Parallax in its giant-mouthed tracks. “I’m not finished… I’m not through…”

Hal Jordan and Spectre are back! From whence, who knows. I certainly don’t know. This comic is confusing. Hal yells for Spectre to fight! Fight back! Fight the thing! Fight fight fight! Rah rah rah!!

The Justice League are motionless. They stare in awe the spectacle. “Parallax… chose the wrong soul to corrupt,” Ganthet says with stoic, frowny confidence.

Hal looks like he’s simultaneously ripping Parallax apart from his own pilot-jacketed body. Just tearing his other self and trying to emerge from the middle. “Spectre…” Hal struggles desperately. “Help me.”

Yuck, I wouldn’t help that guy at all. Spectre does, though. It least it looks like he’s going to, but he probably won’t. He’s not any better than Parallax from what I’ve seen. They’re just two sides of the same butthead coin.

The Justice League gapes at the scene. They really have no idea what to do, do they? Earth’s finest heroes and can’t do jack shit.

“W- We did it. Together,” Hal Jordan pants, ready to smite the big yellow nightmare once and for all. “Now… destroy… destroy Parallax.”

“Do not order me,” the Spectre spits. “I am not your ring. I am the Spectre. And I have interfered enough.”

Hahaha. You’re on your own now, Jordan. Spectre helped exorcize the demon, but that’s all you get in this lifetime. FWASSH. That’s the sound of Spectre flying up into the sky. Serious fuckin’ lol. Bye bye, now.

“Spectre, wait!” Hal Jordan cries to the heavens. I’m dying here rofling so hard, man.

Ugly Yellow Parallax turns to Ganthet and says something to the effect of “What now, Bitch?”

No, Hal, don’t go towards the light! Don’t go towards the light! I love you, Hal! Waaahh!

Parallax plunges into Ganthet and makes him yell and writhe. Hal starts ascending to the skies himself. Apparently, without the Spectre, Jordan is less dense than the air and starts floating upward. This is much to the Justice League’s chagrin. I don’t even know why they’re there.

John Stewart tries to grasp for him, but it’s no use. He starts ascending through some sky tunnel while Ganthet’s got yellow spooge squirting out of every orifice and I keep looking back at the last few pages just WONDERING what the hell is even going on and why. I don’t have answers.

“Follow my light,” Ganthet tells Jordan while throwing a green ball up into the sky. Air Jordan grabs it. I think. I can’t believe what I’m reading, to be honest with you.

Then some stuff happens that means even less to me than the previous stuff that happened that meant nothing to me. Hal Jordan floats in front of a space nebula, certainly, and images of faces appear before him. A pterodactyl face, a woman, and a man named Abin who says this shit: “YOU TOOK CONTROL OF SECTOR 2814 AFTER MY DEATH. THE RING CHOSE YOU FOR A PURPOSE. YOU WILL OVERCOME GREAT FEAR.”

Then Hal sees the floating visage of his dead-eyed-stare dad. He tells Hal that he’s wearing his jacket correctly.

Then I guess the big green ball of light does its thing and Hal slingshots back to Earth.

I completely forgot about Sinestro! He’s still totally buttfucking Green Arrow and Kyle Rayner with ease and proficiency. “Beg,” Sinestro demands, standing tall and intimidating even though he only weighs 110 pounds, “Beg for your lives and I will end them quickly.”

The green ring slowly floats off of Green Arrow’s finger and starts hovering somewhere on the other side of the room. It floats past Sinestro’s “BUHHH” face. It floats over to Hal Jordan’s dead-ass corpse.

“I wake up from a dream. And I call to it. It comes as it always did. My weapon. My power ring. My thoughts and emotions shift. My body aches. My soul does not. I’m finally thinking clearly. I’m finally thinking like me. No more fear. But plenty of damn will. Will to stand up. Will to fight. And will to live.”

The ring, obviously, lodges itself onto Hal Jordan’s dead, fat finger. The green light that glows is the greenest of green lights. The light is so bright and green that Sinestro shields his eyes and goes “BUHHH”.

“Sinestro,” booms the very much alive Hal Jordan, donned in his magnificent Green Lantern suit with the fake abs. “Get the hell away from them.”

Final Thoughts

FINALLY. Enough beating around the bush. Hal Jordan is alive, no more Parallax and Spectre dumbassery. Let’s get to Green Lanterning and flashing lights in bad guys’ eyeballs!