DocTachyon

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GREEN LANTERN in: DON’T LET ME BE MISUNDERSTOOD

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“I told you when I met you Hal, part of being a Green Lantern is this, doing daring things in dangerous places, so quit your bitching. Besides, this one should be a milk run for us.” Kilowog said.

“But why’d it have to be New Jersey?” Hal grumbled.

They flew over the ocean, high enough to be beyond the fogged out vision of any passing fishing trawler, but low enough to see the blooming fireworks that crackled above them. They were somewhere over the eastern seaboard by now, tracing the hazy outline of the coast until they reached Jersey.

“At least it didn’t land on Mars,” Kilowog said, “MPs there like to get their grubby mitts on everything. Jurisdictional nightmare.”

“There are people on Mars? Really? You’re not yanking my chain?” Hal asked.

“Used to be, anyway… I think we’re getting close,” Kilowog said. Hal could tell he was right from the sky, the infinite space of the open ocean waned into pure black sky before the lights of New York, broken up only by swells of light and color exploding above them.

“Clue me in on the sitrep one more time?” Hal’s shifted the ring on his finger as he asked, it felt tight today. This was the first time the Corps expected him to do something that wasn’t training. And there was Carol’s Ferris Air New Years Bash that he was missing, again, but at least this time he was giving a raincheck for a real reason instead of a killer hangover.

“Scans show a civvie-class vessel entered Earth atmosphere in the past few hours, with one life form aboard. Ship is of Tamaranean make, so we’re probably looking at a refugee situation, on account of some deep space politics, which is why the Corps didn't blow it out of the sky. But we need to take a look in case those boys figured wrong, and hope whoever it is doesn't pitch a fit that they’re stuck planetside until the current shitstorm subsides.” Kilowog reported. He still hadn’t shown Hal how to use the ring to tap into Green Lantern frequencies, leaving Hal to drift beside Kilowog as he thumbed at the holographic computer console emanating from his ring.

“So, we rock up, fish them out of whatever hole they landed in, and tell them to settle in for a nice long stay?” Hal summarized. They were over Newark by now, the teal ocean waves yielding to the stout grey of the city before it.

“That’s the gist.” Kilowog started their descent, guiding them down steady, like he expected them to come into a runway. It was how Hal had been landing, without the control to swoop through the air and stop on a dime like Kilowog could.

“Shouldn’t I have a real combat construct going into this? Just in case?” Hal said. Refugee or not, everything Hal had met from space so far had proven capable of putting him out on his ass.

Kilowog’s ears flitted down, like a cat’s, which was apparently the Bolovaxian equivalent of an eye roll. “Remember, milk run. If things go sideways I’m always here as your security blanket. And you’ve got that eyeball thing to rely on.” Kilowog said, which prompted Hal to roll his eyes.

“It’s really more of a parlor trick.” He said. He’d been tinkering with it since his encounter with Sinestro, mostly focusing on making sure it didn’t hurt so damn much when he put it in. But Kilowog had taught him a thing or two about the capacities of his ring, assorted scanners and meters and bits and bobs. Now the ring’s data was overlain with his view of the world, reporting air pressure, coordinates... Hell, it was like being back in the cockpit.

“Mhm. Speaking of, you named it yet?” Kilowog asked.

“No. Do I have to?” Hal looked back at Kilowog, incredulous, but his warthog face remained stoic.

“Everything’s gotta have a name,” he said. He had a point, Sinestro had called that ball thing something… Ganthet’s whatever-it-was. Which surely meant the lightning trick was called Sinestro’s Forehead Size Ego.

What’s in a name, anyway? He picked Highball as his callsign because they called dad Martini back in the war, and Hal though it’d be right to name himself after a drink, too. He didn’t figure out that the Highball was just a kind of glass until later, but Hal thought it was the sentiment that counted. What was wrong with Highball, anyway?

“I’ll call it The Highball,” Hal decided.

“Eyes up, we’re here. Ring’s reading something extraterrestrial in the bay down a ways, but… I can’t see for shit. You got anything?” Kilowog asked.

“Well, now you mention it,” Hal stalled in the air, letting the focus of his energy concentrate in his eyes, shifting the shape of his lens until the light filtered just so, and he finally had the magnification to see the surface in all its detail.

There were two figures below, one a woman, wreathed in a curtain of fiery locks, the other wrapped in deep blue chitin armor. They were an odd pair to be sure, but certainly no stranger than Hal and Kilowog traipsing through the sky. He might’ve taken the blue one for a bug, but they looked… Human, more or less. Maybe the big bad galaxy out there wasn’t so different. They stood across from each other on a patch of gravel rooftop, close enough to the bay that the girl’s hair listed in the sea breeze.

The ship, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen out across the rippling water, light up with the booming echoes of the fireworks above. Maybe the new alien packed camouflage.

“I’ve got a, uh… Orange hippie and a blue guy. Ship’s not in sight,” Hal reported.

“Sounds like our Tamaraenean found a friend. You talk to them, I’ll see if I can’t find the ship,” Kilowog said.

“Me talk to them? Alone?” Hal stopped, the edges of his flight construct wibbling in the wind. So far, Kilowog had been with him every step of the way, and having someone that big, ugly, and pink on his side had done a thing or two to allay his worries.

“Ha! You think they wanna seethis poozer’s mug instead, do ya? Time to fly the nest, Jordan. Catch you in five. And Hal?”

“Yeah?”

“The Highball sucks, we’ll brainstorm when I get back.” With that, Kilowog rolled to the right, disappearing in the night’s haze.

And just like that, Hal was alone, dipping lower and lower in the sky until he didn’t need his lens to see the detail in the hippie’s clothes, purple and green that moved as easily with the wind as her hair. If Kilowog said he could do this, he could. Right? They couldn’t kick his ass worse than Sinestro.

His gaze flitted to the blue one, tracing the inlays and patterns of his armor, and the slope of his arm down into a… Was that a cannon?

Milk run, milk run, Hal repeated to himself. Maybe it was just a sign of Tama-whatsit greeting. He’d drawn close enough that he could hear their voices echoing below each snapped explosion above. It was his time to say something, something profound. These weren’t just more Corps boys, but real honest to goodness visitors to his earth from the beyond. This could be their first contact with humanity. It had to be good.

“Hey, this, ah, sector is on lockdown by the… Esteemed Green Lantern Corps,” Hal jerked his thumb out to the bay, “and I can’t let you park there.”

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GREEN LANTERN in: EIGHT MILES HIGH

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“You ready?” Kilowog asked.

“Asking me a fourth time won’t make me ready,” Hal said.

The two Lanterns flew side by side, green dots against the swathes of gray dominating the clouds. It had only been days since Hal had started flying, but something felt different today. Like the air slid past his body too easily, the atmosphere didn’t drag so heavily on his body. Lower air pressure, maybe. A storm was brewing.

Hal hated storms growing up. All it took was one drum roll of thunder to send him running to cower underneath his mom’s bed sheets. He didn’t like them much more as an adult. A storm was a day you couldn’t fly, when the universe reminded him that his feet had to be planted firmly on the ground…. But maybe this ring could change that.

“Thought you might’ve prepped on the way over,” Kilowog said. His flight was different than Hal’s. Where the human flew straight and true, pointed like an arrow, Kilowog drifted with the breeze, up and down, side to side. He had two nubs of green energy on his shoulders, sticking out from the rest of the energy sheathe that coated his body. They looked almost like the remnants of wings, long since fallen off.

“... You’ve been with me this whole flight. You’ve asked me on this flight,” Hal said. He banked in the air, now facing Kilowog, who had summoned a shimmering green panel, interfacing with it as he flew.

“You went five minutes without complaining. I thought you calmed down.” Kilowog’s fat fingers squished against his console, prompting flashes of emerald and sending digits flying across the screen.

“Shove it, Kilowog. Are we there yet?” Hal asked.

“A minute out or so. He’ll be waiting for us above the clouds,” Kilowog said, dismissing his readout. Hal never liked the way Kilowog talked about him, the man they were going to see: Thaal Sinestro. Kilowog was always joking with Hal or ribbing him, telling Hal the parts of being a Green Lantern he knew and bullshitting the parts he didn’t. When it came to Sinestro, all the cumulative hours Hal had spent learning what each twitch of muscle might mean in the aliens expression meant nothing. His big, dopey hippo jaws were set against one another, and his brow closed down on the black points of his eyes.

It was a little like what he imagined Carol must look like, hunched over the control console while Hal pulled some stunt or other in Ferris Air’s jets, her asking him to slow down for just one minute. Hal had come to think of it as business mode. And Kilowog? Well, when it came to Sinestro, it looked like he meant business.

Hal and Kilowog shifted their paths and shot up through the cloud cover, to find themselves greeted by a sheet of green force, situated firm and flat against the top of the clouds. It had to be as long as a football field, but looked as thin as a sheet of paper. One man stood in the center, garbed in the same black and green uniform as Hal and Kilowog. As they neared, Hal realized the man wasn’t standing so much as floating off the platform, keeping his body as taught and measured as his red face that was coming into view.

“Are you prepared to begin, Lantern Jordan?” From the platform Thaal Sinestro had an inch on Kilowog, but if they were level, Kilowog had him by a foot and a half. Most of his face was forehead, to better contain his ego with Kilowog had said, rounding out a face of hard edges and high cheekbones. There were no blemishes to him, unless you counted his permanent frown or the trim mustache that lived above it.

Hal and Kilowog touched down, and Kilowog thumped Hal’s back. “Show ‘im how it’s done, little poozer.”

“Yessir,” Hal said, half to Kilowog and half to Sinestro. “It’s just a quick lesson, right? I’ve been playing hooky with my job for a week now because of all this, and my boss is starting to get --”

“You will provide whatever time the Green Lantern Corps requires of you,” Sinestro cut him off, “approach me.” Hal glanced back at Kilowog, but the big guy was staring straight through him, eyes locked on Sinestro. Hal stepped forward.

“As a Green Lantern, you are expected to study, develop, and apply a variety of techniques with your issued power ring, be they for combat or otherwise. Against most threats, you will find typical constructs next to useless, especially those generated by a Lantern that is… Well, as green as you,” Sinestro said.

“On this occasion, it is my duty as your superior to introduce you to these concepts in a simple trial. The technique I will demonstrate for you today is known as Ganthet’s Alembic.” Sinestro presented his hand as the light from his ring began to pulse and glow, collecting itself into a bubble the size of Hal’s head. It may as well have been any other construct, green shapes broken as easily as they were created, but there was something… Different about this one. About the snaking flow of the energy within.

“Your task is to overcome this technique, and, if you are able, to score a hit on me.” Sinestro said.

“Uh huh...” Hal spread out his stance, trying to remember the bits and pieces he’d heard from Kilowog about fighting, or the half-forgotten memories of his schoolyard tussles… But this was probably going to be a little different. “Got any words of advice, teach?”

For the first time, Hal saw Sinestro smile. “Remember, Jordan. No fear.”

Sinestro flicked his wrist and the ball launched from his ring as fast as any fighter Hal had ever been in control of. Dodging was out of the question. He did as he had been taught, searching in his heart and his mind and making something manifest of his will. Hal’s ring sparked to life and an aegis leapt from it, directly in the path of Sinestro’s attack. Get through this you son of a --

The ball collapsed Hal’s shield on impact, causing it to crumple and fold in, like the attack was a black hole. The constructs sparked against each other as Hal’s sputtered and died, energy consumed by the ball. Now past his only line of defense, the ball subsumed his ring hand, and locked itself in place.

But he was… Fine. Hal wiggled his fingers inside the sphere. Nothing. Wrist felt a little heftier than usual, maybe.

“What is this thing? A Green Lantern boxing glove?” Hal shouted over to Sinestro. The other Lantern was still, balancing himself in flight. He beckoned Hal.

“Come find out.” Sinestro said.

“Your funeral,” Hal joked. He brought himself into the air and surged forward, sending out bolts of emerald from his ring. Sinestro swerved, dodging each in turn, but something was wrong. Hal had done this before, shooting beams at old cans with Kilowog, but something about each of his shots looked weaker than usual. Less glow, less speed. His flight balance didn’t feel right, either, like was drifting to the side.

Hal dropped back to the platform and shook his hand out. His wrist was heavier, his whole hand was, even more than before. He tried to waggle his fingers and it felt like dragging weights over sand. What?

“Are you quite finished shooting?” Sinestro called to him. Hal ignored him, focusing on the sphere. He could still move his hand at least, but if it got any heavier there would be problems. Hal chanced a look back to Kilowog, whose beady eyes were still firm on Sinestro. No help from there. Thunder cracked somewhere in the cloud cover below. The storm was starting. Hal’s heart thumped heavy in his chest. He swallowed. He could do this.

Experimentally, Hal willed the energy to flow steady from his ring, suffusing into the sphere around it. His hand grew heavier still, it was starting to feel like he was lugging around a steel block instead of a hand. He stopped the flow, and just as quickly the weight stopped growing. Could it be that my ring is...?

“Ganthet’s Alembic is so called for its apparent alchemical ability,” Sinestro said, “converting your energy into mass. But understanding this will no longer help you, you’ve already lost your freedom of movement,” his smile widened, “feel free to tap out.”

“We’ll see about that!” Hal shouted. If there was any one thing he knew about constructs, it was that, unless destroyed, their creator was always in absolute control of them, which meant he had to get Sinestro to release it…

Hal took off at a sprint, boots thumping against the green platform, he brought his hand to bear and swung the ball at Sinestro. He sidestepped, and Hal came around for another strike, throwing his body weight into it. Sinestro dodged backward and Hal threw himself off balance, tumbling across the platform. Hell. Hal eyed Sinestro, and then the open sky above him.

No fear.

Hal locked his left hand around his right wrist, supporting the weight as he rocked up to his knees. He pushed himself into the air, kicking off the platform and using his ring to bring him higher.

Sinestro observed from below, showing no expression but for the remnants of his smile. Hal had to be high enough by now, a hundred feet in the air over his opponent, but he could still hear the roar of the thundering clouds beneath. He banked hard, yanking the alembic along with him -- dive bombing Sinestro.

“Dodge this!” Hal’s ring pulsed as he dropped, funneling more and more energy into Sinestro’s construct, letting its weight pull him down faster. It felt like he was guiding a freight train. Hal’s vision was too blurred to quite see -- the Green Lantern domino mask didn’t come with prescription glasses, unfortunately -- but he hoped he’d wiped the grin from Sinestro’s face. Whatever way he’d try to dodge Hal could follow the blob of his body. No matter what, this haymaker would hit home.

In the last moments before impact, Hal caught Sinestro’s face. No smile, no frown, just a brow crinkled in concentration. Sinestro’s ring flared and the ball around Hal’s hand exploded into a plume of green light and smoke.

The explosion threw Hal like a ragdoll, slamming him shoulder first into the platform and then streaking over it, bouncing and crushing his shoulder against the platform, again and again. Hal pushed himself up. It felt like someone hit his shoulder with a sledgehammer. Hal rolled over to face Sinestro. He’d already recovered from the explosion, but there was a tear across the front of his costume, leaving the Lantern logo sagging.

“Did I pass?” Hal asked, chest heaving. Sinestro had definitely lost his smile. He displayed his ring. Lightning sparked in the clouds below.

“Count yourself lucky, Jordan. I am going to further your education.” A green sheathe began to manifest across Sinestro’s body as Hal struggled to his feet.

The green outline forming around Sinestro seemed to sizzle and pop, reacting to the air around it. Hal couldn’t quite make out what it was from this distance, not without his glasses. It was some kind of full body construct, but not like the ones most Lanterns used for flight.

Something hit Hal, laying a weight across his chest. He teetered backward. It wasn’t a projectile, or any kind of attack -- it felt like the wind itself was moving against him. Through the semitransparent platform, Hal saw the clouds roll and shift as electricity crackled between them.

The weight shifted and Hal jerked the other way, wind whipped across his skin and ruffled the folds of his Lantern outfit while his hair ran freely, no longer constrained by whatever product goop was holding it steady before, come loose in the gale. Sinestro maintained his calm, sweeping his arms around him in movements that seemed practiced, yet forceful. He was like a typhoon. Whatever this was, Hal couldn’t beat it, at least not without seeing it.

He was sure he couldn’t just wave his ring around and hope it would work. Kilowog said that any good construct only needs two things: will and understanding. He had to believe he had the will. The ring chose him, after all. But understanding…? Well, Hal had been wearing glasses all his life, hadn’t he?

Hal stumbled across the platform. The wind was picking up, it was like feeling turbulence in his jet but this time he got to feel it against his skin, shaking him to the bone, it felt like the wind could just grab him and throw him away. Thunder screamed below them, shaking the surface of the platform. Hal shuddered. He had to act fast.

Hal turned his ring on himself, drawing out motes of energy. This would need to be precise, the shaking in his hands be damned. The motes struggled against the wind, winking and sputtering as thunder crashed beneath, but they made it through the holes in his domino mask, laying themselves onto his eyes.

It felt like when he opened his eyes in a chlorine pool, a stinging burn that made tears well up, but Hal fought the urge to close his eyes as they adjusted. The energy settled in, molding to them, settling themselves as a lens, fit just to his prescription.

Through the sundering gale Hal finally got a true glimpse of Sinestro. The other Lantern had made himself a suit, wired by glowing pipes into the platform below, feeding gaping holes all along the suit’s arms and chest. The wind was ferocious enough near Sinestro that Hal could actually see it, rippling across the surface of Sinestro’s construct. Sinestro shifted, raising an arm and sending a zephyr Hal’s way. It was like he was guiding it, somehow… But there was a change.

A well appeared in Sinsestro’s half of the platform, opening to the fabric of the sky beneath, and a cloud began its ascent, through the whole and being vacuumed into Sinestro’s armor. Sinestro wasn’t bothering to hit Hal with wind, he was winding up for something. Hal caught notes of dashing yellow, spriting and weaving all across Sinestro’s armor.

Could it be?

A sound like thunder welled up, a roaring rumble of the whining construct and the hiss of raw electricity. He felt it then, the fear, rising up through his chest and making an electric cage around his heart. Every beat sounded like a bass drum. Thump. Thump. Thump.

He was a little boy again, hiding under mom’s covers, and this was it.

“Enough!” It was Kilowog. Big man could move quiet when he wanted to. He planted himself in front of Hal, surging with energy like Hal had never seen, where there had once been vestigial nubs, it was like there was a whole green creature growing from Kilowog’s back, its flesh riddled with boils that popped with Kilowog’s movement.

Sinestro jerked his hand upward and a rainbow erupted from his hand, spewing color and light, flashing and zagging as the main arc of his thunderbolt split the sky above.

“Enough, indeed.” Hal could hardly hear Sinestro over the ringing in his ears -- had the thunder really been that loud? He felt Kilowog’s arm slipping under him, rough pink skin dragging across the back of his costume as Kilowog hauled him to his feet. The energy had left Sinestro’s body and he stood as them, but another Lantern.

“You have passed this trial, Lantern Jordan, despite your partner’s interference. Leave me. You will both receive assignment shortly.” Sinestro did not break Kilowog’s gaze as he spoke.

“Let’s go, Hal.” Kilowog guided him to the edge of the platform.

“What… What was that?” Hal asked, but he already knew the answer. It was no simple construct, no trick of the light or the senses, but the power of the ring, no, of Sinestro’s technique, used to its fullest potential.

“It was something you shouldn’t have had to see. Can you fly?” Kilowog asked.

Hal rolled his shoulder. It still stung like a mother, but that shouldn’t stop him. He nodded.

Hal didn’t look back to Sinestro as he stepped off the platform, but Hal could feel his yellow eyes following, like electricity down his spine.

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So turns out I enjoyed fucking around with Sgt. Pepper, and decided to try superhero-ing another album from the time period. It's not perfect, but enjoy!

original

new

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@Cybermaxx Blame Uni, he made me. That's Richard Dragon.

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C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

G R E E N L A N T E R N

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^{_{H A L J O R D A N ♦ T E S T P I L O T ♦ C O A S T C I T Y ♦ B. 1944}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

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^{"In brightest day, in blackest night... Uh, line, Kilowog?"}

Coast City never treated Hal Jordan well growing up. It had its own wonders, certainly. Beaches up and down the coast as far as the eye could see and rolling tracts of perfect morning dew suburbia in the hills beyond the city proper. But in Coast City, awash with lights and crowded in by the restful giants of the wartime ammunition factories beyond, you could never see the stars.

By Hal's measure, the war was the cause of all of his problems. Not Korea, the really big one where everybody joined in, Hal always had to specifiy, the one dad bought the farm in. That crack always bought him a bop on the head and some grumbling about "respect", so Hal supposed that the admonishment was the war's fault, too. It was the war that pushed the light out of the sky, changed it from the town of his parents' childhood that made Mom's voice perk up when she spoke about it into a thing of iron and concrete. It was the reason Tommy Tanaka from next door had gone, too, and he was the only kid that Hal could get to play pretend Flying Ace and Red Baron with him.

"Ma says its coz' of the war we got ta' move."
"How's that?"
"Ma says the people here used ta' keep us in cages, then. N' that things ain't got any better since."
"No better...? Do you got cages in your house?"
"I thought about that too, but Dad says this city is just a great big one."

Hal and Tommy, 1950

And then there was Dad, who Mom cried about when she thought Hal had finally drifted off to sleep. Hal figured he must've been a real important guy. In the stories Mom told him, he had some kinda magic in his heart that he must've plucked out of the sky that Mom said let him fly faster and higher than anyone else. For Hal that settled it, if Dad could do it maybe he could too, maybe even finally reach up and touch the stars that had gone missing over the city.

But flying wasn't in the cards for Hal. Instead he was saddled with a pair of coke bottle lenses and instructions to make sure to eat his carrots if he wanted any kind of shot at the controls of an airplane. Hal's first kiss ended up telling him he had carrot breath, but he figured it was worth the trade. As long as he could look forward and keep stepping towards the sky, he'd make it through anything, school, college, break ups, even every damn page of his aeronautics textbook.

Still, for every carrot he swallowed and every precaution he took to keep his eyes in mint condition, it was a miracle he got any position at all. A battery of failed FAA eye exams meant he'd never be a combat pilot, he'd be lucky to even get a job flying rubbernecking tourists across the country.

But Ferris Aircraft didn't need a combat pilot, it needed a technician that knew his vehicle inside and out. It helped that Dad did some work for them at the start of the war, that old man Ferris had a long memory, and that his daughter had a knack for finding the best in her flyboys. Hal wasn't combat-ready, sure, but he could piece together more about the quality of a test aircraft just after takeoff than most pilots could after full flights in them.

It was like this for some years, mornings spreading his wings over the Californian desert, and nights writing aching reports about every bump and hassle and errant knob his craft had on offer. That is, until the night he saw his first Coast City shooting star, a twinkling emerald jewel that came down, down, down.

It is he who shall next bear the ring, the star told him as it slotted itself upon his finger, leading him to the corpse of its former wearer. Abin Sur was dead -- and an alien, but Hal ultimately decided that the dead part was the more pressing concern -- murdered in his own spaceship.

Over the next days, the organization Hal found himself conscripted in, The Green Lantern Corps, would place a sector wide blockade on the planet. No entry or exit from Earth's solar system under any circumstances, the powers that be wanted a locked door mystery. Leaving Hal and the remnants of Abin Sur's team to keep the peace among an increasingly restless population of aliens who didn't expect to be staying on Earth for quite so long.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

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Green Lantern Year One, you've heard the song a hundred times before but never from these instruments. Truth be told this is a boilerplate Green Lantern set up, chock full of power rings, intergalactic law, and more aliens than you can shake a Kilowog at. My main goal here is a pretty steep difference in execution, less a space police procedural with the nigh-omnipotent protectors of the galaxy, and more a journey of willpower and deceit as Hal navigates the increasingly complicated politics of the Green Lantern Corps and the people its meant to protect, couched in the adventure of a Green Lantern that has to figure out far too much of this for himself.

This is a story about cops and power, about lurking murderers, long shadows, and the infinite reaches of space. Most of all, this is a story of the power of human resolve.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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I'm changing some things about the Green Lanterns, eat my shorts. The things of import are as follows.

GLC Changes

-The power rings tend to be much less powerful than they are usually portrayed in the DCU. All but the best Green Lanterns often have trouble maintaining constructs of significant power, leaving such applications of their ring much less useful. As well, the ring overall does much less of the work, each Lantern must earn every benefit the ring bestows upon them, even the Lantern basics of flight or interstellar travel.

-Speaking of changes to the rings, each bearer tends to have a specialty. I won't say too much about what exactly these can do, but know that a Green Lantern can do more than a fnacy light show.

-For my story, the nature of the power rings toes the line between the mystic and extraterrestrial technology. They are said to be as old as Oa, the agents of a power that is still not fully understood.

-As well, Green Lantern Corps members are not the only ones that have gotten their hands on these handy dandy power rings, even the green ones. The Corps is instead simply the largest organized conglomerate of ring bearers who, with the assistance of their Guardians, have forged an organization dedicated to intergalactic policing.

Supporting Cast

Carol Ferris: Hal's employer and sometimes girlfriend. Yes, it is complicated, and no, you shouldn't ask.

Kilowog: A fellow Green Lantern. A big pink alien dude who worked and trained under Abin Sur for a time, who is now responsible for teaching Hal the basics.

Sinestro: A fellow Green Lantern and an asshole. He's in charge of Hal and Kilowog while the Lanterns wait for the immediate crisis to blow over.

S A M P L E P O S T:

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Issue 0

GREEN LANTERN in: LITTLE WING

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“A Green Lantern’s first flight is a rite of passage. It is a demonstration of his mastery, not just of the fundamentals of his ring, but of the infinite force of his own will. Through flight, a Green Lantern is--”

“Kilowog,” Hal interrupted the creature standing two heads over him, “I asked for advice, not Sinestro’s flying speech again.”

Hal was still getting used to reading the big guy’s expressions. The structure of his face was somewhere between a warthog and a hippo, with rough pink skin that looked like sandpaper. His face shifted, opening up his parapeted lower jaw and cracking what Hal assumed was a smile.

“It’s all the advice they ever gave me, poozer. You just gotta work with it,” Kilowog said. He was sitting on the remains of one of the lawn chairs Hal had dragged out here for them, sagging with splintered plastic legs that had cried out and collapsed under the alien’s weight. But still, he sat in it, evidently it was better than getting California desert sand all over the ass of his uniform.

They were out in the reaches of Death Valley, hidden from prying eyes by plumes of cacti and the endless expanse of desert all around them. Hal liked it, out here. Away from the lights of the city, where the stars could come out of hiding and whisper of their mysteries unabated. It was like being out in the far ocean, with rolling waves that stretched to the horizon beyond and where the sky seemed to swallow up the whole world. But here in the desert, the rippling waves were frozen as sand and grit, no longer moving with the tide but sitting in meditative silence.

According to Sinestro, Hal and Kilowog’s boss, meditation was exactly what he needed if he ever intended to get his ring to take him into the sky. That was one of the things he didn’t understand, flying from his angle was never about meditation. It was about reflex and constant movement, keeping an eye on all your dials and instruments, keeping your hands flowing like water across the test console to be wherever they were needed.

“Well, fat load of good that’ll do me,” Hal said, “we’ve been out here an hour and my will definitely doesn’t feel infinite.”

“An hour that you’ve spent, nonstop, trying to take off like Superman,” Kilowog said. He scratched at the icon of a lantern on his chest with a white-gloved, four-fingered hand.

“What, you have any better ideas?” Hal whapped the ring on his finger like it was a malfunctioning TV set.

“Have you tried asking the ring?” Kilowog shifted in his seat and more plastic snapped and broke, bringing him closer to the desert below.

“Asking the -- okay, you know what? I’ll humor you.” Hal turned his gloved hand over, staring now at the icon of the lantern embossed on his ring. “Ring, how do I fly?”

There was silence, except for Kilowog’s snorting laugh. “Ask it to fly, dummy, not how.”

Hal took a moment to stick his tongue out at Kilowog before extending his arm and sticking his ring into the sky. “Ring… Fly.”

Nothing.

“Hm… Ring… Go?”

Nothing.

“Ring zoom. Ring flash! Ring alakazam!” Hal shouted. Kilowog couldn’t keep it together anymore and guffawed, his shoulders heaving and his hippo-jaws jumping open and closed.

“Kilowog! Goddamn, I knew you were hazing me.” Hal kicked the ground and sent up a plume of dust.

“Aw, man, that one’s a Corps classic,” Kilowog wiped tears from his eyes, “what is ‘hazing’ by the way?”

“I -- you don’t?” Hal rubbed his temples. “When I was growing up, I worked at one of these big chain grocery stores that were popping up all over the city. And one day, we got this new kid, Matt, and I told him to head down the checkout and grab the shelf extender. Checkout sent him to the deli. Deli sent him to produce. On and on, until he finally gave up looking for it. That is hazing. What you did to me is hazing.”

“Right. But what happened to the shelf extender?” Kilowog asked.

“There was no,” Hal saw the same smile creep up on Kilowog’s face, “no, no, you won’t get me again. C’mon, let’s figure this out. How did you do it, your first time?”

Kilowog pawed at his chin. “Hm. It’s been awhile… I just thought about what it would be like to fly. And I made the ring do that.”

“Very helpful, Kilowog.” Hal slumped into the sand beneath. Why couldn’t Green Lanterns just use planes like everybody else? If they could make these rings then they could certainly figure out the concepts of lift and drag.

Wait. Why couldn’t he use a plane? He’d already been taught the basics of ‘constructs’, simple shapes and objects he could make manifest out of the ring. What would stop him from…

“Stand back, big guy. I think I have an idea.” Hal said.

“Standing back,” Kilowog said, staying firmly planted in his seat.

Hal started small, as he had been taught, willing the first mote of twinkling green energy from the ring, causing it to coalesce into an elongating rectangle of emerald, gaining more detail as it expanded. The shape curved off from rectangle into tube as it grew beyond Hal, tapering into a distinct nosecone. The rest spread into a shape Hal knew well, forming a canopy over his head and spreading a delta of wings out behind him.

“Woah Jordan, you’re not flying anywhere in that thing. Probably can’t even maintain a construct that big, let alone --” Kilowog started,

“Just, just lemme try this, alright?” Sweat beaded on Hal’s brow as he defined the space around him, eking out his dials and instruments from the featureless green before him, his altimeter, airspeed indicator, the works… But it wasn’t enough, not yet. It didn’t feel right.

“Kilowog can you, ah…” Hal hoped the alien couldn’t see the red on his face through the shimmering jet canopy, “can you pretend to be Air Traffic Control, or something?”

Kilowog nodded solemnly and covered his mouth. “Breaker breaker nine to five, this is Biiiig Poozer, you read me Highball?”

“I changed my mind, shut up,” Hal snapped. He closed his eyes and focused, tighter. The swoop of his craft’s aileron, the way his stabilizers swept into the air around him, the press and shudder of what it would feel like to his the airbreak...

“This is Highball, reading you loud and proud Big Poozer…” Hal mumbled to himself, “let’s get this show on the road.” Hal reached for the throttle, right where it would be in his test plane, and his hands closed around something solid. He pushed forward and felt the engine spinning up in his heart, imaging the plane creaking forward steadily around him. More, more.

He reached out for the instruments, feeling their smooth plastic and glass surfaces and knowing instantly what they would tell him, arranged just so in the cockpit. He knew what they’d do, what they’d tell him as he rose into the sky, information streaming through his eyes and telling him every practical detail of his plane. He knew this, and he knew it well, just like he knew the feeling of air whipping across his skin and sweeping his hair. He knew how high he was, of course, he had to, he could practically feel it from the air pressure. His heading, his vertical speed, his navigation, that all came to him, too, as the great body of the plane rose up about him and the notion of his instruments faded into the background.

Now there was just Hal and the plane, Kilowog and Sinestro and Carol and the job and the ring and Abin Sur all seemed so far away. No, instead there was the lift and drag across his jet, the ripple and roll of each piece of his fighter, working all together in one contiguous whole, one of the finest flying machines every built.

Hal was there, the place he always reached in the sky, where the plane stopped being a plane and instead became an extension of himself, the wings slicing through the sky were his own, forging his path forward. But… He had forgotten one detail.

He never disengaged the landing gear. He reached for it in his cockpit, as he had with the throttle, and his hand passed through empty air. Nuts. Hal’s eyes opened to search for the missing instrument.

There was no landing gear.

There was no plane.

He was flying.

P O S T C A T A L O G:

---

00 - Little Wing - See above!
01 - Eight Miles High

①⑨⑥⑧

so today instead of wasting my time playing video games, I wasted my time making this:

Petition to use it on the characters page maybe?

①⑨⑥⑧

Hal is done! Lemme know what y'all think of the sample.

Variety Hour: An Absolute Comics Roleplay

SPIDER-MAN: THE DISTANCE

Issue 2 -- From Peter’s Playlist; I Think We’re Alone Now

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New York City, NY --- The Daily Bugle Building

---

The Daily Bugle had never been a paper of particular repute. In Ben’s words they were mostly two-bits, preying upon the stories and hardships of the working person to string together a rag just barely strong enough to get pity purchases. A paper that would never rise out of the shadow of the New York Times, or even The Daily Planet over in Metropolis. There were no Pulitzers out of The Daily Bugle. Yet still, the Bugle’s investors gave it enough strength to have its own building, a blazing pillar of neon red against the black of the night, proclaiming a half-hearted message of ‘freedom of the press’, or something like that. It was a towering monolith to slipshod reporters everywhere, and unfortunately, it was the one place Peter Parker had to be tonight.

He crawled along the brickwork, fingers tracing the inlays and channels of it was he went, trying to make sure he was on the right floor. With his luck, he’d wind up smack-dab in the middle of the security office. He crept up the side, checking each window for signs of a floor number inside as he passed.

”Finally! Half worried I was gonna run out of floors.” Peter mumbled to himself as he stuck his fingers to the plate glass. He could feel it in all its detail through the fabric of the suit, every minute imperfection in the surface of its construction. It felt raw and uneven to the touch, and improperly seated in its housing, by the way it jiggled underneath his fingertips. One push and the window crashed silently into the thickly carpeted editorial office.

Peter flipped off the windowsill and onto one of the plaster pillars supporting the few floors above this one. It was an ocean of cubicles stacked high with keyboards and reams of paper, spilling over with pencils and multicolor sticky notes. There was one light source in the far corner; a corona of blue monitor screens and ancient mounted Tube TVs playing a half dozen twenty four hour news channels. Peter dropped from the pillar and began snaking between labyrinthine cubicles. Editor’s office. A fine place to start.

The office was separated from the rest by a thin wall of wood-framed glass, and all was silent but for the steady din of sleepless newscasters. Can’t turn these off when no one’s here? Save the planet, man. The door was frosted glass announcing the editor of this department, “Jameson, J. Jonah; Local News”. Peter tried the handle and popped the lock as he twisted, forcing the door across the carpet.

“Anyone home? The Spider-Scouts brought thin mints.” Spider-Man said. There was a flash of movement in his retinas and he was on the wall, scuffing the craquelure wallpaper and aiming both hands at the slowly turning swivel chair that sat before a network of interconnected monitors. No Spider-Sense again? Thing really must be bugging out on me…

“I hope you have cash in that kooky costume of yours, those locks aren’t cheap.” The man that turned to face him had salt and pepper hair that stood up like a paintbrush, and thick bushy eyebrows that gave shelter to two eyes that shone like burning coals in their darkness. He had a thick block of a mustache, and one hand on his wireless mouse, with the other on the meanest cigar Peter had even scene, unlit, with its end chewed to hell and back.

“Woah, picklepuss! Why are you here? They won’t let you shave that dead rat off your face without a hundred hours’ overtime?” Peter’s shoulders slumped and grinned beneath his mask. At least he doesn’t keep a gun in that desk. “Spider-Man assaults working stiff.” Great way to get my name out there.

“You’ve got thirty seconds to tell me why I shouldn’t call the police.” The reporter rolled his eyes and turned back to his monitors. He jammed his cigar between his teeth, stabbing at the gel caps of his keyboard. Peter tapped his palm and a glut of webbing stuck Jameson’s hand to his keyboard.

“Christ, the nerve of you to--” Jameson’s response was cut short as another glob nailed his other hand to his desk.

“Shh, Spider-Man talking now.” Peter dropped to the floor and his suit receded across his leg, revealing the battered copy of The Daily Bugle pressed to his thigh. He threw it onto Jameson’s desk. “Old man gets shot and left for dead. Bugle are the only ones to report on it. What do you know?”

”You think I remember every story that passes across my goddamn desk?” Jameson spit the cigar out in a cloud of spittle. It bounced across his desk. Peter shook his head.

“It is your byline, Triple J, and I don’t think you’re at the age for dementia just yet.” Peter dropped to the floor and knelt beside a neglected file cabinet, buckling under the weight of the dozens of folders stacked atop it. Peter sorted through them, tossing them into the trash as he went.

“So? You think I’m gonna help some webhead punk like you that muscles his way into my office?” Jameson grunted. He strained against the webbing, his feet dragged on the cheap carpet as he tried to gain leverage.

“Well, I was just gonna search your office, but why go without your pithy commentary?” Peter said. He turned from the folders and zipped to the ceiling, considering Jameson as he sat upside down. The man’s neck veins bulged as he fought the webbing, struggling with every ounce of his muscle. “The faster you tell me what you’ve got, the sooner you can see your whole paintbrush-head family.”

“Murder rates are up fifty percent this year, and I have more assholes like you flying around this city every goddamn day -- I don’t even know who the hell you are. You expect me to remember how some no name took a bullet?”

Peter’s hand cracked against Jameson’s desk and the corner splintered into a shower of sawdust. “Say that again. One more time.” Peter felt a tickle across the back of his mind, ice brushing his head. Is that…? No. No way.

“I’m not afraid of you. You go viral swinging around for five minutes and suddenly you --” Peter focused as Jameson droned and the sensation grew in his skull, spreading across his senses, at once unifying and dividing them. Hairs prickled on the back of his neck. Spider-Sense. His eyes flashed out the window, scarcely detectable from this height, but Peter saw the pulse of red and blue.

“What did you do?” In an instant Peter was on Jameson’s desk, scattering a hurricane of documents. Jameson howled, rocking back as far as he could in his seat.

“You really thought I didn’t already call the cops? Amateur. NYPD’s shitting themselves over the chance to grab a freak like --” Jameson was silenced with a burst of webs before he could finish and Peter closed his eyes, reaching out with his sense. The tendril fibers of his suit tuned and resonated, searching for a way out. Thump of jackboots up stairwell, safeties being released outside, rustle of equipment behind cubicle walls… Perfect, they already rolled out SWAT.

Peter opened his eyes and saw the PA microphone astride Jameson’s desk. His eyes flitted across the room, back to the file cabinet. “I really hope you don’t need that for anything.”

***

“Hold position…” Voices crackled over NYPD closed comm channels as SWAT officers tightened their grips on their rifles. Over response for a B&E, sure, but the promise of a bag and tag of a live mutant or meta-freak? The bureaucrats wanted a win, and by God would the NYPD deliver. Armor rustled as the officers shifted, double checking armor and munitions. They were sheltered behind and beneath desks, automatic rifles poking out from cubicles tracked the figure that bobbed and weaved inside the editorial office. Another squad would be up the stairs in moments, and then they could --

Four speakers situated at the corners of The Daily Bugle’s 42nd floor began to thump, in steady time with a drumbeat.

“What the hell is --?” The plate glass of J. Jonah Jameson’s office exploded behind the force of an steel filing cabinet, launched through the glass and exploding into fine metal shrapnel across the pillars strewn about the office.

“Contact! Contact!” Rifles chugged through their magazines as a black and white specter emerged from the shadows of Jameson’s office, swinging through the air on white strands of webbing. Spider-Man landed like a bomb, sending chipboard particles flying in the air as he grabbed an NYPD officer by the collar, hauling him up and webbing him to the ceiling.

The unit was already in chaos between themselves, diving between cubicles and ducking under each other’s gunfire. Peter pulled a monitor off of its housing and flung it like a frisbee, it exploded across the chest of the nearest officer and he was gone again in the shadows, barely revealed by orange bursts of gunfire.

“Guys, I swear this song was supposed to be White Wedding! I promise!” Peter’s voice was almost lost to the report of the gunfire and the thump of the beat, bullets trying to find him amid the office space and whizzing off into random directions.

“Where is he?” A stapler detonated into a million pieces against a riot helmet and another officer fell, slumped against a pillar.

“I can’t see shit!” Peter was a tornado through the newsroom, slinging tight packages of OfficeMax goods and laying high tensile weblines, clotheslining cops as they ran in the madness.

“Hold this.” Peter launched an officer from the skyscraper with a shove, the man dropped three stories before catching on a hair thin strand of webbing, but Peter was already gone, webbing another SWAT officers hands together and bowling over another pair with his body.

“Hey! Backup is cheating!” A steel door flung upon as more officers piled into the destroyed office, trampling over paperwork and the dropped forms of their friends as they hit cover and thumbed their safeties. Peter flicked his wrists and the stairwell slammed shut with a gout of webs, smashing back a half squadron of SWAT goons.

Peter was in the air again, webbing cops to printers and walls as he ducked and dived through the gunfire, weaving between the bullets as if they weren’t there at all.

“I’d love to stay boys, but I’ve gotta run. Early Spider catches the worm!” Peter slid beneath a cubicle and pounced up and over one of the last officers, thrusting into a front flip off of his shoulders and through the plate glass of the Bugle’s window, into the cool New York air.

The bursts of shots died in the background as Peter swang, webline to webline, faster and faster, further and further.

No leads? Check.
Hatred of the news? Check.
Property damage? Check.
Assaulting the cops? Check.
This superhero thing is working out great…

①⑨⑥⑧

Lreen Gantern

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

G R E E N L A N T E R N

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^{_{H A L J O R D A N ♦ T E S T P I L O T ♦ C O A S T C I T Y ♦ B. 1944}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

---

^{"In brightest day, in blackest night... Uh, line, Kilowog?"}

Coast City never treated Hal Jordan well growing up. It had its own wonders, certainly. Beaches up and down the coast as far as the eye could see and rolling tracts of perfect morning dew suburbia in the hills beyond the city proper. But in Coast City, awash with lights and crowded in by the restful giants of the wartime ammunition factories beyond, you could never see the stars.

By Hal's measure, the war was the cause of all of his problems. Not Korea, the really big one where everybody joined in, Hal always had to specifiy, the one dad bought the farm in. That crack always bought him a bop on the head and some grumbling about "respect", so Hal supposed that the admonishment was the war's fault, too. It was the war that pushed the light out of the sky, changed it from the town of his parents' childhood that made Mom's voice perk up when she spoke about it into a thing of iron and concrete. It was the reason Tommy Tanaka from next door had gone, too, and he was the only kid that Hal could get to play pretend Flying Ace and Red Baron with him.

"Ma says its coz' of the war we got ta' move."
"How's that?"
"Ma says the people here used ta' keep us in cages, then. N' that things ain't got any better since."
"No better...? Do you got cages in your house?"
"I thought about that too, but Dad says this city is just a great big one."

Hal and Tommy, 1950

And then there was Dad, who Mom cried about when she thought Hal had finally drifted off to sleep. Hal figured he must've been a real important guy. In the stories Mom told him, he had some kinda magic in his heart that he must've plucked out of the sky that Mom said let him fly faster and higher than anyone else. For Hal that settled it, if Dad could do it maybe he could too, maybe even finally reach up and touch the stars that had gone missing over the city.

But flying wasn't in the cards for Hal. Instead he was saddled with a pair of coke bottle lenses and instructions to make sure to eat his carrots if he wanted any kind of shot at the controls of an airplane. Hal's first kiss ended up telling him he had carrot breath, but he figured it was worth the trade. As long as he could look forward and keep stepping towards the sky, he'd make it through anything, school, college, break ups, even every damn page of his aeronautics textbook.

Still, for every carrot he swallowed and every precaution he took to keep his eyes in mint condition, it was a miracle he got any position at all. A battery of failed FAA eye exams meant he'd never be a combat pilot, he'd be lucky to even get a job flying rubbernecking tourists across the country.

But Ferris Aircraft didn't need a combat pilot, it needed a technician that knew his vehicle inside and out. It helped that Dad did some work for them at the start of the war, that old man Ferris had a long memory, and that his daughter had a knack for finding the best in her flyboys. Hal wasn't combat-ready, sure, but he could piece together more about the quality of a test aircraft just after takeoff than most pilots could after full flights in them.

It was like this for some years, mornings spreading his wings over the Californian desert, and nights writing aching reports about every bump and hassle and errant knob his craft had on offer. That is, until the night he saw his first Coast City shooting star, a twinkling emerald jewel that came down, down, down.

It is he who shall next bear the ring, the star told him as it slotted itself upon his finger, leading him to the corpse of its former wearer. Abin Sur was dead -- and an alien, but Hal ultimately decided that the dead part was the more pressing concern -- murdered in his own spaceship.

Over the next days, the organization Hal found himself conscripted in, The Green Lantern Corps, would place a sector wide blockade on the planet. No entry or exit from Earth's solar system under any circumstances, the powers that be wanted a locked door mystery. Leaving Hal and the remnants of Abin Sur's team to keep the peace among an increasingly restless population of aliens who didn't expect to be staying on Earth for quite so long.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

---

Green Lantern Year One, you've heard the song a hundred times before but never from these instruments. Truth be told this is a boilerplate Green Lantern set up, chock full of power rings, intergalactic law, and more aliens than you can shake a Kilowog at. My main goal here is a pretty steep difference in execution, less a space police procedural with the nigh-omnipotent protectors of the galaxy, and more a journey of willpower and deceit as Hal navigates the increasingly complicated politics of the Green Lantern Corps and the people its meant to protect, couched in the adventure of a Green Lantern that has to figure out far too much of this for himself.

This is a story about cops and power, about lurking murderers, long shadows, and the infinite reaches of space. Most of all, this is a story of the power of human resolve.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

---

I'm changing some things about the Green Lanterns, eat my shorts. The things of import are as follows.

GLC Changes

-The power rings tend to be much less powerful than they are usually portrayed in the DCU. All but the best Green Lanterns often have trouble maintaining constructs of significant power, leaving such applications of their ring much less useful. As well, the ring overall does much less of the work, each Lantern must earn every benefit the ring bestows upon them, even the Lantern basics of flight or interstellar travel.

-Speaking of changes to the rings, each bearer tends to have a specialty. I won't say too much about what exactly these can do, but know that a Green Lantern can do more than a fnacy light show.

-For my story, the nature of the power rings toes the line between the mystic and extraterrestrial technology. They are said to be as old as Oa, the agents of a power that is still not fully understood.

-As well, Green Lantern Corps members are not the only ones that have gotten their hands on these handy dandy power rings, even the green ones. The Corps is instead simply the largest organized conglomerate of ring bearers who, with the assistance of their Guardians, have forged an organization dedicated to intergalactic policing.

Supporting Cast

Carol Ferris: Hal's employer and sometimes girlfriend. Yes, it is complicated, and no, you shouldn't ask.

Kilowog: A fellow Green Lantern. A big pink alien dude who worked and trained under Abin Sur for a time, who is now responsible for teaching Hal the basics.

Sinestro: A fellow Green Lantern and an asshole. He's in charge of Hal and Kilowog while the Lanterns wait for the immediate crisis to blow over.

S A M P L E P O S T:

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Issue 0

GREEN LANTERN in: LITTLE WING

---

“A Green Lantern’s first flight is a rite of passage. It is a demonstration of his mastery, not just of the fundamentals of his ring, but of the infinite force of his own will. Through flight, a Green Lantern is--”

“Kilowog,” Hal interrupted the creature standing two heads over him, “I asked for advice, not Sinestro’s flying speech again.”

Hal was still getting used to reading the big guy’s expressions. The structure of his face was somewhere between a warthog and a hippo, with rough pink skin that looked like sandpaper. His face shifted, opening up his parapeted lower jaw and cracking what Hal assumed was a smile.

“It’s all the advice they ever gave me, poozer. You just gotta work with it,” Kilowog said. He was sitting on the remains of one of the lawn chairs Hal had dragged out here for them, sagging with splintered plastic legs that had cried out and collapsed under the alien’s weight. But still, he sat in it, evidently it was better than getting California desert sand all over the ass of his uniform.

They were out in the reaches of Death Valley, hidden from prying eyes by plumes of cacti and the endless expanse of desert all around them. Hal liked it, out here. Away from the lights of the city, where the stars could come out of hiding and whisper of their mysteries unabated. It was like being out in the far ocean, with rolling waves that stretched to the horizon beyond and where the sky seemed to swallow up the whole world. But here in the desert, the rippling waves were frozen as sand and grit, no longer moving with the tide but sitting in meditative silence.

According to Sinestro, Hal and Kilowog’s boss, meditation was exactly what he needed if he ever intended to get his ring to take him into the sky. That was one of the things he didn’t understand, flying from his angle was never about meditation. It was about reflex and constant movement, keeping an eye on all your dials and instruments, keeping your hands flowing like water across the test console to be wherever they were needed.

“Well, fat load of good that’ll do me,” Hal said, “we’ve been out here an hour and my will definitely doesn’t feel infinite.”

“An hour that you’ve spent, nonstop, trying to take off like Superman,” Kilowog said. He scratched at the icon of a lantern on his chest with a white-gloved, four-fingered hand.

“What, you have any better ideas?” Hal whapped the ring on his finger like it was a malfunctioning TV set.

“Have you tried asking the ring?” Kilowog shifted in his seat and more plastic snapped and broke, bringing him closer to the desert below.

“Asking the -- okay, you know what? I’ll humor you.” Hal turned his gloved hand over, staring now at the icon of the lantern embossed on his ring. “Ring, how do I fly?”

There was silence, except for Kilowog’s snorting laugh. “Ask it to fly, dummy, not how.”

Hal took a moment to stick his tongue out at Kilowog before extending his arm and sticking his ring into the sky. “Ring… Fly.”

Nothing.

“Hm… Ring… Go?”

Nothing.

“Ring zoom. Ring flash! Ring alakazam!” Hal shouted. Kilowog couldn’t keep it together anymore and guffawed, his shoulders heaving and his hippo-jaws jumping open and closed.

“Kilowog! Goddamn, I knew you were hazing me.” Hal kicked the ground and sent up a plume of dust.

“Aw, man, that one’s a Corps classic,” Kilowog wiped tears from his eyes, “what is ‘hazing’ by the way?”

“I -- you don’t?” Hal rubbed his temples. “When I was growing up, I worked at one of these big chain grocery stores that were popping up all over the city. And one day, we got this new kid, Matt, and I told him to head down the checkout and grab the shelf extender. Checkout sent him to the deli. Deli sent him to produce. On and on, until he finally gave up looking for it. That is hazing. What you did to me is hazing.”

“Right. But what happened to the shelf extender?” Kilowog asked.

“There was no,” Hal saw the same smile creep up on Kilowog’s face, “no, no, you won’t get me again. C’mon, let’s figure this out. How did you do it, your first time?”

Kilowog pawed at his chin. “Hm. It’s been awhile… I just thought about what it would be like to fly. And I made the ring do that.”

“Very helpful, Kilowog.” Hal slumped into the sand beneath. Why couldn’t Green Lanterns just use planes like everybody else? If they could make these rings then they could certainly figure out the concepts of lift and drag.

Wait. Why couldn’t he use a plane? He’d already been taught the basics of ‘constructs’, simple shapes and objects he could make manifest out of the ring. What would stop him from…

“Stand back, big guy. I think I have an idea.” Hal said.

“Standing back,” Kilowog said, staying firmly planted in his seat.

Hal started small, as he had been taught, willing the first mote of twinkling green energy from the ring, causing it to coalesce into an elongating rectangle of emerald, gaining more detail as it expanded. The shape curved off from rectangle into tube as it grew beyond Hal, tapering into a distinct nosecone. The rest spread into a shape Hal knew well, forming a canopy over his head and spreading a delta of wings out behind him.

“Woah Jordan, you’re not flying anywhere in that thing. Probably can’t even maintain a construct that big, let alone --” Kilowog started,

“Just, just lemme try this, alright?” Sweat beaded on Hal’s brow as he defined the space around him, eking out his dials and instruments from the featureless green before him, his altimeter, airspeed indicator, the works… But it wasn’t enough, not yet. It didn’t feel right.

“Kilowog can you, ah…” Hal hoped the alien couldn’t see the red on his face through the shimmering jet canopy, “can you pretend to be Air Traffic Control, or something?”

Kilowog nodded solemnly and covered his mouth. “Breaker breaker nine to five, this is Biiiig Poozer, you read me Highball?”

“I changed my mind, shut up,” Hal snapped. He closed his eyes and focused, tighter. The swoop of his craft’s aileron, the way his stabilizers swept into the air around him, the press and shudder of what it would feel like to his the airbreak...

“This is Highball, reading you loud and proud Big Poozer…” Hal mumbled to himself, “let’s get this show on the road.” Hal reached for the throttle, right where it would be in his test plane, and his hands closed around something solid. He pushed forward and felt the engine spinning up in his heart, imaging the plane creaking forward steadily around him. More, more.

He reached out for the instruments, feeling their smooth plastic and glass surfaces and knowing instantly what they would tell him, arranged just so in the cockpit. He knew what they’d do, what they’d tell him as he rose into the sky, information streaming through his eyes and telling him every practical detail of his plane. He knew this, and he knew it well, just like he knew the feeling of air whipping across his skin and sweeping his hair. He knew how high he was, of course, he had to, he could practically feel it from the air pressure. His heading, his vertical speed, his navigation, that all came to him, too, as the great body of the plane rose up about him and the notion of his instruments faded into the background.

Now there was just Hal and the plane, Kilowog and Sinestro and Carol and the job and the ring and Abin Sur all seemed so far away. No, instead there was the lift and drag across his jet, the ripple and roll of each piece of his fighter, working all together in one contiguous whole, one of the finest flying machines every built.

Hal was there, the place he always reached in the sky, where the plane stopped being a plane and instead became an extension of himself, the wings slicing through the sky were his own, forging his path forward. But… He had forgotten one detail.

He never disengaged the landing gear. He reached for it in his cockpit, as he had with the throttle, and his hand passed through empty air. Nuts. Hal’s eyes opened to search for the missing instrument.

There was no landing gear.

There was no plane.

He was flying.

P O S T C A T A L O G:

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A list linking to your IC posts as they're created. This can be used for a reference guide to your character or to summarize completed arcs and stories.

Variety Hour: An Absolute Comics Roleplay

So my question here is: Why did everyone (that isn't new/making someone new) decide to take a go at these characters again? Why bring them back?

@Sep

Echoing a lot of what Wraith is saying, I'm also pretty nostalgic for UOU, and clearly several of us are, if the characters section is any indication. That was my first one of these superhero sandbox games we tend to do, and at the time to me it felt like we had caught and bottled lightning. It felt like everyone involved was writing at their A-game, culminating in an incredible end to a wonderful season... And I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to relive the glory days a little.

This is a chance for Uni and me to settle some unfinished business from UOU with the finale of my first Vig arc and crossover with Uni's Punisher. I remember hyping myself up for it at the time, but unfortunately, Season 2 of UOU ended up petering out before we could get there. Even if it's nearly three years down the line, I'm very excited for the opportunity to bring this crossover to fruition. Plus, eventually, we'll get to do the Question / Dog Welder crossover we've always dreamed of.

And then there's Spider-Man! I'm really passionate about my Spidey story, but unfortunately, the game I got to do it in has since passed us by. I try not to repeat characters in those sandbox games, so it's nice to get back in the saddle without taking the spider out of the kiddie pool, as it were. And in this setting, it feels like there's less pressure to post which will hopefully be a boon for my productivity.