Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Flash & Green Lantern: The Brave and the Bold #1 (October, 1999)



A man who was hijacking a plane suddenly lost all his aggression, and then was killed by his own shadow.

Hal Jordan was at the airport, waiting for his buddy Barry Allen’s plane to come in. Barry was going to fly in for the weekend rather than run as the Flash to keep his “lives” separate, but had lost track of the time and missed it. Instead, Hal used his power ring to find Allen and carry him to Coast City. Of course, Hal immediately lost any points by being too broke to pay for parking, so Barry came to the rescue.

At a party thrown by Carol Ferris, the airplane’s pilot was attacked by his own shadow. Hal tried to use his power ring against it, but the emerald energy disappeared with the creature, so Jordan fearlessly dove in after it. Barry followed, and both heroes were captured by Science Minister Saraar of the Dorag.
The extraterrestrial Doragians were a placid people unprepared for war with the invading Khand. To compensate, the Doragians used an invention called an infektikon to transmit a psi-virus to leech Earth’s evil. An exception to the rule, Saraar was already pretty darned corrupt.

The Flash and Green Lantern broke free, and then returned to Earth to stop the shadow creatures, including their own evil shadows. Barry reminded Hal to “see reverse,” but my decade-plus old index card notes on this issue are a bit hard to follow, so I’m not sure about the relevancy of that. At some point someone dropped the old saw, “…In order for evil to triumph, it is only necessary that good men do nothing.” Green Lantern trapped somebody in the same “constrictor(?)” that the aliens (which aliens?) sent. Since the shadows were too evil to work together, they perished. Maybe the Khand (Khund?) had evil shadows too?

The important thing was that Green Lantern showed the will to stop the shadows, while Iris Allen and Tom “Pieface” Kalmaku wondered how such opposites as Hal and Barry became friends. The creative team was used to sell this mini-series as something of a “JLA: Year One 2,” but it was really more like the “Silver Age” event in that it was a lame, nostalgic wankfest. The details didn’t matter as much as reminding everyone how swell Hal was before the mass murder, and how solid a fella Barry was before he stayed dead until Wally couldn’t sell books anymore. I didn’t care then, and I’m clearly even less worried about it now, but I wanted credit for writing this crap down years ago in the form of a filler post.

"Those Who Worship Evil's Might" was written by Mark Waid & Tom Peyer, with art by Barry Kitson

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