Pre-Crisis Primer: HOLY CRAP

Green Lantern 190 – 193

“Macho!”

Welcome to a nice, well-deserved vacation Stewart and Katma. Be glad you're not Hal Jordan.

Who is The Predator? I've been enjoying his constant mockery of Hal Jordan as well as his penchant for hitting on for Jordan's long-time girlfriend Carol Ferris, but is there a reason behind his menace besides being some macho dick? I'm going to settle with an answer of: sort-of. It's a long convoluted answer, steeped in somewhat boring GL-lore; welcome to the hell that is the 'continuity-issue.'

Continuity-issues can be cool, especially for geeks like me (and presumably you, if you're reading this blog), but most of the time they're an antithesis to forward momentum in a story and a slog to actually read. A continuity-issue is a term coined by moi to account for any comic that spends the majority of its page real-estate recapping past events in a comic series and tie them together, sometimes with small changes made to the actual events as depicted in previous stories, in an effort to explain mysterious and odd events happening in the current stories of the series. The subject this time being Predator, Carol, and an old foe called The Star Sapphire.

Carol is sick of Hal's whining too. And she dislikes his skills as an umpire.

Finally bringing to a head the long-running Predator sub-plot which first surfaced back when Hal was wearing the GL-costume and continually getting his ass kicked by olympic-level javelin-throwers and construction workers who happened to have the dumb luck to both have yellow weapons in their possession, Hal Jordan again takes center stage in the title for the first time since giving up his secret identity to spend time with Ferris. John Stewart, receiving a bit of a break for delivering some top-notch stories and entertainment for the reading audience gets to sit most of this story out, becoming closer to new lady love, veteran Green Lantern Katma Tui, as the two of them spend much of the story training in usage of the GL ring in space.

Hal is still nursing wounds to both body and pride after a recent run-in with The Predator. Trying to enjoy life as a retired superhero, Jordan finds himself more and more wrapped up in the need for conflict. He resents Ferris for putting him in a position to give up the GL power ring and being a weaker man because of it. Hal Jordan is weaker than the Green Lantern. With all this emasculated navel-gazing, Jordan fails to prevent the bothersome Predator from making off with Ferris, finally having stopped waiting for her to come around on her own.

He still took your girl, man.

Hal's only solution to this turn of events, not calling on any of his friends like Batman or Superman, but to continue to try to be the superhero himself by dressing up in an absurd amount of padded armor and winning back his woman. A quick aside: I think this scene really points out Hal's deficency as a hero, outside of the costume he has no life or purpose and only feelings of inadequacy; John Stewart on the other hand, especially by ditching the mask and secret identity is able to mesh both who he is as an individual as well as part of the Green Lantern Corps. He's a more pragmatic, sensible, less emotional-driven character. I'd argue that's greater strength of character as well.

But Stewart is out having space sex (which is fine, of course) and this is mostly Jordan's story. Facing and fighting (and kind of losing to) The Predator, the villains identity and obsession with Ferris is finally revealed: once Predator and Ferris reveal their love for each other (!) they merge and create one being THE STAR SAPPHIRE! 

So, with this revelation, does this count as domestic abuse? Can we get Hal arrested?

This is when confusion sets in. I know I had no idea what was going on. Hence a whole issue dedicated to explaining what the fuck, which I'll now simplify as best I can.

The Guardians of the Universe, the tiny blue-skinned immortal aliens who gave up a fraction of their power to create the power rings of the Green Lantern Corps were not always a selection of asexual males. The female portion of the race, known as the Zamarons, left the Guardians long ago, feeling that their suppression of emotions went against the very nature of being a sentient being. Literally believing in the power of love, they settled their own planet. Hal Jordan, as Green Lantern, had encountered these beings in the past. They had used Carol Ferris' love for Jordan as a catalyst to turn her into the menacing Star Sapphire, who would use purple energy, powered by love, as a counter-weapon to the emerald energy of the Lanterns, which is powered by willpower. At this point, Ferris and Jordan believe Star Sapphire to be a thing of the past, long defeated.

Well, Ferris never believed that.

In the meantime, Stewart and Katma fight a villain named Replikon who literally will only be seen once more.

The thing is, and here's the retcon, and the crazy part (wait, now it gets crazy?) Ferris never stopped being Star Sapphire, it was just her love for Jordan that helped reconcile the disparate personalities, Ferris and Sapphire, into one being again, no longer separate. When Jordan was gone for a year, Carol found herself becoming more and more unglued, the power and need for conquest of the Star Sapphire taking over her personality, and body, split again, this time into Carol Ferris and...THE PREDATOR?!?! The Predator is Carol Ferris. At least her masculine side: power, business acumen, and aggression. When they merged again, Ferris finally embraced her destiny to be the Star Sapphire. Revelations aside, she abandons Hal on Earth and returns to Zamaron to rule the Zamarons as their queen.

Well...holy crap. Quite a pickle Jordan, in hindsight I'm glad Stewart was able to sit out this debacle.

Guy Gardner, pre bowl-cut.

Waiting in the wings of this new conflict, put on hold for the time being, we are witness to two small events that will bear bitter fruit: a man by the name of Guy Gardner, once fill-in Green Lantern for Hal Jordan (this guy quits his job often) awakes from a coma with nothing but the burning desire to reclaim his ring and the Guardians sense a presence, something powerful and evil from the Anti-matter universe (a mirror universe of ours, which is made of positive matter apparently) that they dismiss as an error in their instruments and not the beginning of.... A CRISIS!

I'm loving the caps lock today.