green lantern

Aside from the occasional, scratchy spider ring that a guy might wear around Halloween every year, we have a tendency to, well, NOT collect toy rings. At no point in my development was I compelled to collect little 25-cent gold rings with plastic jewels glued to them. I’m a little surprised myself – I’ve collected just about everything.

DC Comics, however, is trying very hard to change this. Men wearing rings has always been something of a staple in DC Comics – The Flash kept his costume miraculously stored in his ring, Lex Luthor has been known to surprise Superman with a ring that secretly housed Kryptonite, and of course, we have Green Lantern, whose sole power is the fact that he can channel the energy of his ring into constructs based on his willpower.

If Green Lantern wants to create a giant dinosaur to chomp his robot enemies to death, all he needs to do is think really hard about it, and a glowing, translucent green dinosaur appears. It’s been this way since 1940, with Green Lantern wearing a green ring. Really, the ability to just make things with your mind would be enough to get any guy to wear a huge, gaudy green ring, but the original Green Lantern totally rocked poofy purple pants also.

Then, the Yellow Lanterns came along. Well, Sinestro came back from from Qward after being banished for being a jerk and stripped of his Green Lantern powers. When he returned, was wearing a Yellow Ring. It wasn’t until 2006 that more wielders of Yellow Rings, The Sinestro Corps, appeared, whose rings are powered by generating fear. And then things got crazy.

The Red Lanterns appeared, fueled by rage. The Blue Lanterns appeared, fueled by hope. The Black Lanterns appeared, powered by death – and the same occurred with every color of the visible and ‘emotional’ spectrum. It’s comics, and this means that we get a Zombie Batman action figure, so I’m not complaining. What this also all means is that DC Comics is not producing one, but THREE different formats to collect all eight rings in.

Right now, a set of eight plastic rings is available to represent all of these Lanterns, which were packaged with comic books released between September and November that related to the ‘Blackest Night‘ storyline. A full set, with comics, will run about $25, and they’re fairly nice for rubber rings. They’re quite large, but wearable, and inexpensive. I’ve already taken a few stupid Facebook photos wearing them. Who needs girlfriends? I have Power Rings.

DC Direct also just released the JLA Trophy Room Green Lantern Rings Replica set, which again features all metal-plated eight rings set in a round, illuminated base with a removable glass dome. It’s made very clear that these high-end prop replicas are not meant to be worn as costume pieces, but for $250, who isn’t going to try? This item is also out right now.

Finally, DC Direct just announced a set of eight wearable Blackest Night Power Ring Spectrum Set made of PVC. These will be adjustable, come in a fancy display box, and best of all, they’ll light up when you put them on. While not officially available until July of 2010, the price tag of $60 is pretty convincing.

There have been a few official, wearable metal prop replica Lantern rings that have come out in the past, which were packaged with mini-busts. There have also been GL rings packed in with action figures, and even a Flash ring with a spring-loaded cap. It’s hard to resist the lure of the plastic, toy ring.

So, I’m a big, dorky Green Lantern fan.

I feel an instant kinship with any hero who depends on creativity and willpower to thwart his enemies – and as an artist, I’m a little in love with the idea that a Green Lantern ring would allow me to will things into existence and they’d just BE. That, my friends, is an exceptional power. And I’d never need a girlfriend.

The whole Green Lantern thing has an even broader appeal to me than just that, though, as recent events in the DC Universe have revealed a whole array of colored Corps, from Red to Violet, which means a really stunning array of color-coded action figures that I can’t keep my hands off of and naturally dictate how I’m going to arrange them – not to mention a few zombified Black Lantern figures, because who can pass up a zombie Aquaman? Certainly not myself. Guy’s more powerful dead than he ever was alive. I might be selling a whole bunch of my stuff, but my GL Corps figures are staying put – if only because a color-coded team looks really neat, as opposed to the freewheeling, willy-nilly costumes that the Justice League uses.

So, I was pretty excited to check out the first Green Lantern animated feature, First Flight. In terms of animated Lanterns, we never really had a great look at how Hal Jordan would have turned out, as he made only one exceptionally brief guest appearance during Justice League Unlimited during an alternate timeline story, and was mentioned once during the Superman Animated Series. This was enough to spawn a JLU action figure from Mattel which stands as one of the most sought after action figures of all time, as only a few were made and given to personal friends of the company at a party.

That brief bit of history aside, GL : First Flight is probably one of the most explodey cartoons I’ve ever seen, and it’s great. Forget about lengthy introductions to who Hal Jordan is, and how he struggles to live a secret life as a hero while maintaining his everyday Joe persona, and forget about most of what you know of the GL Corps. It doesn’t apply to the animated revisions that this universe brings, and that’s okay. At least we still have the same Kilowog, even if heroes are suddenly bad guys and things develop in unfamiliar ways – that’s the freedom that these one-shot animated films bring. They’re not mired in nearly a century of story that all has to integrate with every other part.

It’s a completely predictable story, of course, and it probably appeals to a vast majority of Joseph Campbell’s’ ideas of the monomyth – but that makes it exciting. It’s exciting to see Hal Jordan punching Sinestro in the face, with his own hands or with giant, green hands that he imagines into existence. The monomyth appeals to us because we’re all a little bit Luke Skywalker – we’re just Luke Skywalkers who haven’t happened yet.

It’s animated excellently, though I’m always a little bothered by the visuals that are obviously computer generated and geometric which don’t flow with the pace and aesthetic of the surrounding animation. The PG-13 rating is appropriate, given some mild profanity, and an especially disturbing scene involving Sinestro and a sexually suggestive alien woman. I don’t know what the hell was going on there, but it was sadomasochistic, and I think I have to ask my mom about it ’cause I just didn’t get it.

Dedicated comic fans will get the pleasure of seeing all of their favorite Lanterns in there somewhere, even if they just make a background appearance, or might look a little different. The Weaponers of Qward, once unbearable goofy, have had a killer makeover for the 2 minutes they’re on screen. Geeks, however, will surely bristle. They’ll do that anyhow.

The bonuses on the single disc edition are pretty hollow – a collection of buzz-filled docu-mercials about the other DCAU films which have already appeared tacked onto other DVDs, and an 8-minute look into the Green Lantern universe with a few DC Comics folks. I can’t speak to whatever might be on the two-disc edition, or the fancy Blu-ray, either. If you seek to augment your experience with material goods, check out DC Direct’s maquette, made to commemorate the movie and in stores now.

I have to say that, like Wonder Woman, it was an enjoyable watch, but isn’t one of those rare gems that redefines a genre or destroys conceptions of the art of animation and its place in the world. Sometimes it’s okay to just have fun, too.

There are a lot of DC Comics superhero DVDs out there, and even as a professional nerd, I find myself confused a whole heck of a lot. I mean, you have 1973’s Super Friends, 1977’s The All-New Superfriends Hour, 1978’s Challenge of the Superfriends, 1985’s Super Powers Team, 1988’s Superman, and everything in-between. Well, it’s time to throw one more DVD onto the pile of awesome. Do it gently though, as pure, unexhausted Awesome is known to explode.

What? It’s on the periodic table. Right between Gnarlium and Radiclon.

While I was growing up, Filmation was known as two things : those guys who did He-Man, and those guys who did that ‘not-as-good’ Ghostbusters cartoon without Slimer. Everyone knows two fundamental things about monkeys : they can’t swim, and they can’t catch ghosts. It’s simple biology. Get with the program.

In the halcyon days of 1967, long before irreparably altering the direction of my childhood and compelling me to tear around my back yard bellowing ‘I HAVE THE POWER!’, Filmation took a whack at a variety of DC Superheroes. This DVD collection of eighteen 7-minute episodes originally appeared before and after Filmation’s ‘Superman / Aquaman Hour‘ (released by Warner Home Video previously). These Super Heroes cartoons are divided by hero on the DVD, with three dedicated episodes for each one : The Atom, The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, The Teen Titans, and of course, the whole Justice League of America.

Being an excitable Green Lantern fan, I skipped right to the GL episodes, only to find him with a Venusian sidekick named Kairo, who would be a ridiculously offensive stereotype of SOMETHING were he not clearly from Venus. This was the Silver Age of comics, mind you – everyone was picking up extraneous youthful wards, and crazy pseudo-science was taking over comic book plots where basic crime tales once ruled. It was really a great time to be reading – visits to other planets, alien life forms and ridiculous machines were beginning to redefine comics, as well as the cartoons based on them.

It’s also worth mentioning that the creative climate of cartoons at the time tended to focus on quantity over quality, so studios would re-use animation, backgrounds and even plots as much as possible. While Filmation is usually regarded as the very worst offender and prolific re-user, it’s amazingly charming in retrospect. Long, slow pans over large, lush background paintings became a trademark of theirs, as these shots took up expanses of time without the expensive process of actually animating anything, or moving still characters across backgrounds. Still, these money-saving approaches to animation are brimming with nostalgia (are occasionally, hilarity), and current cartoons like The Venture Bros. have made segments purposely mimicking this limited animation style for the nostalgia effect. And you HAVE to love the quickly designed one-off monsters and bad guys who flounder around without real background or purpose and bad helmets. Well, at least I have to.

About 2 minutes into the classic Green Lantern episode ‘Sirena, Empress of Evil’, the best thing ever happens. Ever.

See, Sirena is SO evil that she’s designed a complex device that uses a magneto-beam to locate Green Lantern anywhere on her evil planet. By pulling a lever, the magneto-beam’s wavy lines search out the brainwaves of ol’ Hal Jordan. This, in itself, isn’t evil, but Sirena pulls another lever and a dopey-looking red bird is revealed. It’s purpose? Well… just watch.

Someone call PETA. Or help me train a bird to do that, because it is amazing. The sheer, open-ended bizarreness of the DVD drops unexpected, circuitous bombs like this every few minutes, along with a bevy of classic Burt Ward-ian exhortations, like ‘holy galaxies!’ or ‘great merciful sappho!’ or ‘jumping armadillos!’ Unfortunately, there’s not a Batman in sight, as this Justice League is comprised of the DVD’s aforementioned main stars, plus Superman.

The absolute best part of the DVD is the 40-minute documentary on Lou Scheimer and how he and two friends built Filmation from scratch, subterfuge and pure ingenuity, watched it create wonderful things and form a family, and eventually collapse. It’s surprisingly moving and emotional, and it conveys a newfound appreciation of Filmation’s approach to animation. They’d bring you in, give you a job for life if you wanted it, and teach you how to do whatever you wanted to know… and it was exciting! It was the Pixar of its day – interested employees creating things that they believed in, full of expression and wonder.

Within the documentary, Paul Dini articulates the appeal of Filmation’s cartoons best : they’re organic. You can see the process, you can see the hand of the artist and the brushstrokes. As more and more animation was sent overseas for production, Filmation kept almost all of their work within the US, and at one point, within the same building – from sketching to voiceovers to final product. It’s that insular, close environment that genuinely created a family, and if you watch carefully, you can see it in their cartoons. (Parents, use mild caution – the documentary involves one instance of medium-level profanity.)

I was prepared to laugh my way through the DVD’s continuity errors, mis-painted heroes and strange plot twists, but while I still can’t help but notice the amusing weirdness, it’s now easier to see the hands behind it, and that adds a whole new dimension to the experience.

The DVD holds an important part in any animation collection as it features some of the very first ‘Saturday morning’ cartoons. And, of course, birds flying into peoples’ heads. What’s cooler than that?