Thursday, May 10, 2007
Putting the P in Super
For no particular reason, I've been taking vitamin B supplements recently. As those of you who have tried this know, vitamin B has the side-effect of turning one's urine an almost radioactively bright shade of yellow.
So I was taking a whiz this morning and I was thinking, "Wow. The Green Lantern would be powerless against my urine!"
...'Cause his weakness is the colour yellow, you know. Which is pretty lame if you ask me.
Usually, when I get on these tongue-in-cheek comic-book critiques, my target is Superman. But these days there are so many of those "Superman Is A Dick" websites that the Man of Steel seems like too easy of a target.
The Green Lantern, on the other hand, has been largely spared serious scrutiny. He got his power ring from this super-advanced benevolent society, the Guardians of the Universe from the planet Oa, who have established a galactic police force. Does this "super-advanced" civilization not have any sort of engineering safety standards? Isn't there any kind of Green Lanterns union that can file a grievance about these things?
Really, could you ever imagine this happening on Earth? "Here you go, officer, this is a new sort of taser we've developed. The only problem with it is that it doesn't work on anything yellow." My guess is that invention would be headed back to the lab until the whole yellow weakness thingy gets fixed.
Here's another question: why is the Green Lantern always an athletic guy? He doesn't have to do anything remotely athletic. He flies around and points the ring at shit. A guy in a wheelchair could do that job. In fact, that would make for a much more interesting comic.
As a kid, my biggest pet peeve with Green Lantern was the over-use of the plot device of his power ring running out of juice at a crucial moment. There were always these scenes where he would be surrounded by bad guys and the giant green hammer generated by his ring would suddenly go limp and disappear at the worst possible moment.
His ring, you see, has to be charged up at his lantern-battery once every 24 hours. Once a day... that's it! Dude, do it before you go to bed every day. Put a post-it note on your toothpaste tube: "Charge ring." Set up Google to send yourself an email reminder. I mean, you use the ring to fly around and travel in outer space. It's kinda important that it always, always, always be charged up.
But apparently the Guardians of the Universe also don't have annual performance reviews, 'cause otherwise I'm sure 'failing to charge ring regularly' is something that would go on a Green Lantern's work record.
OK, I've had my fun. Your turn: got any favourite comic book pet peeves or hypotheticals?
posted by Mentok @ 9:53 a.m.,
5 Comments:
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At 2:46 p.m.,
said...
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ok, the genesis of this idea is an extreme example of "everything is copy"!!
and i love the subtle-yet-apropos use of pet "peeve"--it's writing like this that got you the thinking blogger award. ha!
other than that, i got nothing. : ) -
At 2:55 p.m.,
Mentok said...
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So, you're saying my reflections on the effects of urine on superheroes is an example of how I got the thinking blogger nod?
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At 4:34 p.m.,
said...
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i'm saying that the use of the word "peeve" is a brilliant play on words, and--oh, shit! you know what i meant! : )
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At 9:41 a.m.,
Mentok said...
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Thanks for the kind words, marcy. You're in a class of your own! ;-)
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At 12:25 p.m.,
FiL said...
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Urea-ly got me going, Mentok. I must show this to my friend Mick Turate...
I thought the Wonder Twins were a hoot, especially the one who's power was to transformed into anything formed by water. Shape of... Evian!!!
Right, off to have a shower...
