Action Comics Weekly #610: The one where Nancy Reagan gets called out

Having missed Action Comics Weekly #609, we join all six weekly features already in progress, although we probably won’t actually discuss all six of them, because most of them are boring and don’t involve Hal Jordan getting hit in the head or doing anything foolish.

But the first feature sure does!

It opens with Hal Jordan facing a sword-wielding maniac in the streets of Chicago, a sword-wielding maniac who just cut down a victim. Fearlessly, Jordan tosses his super-power ring onto the ground and decides to take on the swordsman with his bare hands. (I notice the drooling madman does have a yellow shirt on, however, so maybe Hal’s ring would have been powerless against him anyway…?) Jordan lands a devastating blow to the dude’s breadbasket, which unfortunately opens up the bullet wound in his arm (remember, he was shot a couple of issues ago, which was a couple of months ago in my ongoing coverage of this 23-year-old storyline).

Lucky for Hal, the crazy guy hits him with the wrong end of the sword:Before he can deliver the coup de grace, Hal’s opponent seems scared and hesitant, allowing Hal time to think to himself that maybe he’s a little too fearless lately, and to kick the guy in the genitals.

Hal flies away, leaving the fellow to the arriving police officers, although he notices the swordsman seem to be shaking off his state of mind, “like he just woke up or something.”

From there, Hal flies off to the police department and attempts to get his very own Commissioner Gordon by comparing notes about what turned a normal guy into a sword-swinging lunatic with a Lieutenant Rensaleer. The latter’s not much of a detective. A letter arrives in the mail from a man calling himself “Mind Games” who takes responsibility for causing the man “to run wild with the sword” and threatening to “turn more citizens into homicidal maniacs” if he’s not given $500,000 by 6 p.m.

Rensaleer laughs at the guy and tosses the letter in a wastebasket.Back in his hotel room, Hal has sex with his teenage alien girlfriend and orders room service. The waiter, coincidentally, is the next person being driven into homicidal mania by mysterious circumstance and, because Peter David is scripting the Green Lantern feature at this point, Arisa’s dialogue sets up a visual pun for a cliffhanger.Green Lantern is followed by a Phantom Stranger short story written by Paul Kupperberg and drawn by Kyle Baker (credited as “artiste” instead of artist). The story involves a computer becoming possessed by a demon and, this being 1988, the technology and lingo are pretty dated, but it’s a great example of Baker’s already great—and certainly quite distinct—artwork.

Here are two badly-scanned, non-consecutive pages, just to give you an idea of what it looks like:...If reading these old comics from $1 bins is like panning for god, this is a fine nugget.

As exciting as the two opening stories were, even they are eclipsed by chapter ten of the Deadman feature, entitled “Catfight,” which opens thusly:Nancy is, of course, First Lady Nancy Reagan, and that’s her husband cowering in the tuxedo in the background.

And the woman calling her out is Raisa Gorbachev, wife of Mikhail Gorbachev, although the yellow aura is our visual cue that she’s currently possessed by Deadman, the ghost hero who’s super power is possession.

Nancy is possessed by Satan (really!) and Deadman/Raisa is packing an “ancient astronaut's weapon” capable of hurting the devil.

While the husbands run interference, the spiritual entities eventually abandon their famous hosts, and end up parleying with Major Kasaba, from earlier in the storyline. And then D.B. Cooper reappears to assure us that the creature calling itself Satan wasn’t really Satan, but a minor demon named Yakin, and that he is really the devil.

Oh shit, D.B. Cooper is Satan himself?! Or Satan is disguised as Cooper…or something?! I guess I’ll find out next week! Pretty exciting cliffhanger, though (I notice reading these two that the cliffhangers are all single-panel affairs. Either of these—D.B. Cooper revealing himself with a sly smile and the declaration “I’m his boss,” a knife poised to stab at an unaware Arisa—would be full-page splashes in a modern DC comic.

There’s two more pages of Roger Stern and Curt Swan’s boring-ass story about a Superman cult or somesuch, another boring installment of the boring Secret Six feature, which at least has some odd images as the Six infiltrate a meat processing plant——and then it’s time for part two of “Bitter Fruit,” the new storyline featuring Black Canary, which began last issue (the one I didn’t get or read).

It’s written by Sharon Wright and drawn by Randy Duburke and Pablo Marcos, none of whom I’m familiar with. It’s set during the time Black Canary and Green Arrow were based in Seattle, and presented in a rather realistic fashion—Canary only appears in her civilian identity as Dinah Lance through most of this story, only putting on her then-new “costume” at the end of the story, after talking with a woman with a 1988 haircut, glasses and outfit about some violence troubling her and her family, which Dinah decides to investigate.The art is quite cinematic, with single images being broken up with panels as if to suggest a panning camera, and I like how realistic the people are drawn, although attention is paid to unique points-of-view. And, again, it’s refreshing how different this is from modern Big Two super-comics. It’s drawn in a realistic style, but that doesn’t mean photo-referenced or made to resemble a photos, it just means it was drawn in a particular style.

Here’s a sequence of Dinah suiting up:I have no memory of this costume (Perhaps it only existed for this storyline…?) and the shoulderpads sure date it, but otherwise it’s a pretty decent compromise between her superhero look (blonde hair, corset-like top thingee, gloves and jacket) with more functional, off-the-rack clothes (of course, Black Canary’s original costume was something you could put together off the rack, huh?).

Action Comics Weekly #608: The one where Hal Jordan goes on Oprah

This is the cover of 1988's Action Comics Weekly #608, which features the first appearance of Green Lantern Kyle Rayner—a full six year's before he was actually introduced in Green Lantern #48! That, or whoever colored Paul Smith's cover decided to give the brown-haired hero jet-black hair. Post-Kyle though, that totally just looks like the younger, cooler, better Green Lantern flying around, doesn't it?

Once again, the Green Lantern strip, now being written by Peter David and illustrated by Todd Smith and Dan Bulanadi, is the highlight of this particular issue of DC's shortlived weekly anthology series. The title of this particular installment is "Where the Heck is Green Latnern?," and appears being shouted by Oprah Winfrey at the sweatiest TV show flunkie in Chicago: I love everything about this panel, and it's only the first panel of the story. How do I love this panel? Let's count the ways.

1) It has Oprah Winfrey in it, rather than a weird fictionalized analogue character; in the late eighties, DC wasn't as shy as they are today about tossing real public figures into their fictional narratives. 2) Oprah is shouting so loud that her dialogue bubble accounts for nearly a quarter of the splash-page, and here "Heck" is in a big, blocky red font while her "Green Lantern" is in green, flaming letters...and yet as loud as she's yelling, she still chose to say "heck" instead of "hell." 3) She pronounced the little "registered trademark" symbol after "Green Lantern." 4) Her face is radiating a halo of...exasperation? Soundwaves? Oprah aura? What? What are those lines all about?!. 5) The look on that guy's fce as he's flipping through the pages on his clipboard, as if he's going to find Green Lantern stuck to the back of one of those pages. Even if you ignore all the white sweat pouring down his brow, just look at the existential horror on his face—is Oprah Winfrey going to throttle him then and there if he can't produce Green Lantern? What a set-up! The look on his face alone makes this one of the most intense and suspenseful openings of a superhero comic I've ever read!

So, where the heck is Green Lantern? He's still asleep in the hotel room he's been living in with his teenage space alien girlfriend, despite the fact that he was supposed to be on Oprah's set at 9 a.m.! And it's already 8:45!

He smashes his alarm clock with a blast from his power ring, and then flies into the bathroom to get ready: This is another great panel, full of frantic energy and rich, weird details. But do you notice anything wrong about it, aside form the fact that space-faring superhero Hal Jordan is doing his part to destroy Earth's ozone layer by using aerosol underarm deodorant? (Not very green for a guy who calls himself Green Lantern...)

Check out the foreground, were we see his Green Lantern shirt is laid out over a chair, while he's already wearing his Gren Lantern pants and boots. In the next panel, he's pulling on his gloves, and in the one after that, he dashes out of the room while putting on his mask.

This scene seems to imply that his costume is merely cloth and spandex, something he takes off and puts on like normal clothes. Yet in the previous issue we saw him putting on his costume thusly: That's the way I usually see Green Lanterns changing their clothes—using ring-power to make their street clothes turn into their Green Lantern uniforms, or vice versa.

How does that work exactly? I've always wondered. Do they use their ring's energy to reassemble their street clothes at a molecular level, transforming, say, a bathrobe into a GL uniform? Do they make the street clothes disappear—teleporting them to their laundry room, perhaps—and either make their costumes appear on them or weave their costumes out of thin air, using the rings' matter-creating abilities? Are they always wearing their GL outfits, but they use the power of the ring to render them invisible, and then when it's time to change, they just turn their street clothes invisible and make their uniforms visible?

This is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night. Yes, agonizing over how a Green Lantern gets in and out of his or her clothes sometimes prevents me from sleeping. This is not a blog post, this is a cry for help.

At any rate, Hal apparently did whatever he does to create his uniform, but only put it on piece by piece. That seems kind of dumb if you're getting dressed in a hurry. But this is in keeping with Hal Jordan's character, because Hal Jordan is dumb.

Once dressed, Hal flies off to make it to Oprah's studio, but must first spend a few pages stopping an armored car hijacking he happens upon. In the process, one of the criminals shouts, "Hey, Lantern! Welcome to Chicago!" and then shoots at GL with a high-powered rifle. The clever crooks have painted their bullets yellow, and since yellow is the Green Lantern's only weakness, the bullet whips through his force field and slices through his shoulder.

But not even a bullet wound will stop Green Lantern! From appearing on Oprah! He arrives in the nick of time:Note that Oprah isn't exactly portrayed in a flattering light. In the second panel on this page, her body appears to be little more than a rectangle with limbs and a head balancing a top of it (In fact, she looks an awful lot like Amanda Waller from that angle and distance). Also note that she's wearing yellow, which we were just reminded was Hal Jordan's only weakness. Is this a subtle clue to the nature of the effect the interview will have on Hal? Or did Colorist Anthony Tollin, credited as the "colorer," just coincidentally choose to put Oprah in a canary yellow blazer? Whatever the reason, the fact remains—if Oprah were to button up her jacket and attack Hal Jordan during the interview, he'd be no match for her in hand-to-hand combat.

After the interview, Oprah walks up and down the aisles of the audience, allowing her viewers to ask some questions. When one asks Hal if she can become a Green Lantern, he explains that there's only one Green Lantern for the planet Earth—him. After a panel of stunned silence, the crowd reacts: To say that Hal is surprised by their reaction seems like an understatement. Check out his expression, he looks like he was just stabbed in the stomach by his best friend: And that's where the story ends for now.

Also of special note in this particular issue is the Wild Dog story, "Moral Stand." The installment opens with an image of Wild Dog's logo/mascot... ...which for some reason reminds me of that asshole dog from Duck Hunt... As you may or many not recall/care, in this story the Punisher-like vigilante who calls himself Wild Dog is up against The Legion of Morality, a reactionary, Moral Majority-like group that speaks out against smut—which they define rather broadly to include just about everything—and has a military wing that commits arson and terrorist attacks while wearing matching uniforms with a red circle with a line through it as their symbol.

Wild Dog has been attempting to infiltrate the militant wing in order to expose them, and had previously halted their attempt to destroy a newspaper's printing plant. One of the footsoldiers was captured, but was blown up by an explosive charge in his belt before he could reveal any information to the police.

But all the action of this installment has to do with older people doing it.

The Legion's leader Lyle Layman is having a business dinner with local volunteer Helen, and he puts the moves on in a weirdly aggressive manner— Putting your hand on a lady's leg is one thing, but doing it when sitting across the table from her? That's...that's pretty bold. And awkward.

The next morning, some of Wild Dog's police pals interview Helen for information about Layman, but she stonewalls. When they leave, we see that Layman was there all along—and not wearing a shirt!That's enough to imply that Helen and Layman spent the night together last night, as is their dialogue there, but if all that's too subtle, check out the reflection in the mirror in that final panel...they're totally in bed going at it again! Ew!

(Man, what if Lyle Layman was Peter Parker's uncle? "With special responsibilities come special privileges"...)

This issue also includes the conclusion of the first Blackhawk storyline, by Mike Grell, Rick Burchett and Pablo Marcos. This final installment a heavy avalanche of exposition explaining that blond gal that Blackhawk's been trying unsuccessfully to bang's backstory, plus some fisticuffs and a dramatic air battle. It ends with Blackhawk commenting on the nun's nunnishness: I suppose the look on his face in that first panel is supposed to suggest roguish incorrigiblity or rakish rapscallionocity, but it just looks like menacing sexual predator to me. Brr!

The next issue of Action Comics Weekly is the one with the killer Brian Bolland cover in which Black Canary rejects her 1980s costume in favor of her classic look——but unfortunately the used book store I bought this pile of ACWs from didn't have that particular issue, so we'll have to jump ahead to #610 in our next installment of Caleb Just Posts Scans Of Panels From Action Comics That He Thought Were Funny Instead Of Actually Reviewing Anything.

What can we look forward to in that issue? Kyle Baker drawing The Phantom Stranger, Black Canary wearing another new costume, then-president Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan in the same story as Satan and Deadman and Hal Jordan getting hit in the head!

Action Comics Weekly #607: The one where Hal Jordan solves the conflict in the Middle East

DC's 1988 weekly anthology series seemed to have hit its creative apex with issue #606, the one featuring a Green Lantern story in which all of his friends and allies tell him to get lost. From that lofty point, there's really nowhere to go but down, but, thankfully, "James Owsley" and Tod Smith's GL story in #607 isn't that far down Awesome Comic Mountain. It's still the story of unlovable loser Hal Jordan, living his sucky life and flying all over being told he sucks by everyone he meets.

It's just this time it's mostly random people telling him he sucks, instead of Alfred Pennyworth or Green Arrow. What this lacks in Justice Leaguer-on-Justice Leaguer dickishnes, it makes up for in politics.

After all, this is the issue of Action Comics Weekly in which Green Lantern Hal Jordan totally brings peace to the Middle East (temporarily), uniting the warring factions in common cause (that is, throwing rocks at Hal Jordan).

The GL story, entitled "Guilty!", opens with a full-page splash of our hero and his then-girlfriend in a Coast City hotel bed. Arisa, Hal's golden-skinned, elf-eared, femullet-sporting alien girlfriend, is sitting up in bed, eating the latest of several candy bars (judging by the number of crumpled-up wrappers on the bed) and saying the word "Chuckle!' at the television set. That's how Arisa laughs, I guess; she doesn't chuckles, she just says "Chuckle." The program she's watching is Oprah's. It's about reformed mass killers.

Hal, meanwhile, is shown naked from the waist up (At least! We'll have to wait until he gets out of bed two panels later to see if Hal sleeps nude or not!), entangled in the bed sheet, his pillow folded around his head, thought-ballooning to himself, "Close the blinds! Close the blinds! Close the blinds!" (Why he doesn't just use his power ring to close the blinds isn't addressed).Arisa is, by the way, literally watching Oprah. Like, they say "Oprah" repeatedly. And in the second of the above panels? They show Oprah. I don't know why exactly, but that seems kind of cool and daring to me—I guess because I know today neither DC nor Marvel would use Oprah's name and face like that (And man, just wait until you see next issue's GL story, guest-starring Oprah!).

In the second panel above, you can also see Hal getting out of bed. Yes, Hal sleeps in the nude! Or else just wears tiny, tiny, tiny briefs.

And since I know my audience so well: Hal finally gives up trying to sleep in past nine, thinking "Heck with it!" and rising: Er, if you have to ask Hal, well then, the answer's probably no...

Hal goes on to thought balloon, "Didn't sleep much last night. That's becoming a habit. Can't stop thinking about John." But don't get too excited about the comment, slash-fiction fans—Hal's merely segueing into a nine-panel recap of the events of the series so far, while taking a "walk" to "clear the cobwebs." This means putting on his superhero suit and then flying all over the world: Up into space, over a Middle Eastern desert, to s snow-topped mountain top, to the sphinx at Giza.

Then, in the next panel, Green Lantern gets topical, only vaguely so: "Later, over a remote shore settlement within a middle eastern country..."

I'm assuming that's supposed to be the part of world that the Palestinians and Israelis were fighting over in 1988. And before. And are still fighting over today. But the comic book doesn't really do much to provide context and, since this is the DC Universe, which is full of stand-in cities and countries like Gotham City and Qurac, I guess this could be a dispute between the Quisraelis and Schmalestinians.

One side is armed with rocks and have scarves tied around their heads and faces. The other side are wearing military uniforms and carrying machine guns. Both speak what looks like it's supposed to be Arabic. Or maybe it is Arabic? I don't know.

At any rate, from high up in the sky, Hal sees a few overturned cars on fire, with people scrambling around like ants. "Nothing makes any sense anymore!" he thinks, regarding his problems with Carol and John, "Just like those rioters fighting police with bricks and stones!"

Then: What's that Hal? maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere...? Are you saying maybe America shouldn't try to solve the world's problems, because it only makes things worse? Is Hal Jordan an isolationist? Hal, you sound like some kinda crazy pinko in this story! Don't be such a sissy! Intervening always makes things better!

Hal realizes this himself in the very next panel, of course, when he sees a woman running through the melee cradling a baby. She falls down, and Hal springs into action—well, he points his ring to create some action.

"Now this is much easier!" Hal thinks "No right or wrong...no moral debate...that woman's life is at stake! This riot stops now!"

He employs the time-tested tools of riot dispersal: Two giant green electric fans to blow away the tear gas, and a giant green fire extinguisher to put out the car fires. Problem solved? No, the heavily-armed side of the conflict wants to start some shit with GL! See what I mean about the language? Is that Arabic, or just an Arabic-looking font? Is it, I don't know, Farsi? Urdu? It doesn't look Hebrew, but I don't really know what Hebrew looks like anymore than I know what Farsi, Urdu or Arabic look like.

There's no translation notes to indicate what language it is, or what they might be saying. I assume it's, "Look! It's that fucking guy! Shoot him!"

And then Hal just straight up solves the whole crisis: Sliding green forcefields! Why didn't Clinton think of that?

I didn't scan the very next panel, after the one where the tiny-handed Hal Jordan smiles, "You're safe now," but I should have, because the woman tosses her baby into the crook of her right arm in order to unleash a devastating, left-handed slap on Hal Jordan, complete with an little yellow explosion effect. It's a slap so hard, Hal is rubbing his face for a few panels.

Realizing that the woman is afraid of him, and that the medical services won't attend to her while he's standing next to her, he flies away. The whole world hates him now! Why is that? (I think it's because he's terrible. Is that the reason?) Hal assumes there's only one solution to his PR problem, and withe the courage and willpower that originally earned him his power ring, he goes for it: Yes! Hal Jordan is going to go on Oprah! And he really does, in the next issue. But that will have to wait until another post.

Anything else of note happen in this issue?

Well the Deadman story got even nuttier, which is something of a feat, since it began with the ghost of a dead acrobat fighting the CIA and ancient astronauts in Central America. In previous chapters, Deadman escaped captivity at the hands of the CIA, and was pulled through an ancient Sumerian jar into Hell by the devil himself. In the last installment, D.B. Cooper appeared with an offer to help Deadman escape from Hell.

That's where "Escape From Hell" picks up, with D.B. and DM scaling the sheer cliff face of a giant mountain. As they near the top, D.B. advises Deadman not to the old man in the cave, and Deadman's all like, "What?" and then he starts complaining and oh hey look, what's that? What the--? Hey, come on D.B. Cooper, what's the big idea? Sure, Kool-Aid Man's face looked a little...off-model, but so what? Maybe it was just a generic--Oh. Face-ripper.

I wish the next panel had some variation of Deadman asking, "A face-ripper? What's that?" or "What's it do?" Sadly, he just goes on complaining about his thirst.

They eventually get to the top of the mountain, where Deadman sees an elevator. Pushing the button, he sees his sensei, or a guy named "Sensei," dressed like a bellhop. Wait, Deadman exposits when D.B. tells him not to talk to him, as this is the old man in the cave. "It's the O-sensei, former leader of a gang of thugees," DM explains. "They were responsible for my murder."

And then it gets weird. The Old Man in the Cave that looks like Sensei convinces Deadman that D.B. Cooper isn't D.B. Cooper, but the real Sensei. And D.B. Cooper turns into Sensei. And they have a kung-fu fight, Deadman prevailing when he throws his foe over the cliff. Then the Old Man/bellhop and Deadman fight, and Deadman throws him over the cliff. Then D.B. Cooper appears and tells him that he's the old man in the cave.

Anyway, D.B. Cooper or whoever points the way to a cave that leads to Earth and a team-up with the Reagans. (In just two more issues!)

Let's see...Wild Dog fights some dudes (BRAKKA! BRAKKA!BRAKKA! BRAKKA! ZING! ZING! ZING! BUDDA! BUDDA! BUDDA! BUDDA!), Superman does some research, The Secret Six get into some boring-looking highjinx involving laser tag, Michael Landon, a magician, a Godzilla dummy and the Ku Klux Klan wizard they work for, oh, and Rick Burchett draws some fine Blackhawk action.

Check out this scene: Okay, it doesn't scan all that well given the shape of the panel, but see how Blackhawk dramatically appears in the doorway there, just as a bolt of lighting streaks out of the night skies in the background? And, more importantly, see how high he is in relation to his adversary?

This is the very next panel:Blackhawk basically just leapt from the tenth stair up, God knows how man feet away that is, and landed face-first onto his opponent. That was his attack! He literally hurled himself at his foe, and hit him with his own face. That's...that's a really amazing panel right there.

It leads to another pretty cool fight scene. One of the things I really like about this Blackhawk strip is that the hero, while generally winning his fights, really takes a pounding during them. As fun as it is to read scenes featuring an invincible, unstoppable bad-ass like Batman just wrecking large numbers of enemies, it's cool to read fights where the protagonist is just a regular-ish dude who has to take it just about as well as he gives it. And I say regular-ish instead of regular because, Jesus Christ, he threw himself from the top of the stairs and hit that guy's face with his own face.

Anyway, here are two panels of Blackhawk landing a blow and taking one:I really like the way Burchett draws 'hawk wrapped around the guy's foot. How hard do you have to kick a man to have him fold around your foot like that?

And that's the end of Action Comics #607. Next issue, Hal Jordan goes on Oprah! And probably some other stuff happens too!

Action Comics Weekly #606: The one where everyone hates on Hal Jordan

My occasional series of posts taking close looks at issues of DC's 1988 weekly anthology version of Action Comics finally reaches issue #606, which is probably the single best issue of them all.

And what's so great about this issue, beyond the awesomeness of the cover, which depicts a throng of crazed Superman-worships praying to the Man of Steel while he awkwardly reads the text framing his head?

(And let's face it, that's a very awesome cover, whether you crop it so that it looks like that one dude is worshiping Superman's crotch or not). Well, there is that.

But there's also the fact this is the issue where Green Lantern Hal Jordan reaches out to all of his friends and allies, and they each tell him that he's stupid and lame and they hate him and they wish he would just slink off and die and let a twentysomething in a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt replace him for a decade or so.

It's true! I'm hardly exaggerating at all!

When we last left Hal Jordan in the pages of Action Comics Weekly #605, he was unshaven, half-naked, and chained on a weird planet of constant lightning strikes, while back on earth Carol "Star Sapphire" had faked her own death and framed John Stewart for it, sending the other Green Lantern to jail.

Hal returned to Earth, finding Carol in a graveyard, where a little orange alien abducted her and zapped Hal unconscious for a while.

In this issue's Green Lantern story, "The List," which is drawn for the first time by Tod Smith instead of Gil Kane, Hal is flying around downtown, surveying the rubble of what used to be Carol's apartment building, until he notices a newspaper blowing around the street, its headline reading "Green Lantern Murders Socialite."

"What's this--?" Hal thinks theatrically to himself, "John00 accused of murdering Carol?!"

Hal places a call to John, recapping the events of the story so far, before reminding Hal that he's still pretty mad at him for those events: "Feels like my life's come completely apart!" Hal thinks to himself. "I need to help JOhn, but first I've got to help myself!...I've got no job...no home...no possessions!...I need to find some balance to my life. And-- --I know just the place to start."

That place, it turns out is Wayne Manor, where Hal goes to reach out to perhaps the smartest, richest guy he knows. Unfortunately, Batman was still going through is Dark Knight, be-an-asshole-to-everyone-constantly phase, and his black mood had apparently infected Alfred as well, since this is how he politely answers the door: Yeesh. Maybe Alfred just didn't recognize Hal without his little green mask and GL uniform on?

After a bit of argument from Hal, Bruce Wayne invites him in by throwing his voice or something, but Alfred continues to be rather prickish to him: Hal extends his hand to Bruce, who ignores it, and asks what he can do for Hal.

"What, can't an old friend drop in for a visit--? No, huh? All right," Hal starts, before shrugging, "Look, Bruce, ever since the Green Lantern Corps disbanded, my lifes been slowly unraveling. I guess I'm looking for an anchor...something to give me a sense of balance."

Bruce Wayne compassionately responds: Sheesh. Batman usually gives hobos directions to homeless shelters are the cards of Wayne Enterprise's HR deparment at least.

After Bruce stalks off, the scene ends with Hal screaming at his back, "Haveny you heard a thing I've said?! Bruce!"

Next, Hal tries the other member of the World's Finest, and gets shot down even more quickly, albeit more politely: (This, by the way, is apparently the starting point for Neil Gaiman's old script which eventually saw publication in 2000 as Green Lantern/Superman: Legend of the Green Flame, illustrated by a who's who of artists in jam fashion. As I recall, the script was originally spiked because it turned out that Hal no longer knew Superman's secret identity after the events of Crisis On Infinite Earths, and thus the story no longer made sense as written. Obviously, the spike hadn't yet dropped on the script of this particular issue, in which Hal knew both Superman and Batman's secret identities.)

Cut to an establishing shot of a phone booth—remember those—and then we see Hal in complete anguish, regarding a list of friends he made and then crossed off friend by friend when he realized they all hate him:That list in the second panel above is just about the saddest thing I've ever seen. (Fun fact that Hakwman, Martian Manhunter and Aquaman weren't "really" Green Lantern's friends; they just worked together, I guess).

This leaves Hal's best friend, Oliver "Green Arrow" Queen. When Hal thinks back to those days, this is what he envisions: For some reason, this panel reminded me of the scenes in Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour where Scott and Gideon remember their relationships with their exes through rose-colored glasses......only in Hal's case, he's standing idly by while Black Canary is all "omigod ur like, such a stud" to Ollie.

(Oh, and just in case Sally is reading, I'd better crop that image and blow it up a bit: You're welcome).

At this point, Green Arrow was living in Seattle with Black Canary, and he was going through his dark, urban hunter phase. Hal finds him busting some drug dealers, and joins the fray, although Arrow's not happy to have a glowing space cop intruding on his gritty realism.

After they finish mopping up the bad guys, they convene on a rooftop, where Hal tries to confide in Ollie.

Let's listen in:As you can tell from Hal's "What?!" there, he wasn't really ready for any hard truth. Green Arrow spends another five seconds telling Hal to get lost, and then he runs off to get out of this anthology series and back to his own comic book: His best friend, and the last person on his short list of friends having told him to fuck off, Hal tragically crumples up his list, and drops the piece of paper containing the first names of the secret identities of the original Justice League of America into a random Seattle alleyway: Aw, here are two words I never thought I'd type in this particular order: Poor Hal.And thus concludes "James Owsley" and Tod Smith's "The List," the best Green Lantern story in Action Comics Weekly, perhaps the greatest Green Lantern story ever told—at least until Frank Miller and Jim Lee got around to that one issue of All-Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder where the leads paint themselves yellow, meet Hal in a yellow room, and enjoy yellow snacks while making fun of him for 22 pages.

What will happen to the friendless, jobless, penniless, homeless superhero in the next issue? Will he become a full-time super-hobo? I'll have to read ACW #607 to let you know for sure.

In the meantime, there was some other neat stuff in this issue.

For example, Mike Baron, Dan Jurgens and Tony DeZuniga's Deadman story. When we last left Boston Brand, he had escaped a ghost-cage at CIA headquarters, but was pulled into an ancient urn by the devil himself. Now he finds himself in Hell.

After a few pages of discussion with Satan about whether or not this was really the real Hell, DM asks why Satan looks so stereotypically satanic, and so the devil turns into Spider-Man's wife and throws herself at our hero: The Devil changes shape a few more times—a couple of scary, hag-like lady harpy creatures, an old Asian dude with no shirt, Richard Nixon—and we get to see that Hell looks a bit like a red-tinted rough neighborhood in pre-Giulani NYC.

It seems like there are quite a few familiar business in Hell too:
Not surprised to see McDonald's and Burger King down there, reall, but Donut World? What's wrong with doughnuts?

Later in the story, we get another long shot, where Deadman and the devil stroll in front of what looks like a bunch of porn shops, X-rated movie theaters and strip clubs, singns reading "Deep Throat XXX," "24 Hr. Strippers," "Girls Girls Girls," Live Sex," "Sex," "Private Video," "Sultry Ladies" (sounds classy!) and, um, "Nazi Chicks." (Well, it is Hell, after all).

I wonder if all of these places are still open in Hell, or if the Internet and its 24 hour, free access to an infinity of pornography has put even the Hell-based brick-and-mortar porn shops out of business...?

Deadman stalks off, until someone calls after him. Someone who looks sorta familiar to our man Deadman:D.B. Cooper! So that's what happened to him!

He tells Deadman he's been planning to escape from Hell for a while, and since Deady hasn't been officially admitted, he should be able to climb back out of the jar, and take D.B. with him. So off they two go on a journey that will continue next issue.

And now let's break for a commercial message from this very comic book: I don't remember so many of the video games of the late '80s having titles that sound like anti-depressants. Even Lunar Pool sounds like a modern medicine, if you squish into a single word, like Lunarpool.

Let's see, what else was there in this issue? Another chapter of the boring Secret Six story I quit reading (I do look at hte pictures to admire all the facial hair in it, though), another two-pages of the Roger Stern, Curt Swan Superman story, in which Superman learns he has some worshipers, another chapter of the Wild Dog strip, in which the terrorist group he's trying to infiltrate attacks a newspaper printing press because that particular newspaper mongers filth and, of course, the Mike Grell, Rick Burchett and Pablow Marcos' Blackahwk strip.

Check out how sharp and elegant this fight sequence is: After Blackhawk punches out The Red Dragon's henchman, wounding his hand in the process, she rewards him by taking him to her room and bedding him.

Here we learn she has terrible taste in art and/or decor: Or maybe she put that dragon statuette there ironically?

And that concludes Action Comics Weekly #606, the best issue ever. So far.