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With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

Reader mode
Mr Zoat said:
"Garnet has one Green Lantern permanently assigned to it. Earth has four. In addition to two Star Sapphires, a Blue Lantern and -currently- five Orange Lanterns. Any species with any experience of interstellar travel is going to take one look at that and stay the heck away."

"We're-? We're a bad neighbourhood?!"

"Yes."
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Aliens lock their doors when they drive by Earth


Happy Birthday, Zoat!
 
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Mr Zoat said:
Yes. I am no longer the answer to the great question of life, the universe, and everything.
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I was just thinking the other day that since Zoat started writing this in his late 20s and it's been over 13 years, he must be in his early 40s now. This also means that I'm in my early 60s - shit, how did that happen!?
 
..... Antonia is going to become a political clan/party sponsored superhero because apparently that's where politics is going now.

Welcome the super elite. Same as the old elite.

She's going to HATE it.
 
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Happy birthday!

Chojin Patriarch said:
I imagine a lot of that was down to fear of what he could do if he took exception to abuses of power...
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The thing is that, in a vacuum, the concerns that Luthor, Waller, CADMUS, et. al. have are not entirely unfounded. (Exhibit A being 'Kneel before Zod'). "They want a means to take down Superman if need be" is, functionally, the same in principle whether the 'they' is a civil servant in charge of a department or a man dressed like a bat.

The problem is that once they assume the worst, they continue to assume the worst despite all the evidence of Clark's, Kara's, the League's, actions demonstrating the contrary.* In Lex's case it's because his despising of Superman runs so deep that he can't even reach the point of classifying him as "one of the good ones"; for everyone else the in-universe explanations are paper-thin at best.**

* DCAU Amanda Waller is, unfortunately, an outlier adn should not be counted.

** The out-of-universe reason, as with so many other things, is that "Superman needs adversaries or we don't sell comics".
 
Time Break New
Time Break

3rd April 1970
10:12 GMT -5

Ugh, time to check in with my 'parole officer'. Who is… In Star City for some reason. One surge of desire to get this over with as fast as possible and I'm there, looking down at the… 'Affordable' part of the city.

Arriving in some version of the D.C. Universe was weird, but finding out that the local version of the Green Lantern Corps is the only Corps means that I can't assume that anything I know is correct. And I know that comics have an elastic relationship with time, but the Seventies..? If things happening line up with the dates the comics were published, then Darkest Night doesn't happen for another thirty years or so. We might even be pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths, but I haven't wanted to ask.

Lantern Jordan was concerned that I was connected to Sinestro somehow… Who is still wearing the black and blue costume and sports the truly ridiculous forehead I vaguely remember from the nearly-animated televised comics I remember from my early childhood. Anyway, after kicking my neophyte arse and dragging me off to the Guardians… They were actually quite polite about the whole thing. Fascinated at the idea of using other colours. Even offered me my own personal lantern as long as I kept my nose clean.

In practice that involves checking in on Jordan or Stewart once a week, and… I usually prefer Jordan. Stewart is the original professional architect on a Black Power kick rather than the revised post-Justice League Animated former marine, and… It's a little trying. And I-.

A glowing green cage flies past me in the direction of… Star City's central police station. Ah, someone's being busy. I set course for the green glow, flying over… 'Competitively priced' accommodation. Yeah, there's Jordan and Green Arrow and it looks like Green Arrow's in fine form.

What is it this time?

"…kick a lot of old folk out on the street! Lord knows this building is bad… But they don't have anything else!"

Yeah, and if it was nicer then it would cost more, meaning that they wouldn't be able to live there anyway. Ah, I should probably let him get it out of his system. With Jordan, and not with me.

"Like what you've seen? Listen, I hope you enjoyed playing super-hero out there… I hope it did a lot of good for your ego-."

Oh, he didn't.

Jordan clearly looks like he has no idea where this invective is coming from. "Easy… You've no cause to yell at me! I have a job… I do it!"

Okay, without context… Jordan arrested a poor person, Green Arrow thinks that poor people should be allowed to commit all the crimes they want-.

"Seems I've heard that line before… At the Nazi war trials!"

"Duh-hah!"

I put my hand over my mouth as Green Arrow achieves oneness with Godwin's Law. Ah, he can't hear me from up here, and I'm pretty sure that he's not listening in any case. Though we are in the Seventies, so it was only 25 years ago… He might have actually attended one of the later Nazi War Crime trials. But Harold Jordan is about as far from a Nazi as it's possible to get.

"I want to ask the ring-slinger a question, Mister Green Arrow…"

An elderly black man dressed… Like my granddad, actually, shuffles towards the arguing superheroes. Which suggests that his judgement is impaired, because when a man with a weapon powerful enough to push the moon out of orbit starts arguing with a man with a nuke arrow, then sensible thing to do is leave them to it.

"I been readin' about you… How you work for the blue skins… And how on a planet someplace you helped out the orange skins…"

It's nice to see that racism is non-discriminatory.

"And you done considerable for the purple skins! Only there's skins you never bothered with..! The black skins! I want to-"

Guh..?

I think my brain just broke.

"-know… How come?! Answer me that, Mister Green Lantern!"

Okay, Jordan can put this arsehole in his place and then we can-.

"I… Can't…"

I shoot down, landing next to him with my right hand extended.

"Green Lantern, tag me in."

"Huh. Orange-?"

"You're clearly off your game." I make a beckoning motion with my right hand. "Tag me in."

"I-. Okay..?" He tags me.

I clap my hands together, grinning broadly. "Hi there! I'm Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four!"

"Ah, hey-."

"Would you happen to remember an incident in the newspapers about a decade ago, where a giant blue-skinned starfish alien tried to take over the world and turn all of its inhabitant into slave-drones?"

"I… I think I remember somethin'-."

"Now do you think that an alien creature that could barely tell different humans apart was going to leave the brown-skinned humans alone, or do you think it was going to throw racial sensitivity aside and include them in the whole slave drone thing?"

He looks quite uncertain. I just smile encouragingly.

"I.. guess it would probably have.. made us slaves as well."

"You bet it would. Or going back a little further, when the unfortunately-named criminal group 'Yellow Peril' were robbing banks in Coastal City, do you think they stuck a gun in the teller's face and said 'give us all your money, except the money being held in the accounts of black people', or do you think they just said 'give us all your money'?"

"They'd.. probably just take all the money."

"And do you think Green Lantern asked who the money belonged to before taking them down?"

"…no."

"Correct. And that's because with the sole exception of the fact that he still calls a long-time Eskimo friend of his 'Pieface',-"

Green Arrow -who I could tell was preparing his own diatribe against me- chokes. "He what?!"

"-he's not actually racist."

"Ah, Jesus." Jordan raises his hands. "Look, I didn't know people used it for their whole race, Eskimo Pie was just the only Eskimo thing I'd ever heard of, and he looked kinda like the guy on the packet! I just thought it was a bit of fun, you know? I live in California, how many Eskimos do you think I meet? When someone finally explained it to me, I stopped right away!"

Green Arrow is still glaring. "You better have apologised!"

"Yes, I apologised!" He glares at me. "I don't still do it!"

"Ah, my mistake then." I look around. "What was this all about?"

"Ah, I arrested a kid who has to live here after he assaulted the local slumlord. And me, but I could take it."

I… Nod. "Okay? Sounds entirely reasonable? Look, Green Lantern's a good guy, but he's an interplanetary police officer. If you don't like the local building codes, talk to your mayor. If you think they're being broken, talk to the local police. And if you think you've got it hard, I'll take you to where those orange skins live, and you can try surviving on their planet when the Citadel Empire bombards it from orbit."

I look around.

"We done?"
 
Star City's a upper Midwestern Chicago or Cincinnati stand in right? I think in 1970, Blacks in America have pretty good cause to be distrustful of the 'official' legislative process. It's only been a few years since they've been allowed to use the same washrooms in half the country, including in Washington DC. And sundown towns were still commonplace.

Yea, racial injustice might be lower in the priority list than alien invasions, but if he's got the time to bust a kid Green Arrow for assault, he can also start going around and enforcing some of the civil rights laws that are now officially on the books.
 
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yingyang590 said:
but if he's got the time to bust Green Arrow for assault,
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I think you've got this backwards? GL stopped a kid who was assaulting his local slumlord (can't honestly say I blame the kid, as a kneejerk reaction, regardless of race,) and then Green Arrow accused GL of...is it racial profiling? I don't know, I never read the original comic.
 
Mr Zoat, is Vincent Edge still missing? He (presumably still old and requiring a cane) disappeared after the fight with Bruno Mannheim. He was a living Anti-Life projector, as far as OL could tell.

Logically, he would have been near ground zero of the White God's wave of Light. Although I suppose he would have had access to the Alliance of the Just's resources, in addition to whatever goodies Mannheim's top men would have equipped themselves with.
 
NightmareWarden said:
Mr Zoat, is Vincent Edge still missing? He (presumably still old and requiring a cane) disappeared after the fight with Bruno Mannheim. He was a living Anti-Life projector, as far as OL could tell.

Logically, he would have been near ground zero of the White God's wave of Light. Although I suppose he would have had access to the Alliance of the Just's resources, in addition to whatever goodies Mannheim's top men would have equipped themselves with.
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I think he's dead.

When they were in the Aztec afterlife, there was an Anti-Life machine that was using a human heart to power itself.

Paul noticed that the heart seemed to have been exposed to Anti-Life for far longer than others, so it may have been Edge's heart.
 
Khettien said:
I think you've got this backwards? GL stopped a kid who was assaulting his local slumlord (can't honestly say I blame the kid, as a kneejerk reaction, regardless of race,) and then Green Arrow accused GL of...is it racial profiling? I don't know, I never read the original comic.
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Yea I originally misread who he got locked up there.

I know this was an original comic line from the 70s where Hal Jordan was railroaded for the authors soapbox, but I think it was one of the first story lines to break out of the silver age irrelevance.
 
Darko said:
I think he's dead.

When they were in the Aztec afterlife, there was an Anti-Life machine that was using a human heart to power itself.

Paul noticed that the heart seemed to have been exposed to Anti-Life for far longer than others, so it may have been Edge's heart.
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Wasn't that before he showed up in the final battle? And we know from Red Lantern that certain types of magic can bypass the need for a heart.
 
Mr Zoat said:
Time Break

3rd April 1970
10:12 GMT -5

Ugh, time to check in with my 'parole officer'. Who is… In Star City for some reason. One surge of desire to get this over with as fast as possible and I'm there, looking down at the… 'Affordable' part of the city.
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Oh, this is going to be good. The iconic moment where Hal realises he's been fucking up on Earth and decides to let Green Arrow show him the real reason to fight Evil. After a little bit of typical comic-book fuckery, mind...

Arriving in some version of the D.C. Universe was weird, but finding out that the local version of the Green Lantern Corps is the only Corps means that I can't assume that anything I know is correct. And I know that comics have an elastic relationship with time, but the Seventies..? If things happening line up with the dates the comics were published, then Darkest Night doesn't happen for another thirty years or so. We might even be pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths, but I haven't wanted to ask.
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And now I wonder what this OL would look like if he's drawn in Neal Adams' iconic style.

Lantern Jordan was concerned that I was connected to Sinestro somehow… Who is still wearing the black and blue costume and sports the truly ridiculous forehead I vaguely remember from the nearly-animated televised comics I remember from my early childhood. Anyway, after kicking my neophyte arse and dragging me off to the Guardians… They were actually quite polite about the whole thing. Fascinated at the idea of using other colours. Even offered me my own personal lantern as long as I kept my nose clean.
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...Old Sinestro really did look a bit... Well, it was the Silver Age, man...

In practice that involves checking in on Jordan or Stewart once a week, and… I usually prefer Jordan. Stewart is the original professional architect on a Black Power kick rather than the revised post-Justice League Animated former marine, and… It's a little trying. And I-.
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Ah, yes, back when it was white men trying to write topical black men... 😅 Again, it was the Silver Age.

A glowing green cage flies past me in the direction of… Star City's central police station. Ah, someone's being busy. I set course for the green glow, flying over… 'Competitively priced' accommodation. Yeah, there's Jordan and Green Arrow and it looks like Green Arrow's in fine form.
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'Slums', you mean. Ah, the old times, when a Superhero could just dump someone at the police station with little more than a note saying 'This guy did these things, Lock him up'...

What is it this time?

"…kick a lot of old folk out on the street! Lord knows this building is bad… But they don't have anything else!"
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True, Oillie did create a lot of conflict with the right-wing types like Hal and Katar Hol. To be fair, this was around the same time that his sidekick was secretly doing heroin (which this plotline would eventually expose, actually.)

Yeah, and if it was nicer then it would cost more, meaning that they wouldn't be able to live there anyway. Ah, I should probably let him get it out of his system. With Jordan, and not with me.

"Like what you've seen? Listen, I hope you enjoyed playing super-hero out there… I hope it did a lot of good for your ego-."
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Easier for him to play the understanding young buddy after they wear each other out, especially if he's got the youthful looks going on here, too.

Oh, he didn't.

Jordan clearly looks like he has no idea where this invective is coming from. "Easy… You've no cause to yell at me! I have a job… I do it!"
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Since yes, Hal is a space-cop. His crime-fighting on Earth is part of that, since, you know, Earth.

Okay, without context… Jordan arrested a poor person, Green Arrow thinks that poor people should be allowed to commit all the crimes they want-.

"Seems I've heard that line before… At the Nazi war trials!"
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Dangit, Ollie, you just tossed all credibility away with that line.

"Duh-hah!"

I put my hand over my mouth as Green Arrow achieves oneness with Godwin's Law. Ah, he can't hear me from up here, and I'm pretty sure that he's not listening in any case. Though we are in the Seventies, so it was only 25 years ago… He might have actually attended one of the later Nazi War Crime trials. But Harold Jordan is about as far from a Nazi as it's possible to get.
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Red-blooded American man to the core. And the Corps.

"I want to ask the ring-slinger a question, Mister Green Arrow…"

An elderly black man dressed… Like my granddad, actually, shuffles towards the arguing superheroes. Which suggests that his judgement is impaired, because when a man with a weapon powerful enough to push the moon out of orbit starts arguing with a man with a nuke arrow, then sensible thing to do is leave them to it.
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I mean, he's probably upset enough that he doesn't consider the white men arguing much of a threat.

"I been readin' about you… How you work for the blue skins… And how on a planet someplace you helped out the orange skins…"

It's nice to see that racism is non-discriminatory.
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Tamaraneans, most likely. Not that orange skin isn't uncommon in the DC Universe.

"And you done considerable for the purple skins! Only there's skins you never bothered with..! The black skins! I want to-"

Guh..?
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Yeah, it would kind of come out of nowhere, without context. Perhaps OL can offer a fresh pair of eyes.

I think my brain just broke.

"-know… How come?! Answer me that, Mister Green Lantern!"
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I'm loving his early-2000's brain trying to deal with this Seventies culture. Must be crazy, living without stuff like global public internet access allowing easier access to information.

Okay, Jordan can put this arsehole in his place and then we can-.

"I… Can't…"
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I assume this is just the straw on a lot of other stuff that just broke him. Or a heavy-handed writer in action...

I shoot down, landing next to him with my right hand extended.

"Green Lantern, tag me in."
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Ah, the butterfly of time flaps its wings.

"Huh. Orange-?"

"You're clearly off your game." I make a beckoning motion with my right hand. "Tag me in."
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Man, these guys must have a hard time sometimes, especially when this OL drops his era's memes into conversations...

"I-. Okay..?" He tags me.

I clap my hands together, grinning broadly. "Hi there! I'm Orange Lantern Two Eight One Four!"
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And I can picture the old man thinking 'oh great, another white man about to tell me the same old shit'...

"Ah, hey-."

"Would you happen to remember an incident in the newspapers about a decade ago, where a giant blue-skinned starfish alien tried to take over the world and turn all of its inhabitant into slave-drones?"
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Which says a lot for how long this world has been ticking over on Superhero shenanigans. Most of the current generation would be in their mid-to-late thirties while their formerly-teen sidekicks are past twenty.

"I… I think I remember somethin'-."

"Now do you think that an alien creature that could barely tell different humans apart was going to leave the brown-skinned humans alone, or do you think it was going to throw racial sensitivity aside and include them in the whole slave drone thing?"
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So just going scorched earth on the whole foundation of his argument, eh?

He looks quite uncertain. I just smile encouragingly.

"I.. guess it would probably have.. made us slaves as well."
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Ah, yes, the uncertain wariness of someone dealing with a possibly-crazy person.

"You bet it would. Or going back a little further, when the unfortunately-named criminal group 'Yellow Peril' were robbing banks in Coastal City, do you think they stuck a gun in the teller's face and said 'give us all your money, except the money being held in the accounts of black people', or do you think they just said 'give us all your money'?"
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...Old-timey comics, everyone... What's the bet they weren't even Asian? After all, this Hal does have a blatant yellow weakness.

"They'd.. probably just take all the money."

"And do you think Green Lantern asked who the money belonged to before taking them down?"
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I'm guessing he assumed the bank would get it all back to the right people...

"…no."

"Correct. And that's because with the sole exception of the fact that he still calls a long-time Eskimo friend of his 'Pieface',-"
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Granted, young Hal is a dumbass, even if he was a fighter pilot.

Green Arrow -who I could tell was preparing his own diatribe against me- chokes. "He what?!"

"-he's not actually racist."
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Well, at least you derailed Ollie's little mad-on.

"Ah, Jesus." Jordan raises his hands. "Look, I didn't know people used it for their whole race, Eskimo Pie was just the only Eskimo thing I'd ever heard of, and he looked kinda like the guy on the packet! I just thought it was a bit of fun, you know? I live in California, how many Eskimos do you think I meet? When someone finally explained it to me, I stopped right away!"
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Well, he does have some good sense, I see.

Green Arrow is still glaring. "You better have apologised!"

"Yes, I apologised!" He glares at me. "I don't still do it!"
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Save the righteous anger, Ollie, Hal knows how bad he fucked up there.

"Ah, my mistake then." I look around. "What was this all about?"

"Ah, I arrested a kid who has to live here after he assaulted the local slumlord. And me, but I could take it."
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Good, now that their heads have cooled off, they can maybe discuss this like reasonable adults instead of four-colour stereotypes.

I… Nod. "Okay? Sounds entirely reasonable? Look, Green Lantern's a good guy, but he's an interplanetary police officer. If you don't like the local building codes, talk to your mayor. If you think they're being broken, talk to the local police. And if you think you've got it hard, I'll take you to where those orange skins live, and you can try surviving on their planet when the Citadel Empire bombards it from orbit."
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Admittedly, that kind of activism takes money and time, neither of which a lot of the people in these circumstances have to spare. Now, a couple of superheroes feeling a bit of righteous indignation right now? That might be effective.

I look around.

"We done?"
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And now they can investigate the 'slumlord' without going to foolish levels of risk.

An interesting choice of events to drop an alternate OL into. I wonder if they'll still do their road-trip thing without the extenuating circumstances that led to it, and if OL will replace Appa Ali Apsa on it? Regardless, it's amusing to see an OL in an era where his character and capabilities are very different to the going style...
 
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