The Emerald Gladiator..... "WIDE OPEN ROAD" Part 2
Green Lantern #7 - July, Year One	by Mike McGee and Russ Anderson

“Connor!”

Kyle Rayner had to jog after his friend just to keep up with Connor Hawke’s stiff, slow-marching gait. Under most circumstances, there wasn’t much question which man packed more power - Connor’s ability to accurately shoot an arrow wouldn’t help him to right the axis of any imperiled planets this week. Mongul, Fatality, Von-Lo...any one of them would have left the kid who called himself Green Arrow a grease-spot. The difference?

Well, one fine night, an alien had appeared out of nowhere and just handed Kyle Rayner what was probably the most powerful weapon in the universe. Connor Hawke, on the other hand, had merely spent most of his life training to become one of the world’s most gifted archers and accomplished martial artists.

Pshaw. No contest.

Except...as Kyle was quickly discovering....

“Connor!” Kyle panted. “Dude! I beg of you!”

...Connor Hawke was in infinitely better shape.

Connor stopped just short of the gates - and turned. And, at the sight of him, Kyle Rayner - who had undeniably kicked the asses of Mongul, Fatality, Von-Lo, and a host of other wannabe world conquerors and cosmically-powered megalomaniacs - that Kyle Rayner gulped. Hard.

“Look at this,” Connor hissed through clenched teeth, his complexion gone scarlet. He jabbed an accusing finger at the travesty before him. “Look at it!”

Kyle looked. This place, he knew, had once been Connor’s home: The ashram where he’d learned to find his...spiritual center. Or whatever. Kyle had not only never found his own spiritual center, but wouldn’t have known where to look for it, and guessed he might not have one. But he grasped the concept. He knew it had to hurt to lose a place like that. And anybody who didn’t get it...all they needed to do was look right in Connor’s face.

“Zenworld,” Kyle sighed, reading the name off the sign.

“Yeah,” Connor said. “’Zenworld.’ A place for the overprivileged to drop in for a few weeks and buy their way into a state of guilt-free nirvana and mindless bliss. No middle-class seekers of truth need apply.”

“It is a little....” Kyle glanced around at all the brilliant electric lights that cast their arc into the darkness of the California night sky. One small building had been renamed Harmony Plaza, and above its door Kyle spied a neon yin-yang - one half lit when the other went black, and then the luminous and dark halves were reversed. “...Gaudy.”

“Excuse me,” a deep voice intoned, not unpleasantly.

One of the huge Samoan men who guarded the gates approached them, wearing an amiable grin that did not reach his deep brown eyes. Inexplicably, the man (like his partner) was naked save for a loincloth. He was a foot and a half taller than Kyle or Connor, and Kyle suspected his friendly ease with trespassers stemmed from the knowledge that he could effortlessly break the average human body in two.

“My name is Anton,” he said warmly, “and I would like to help you gentlemen if I can. Please, share the nature of your dilemma.”

“Actually,” Kyle said, “I was shopping around for underwear, and I was wondering if you could tell me where you picked up - “

“This place is a mockery,” Connor sneered, staring the big man dead in the eye. “That’s the nature of my dilemma.”

“That, um,” Kyle said, shuffling his feet. “That, too.”

“I can see that you’re very upset,” Anton told Connor. “Please, won’t you come with me? Here at Zenworld, we have a visitors’ lounge where prospective members can sit and discuss their feelings with one of our counselors over a soothing cup of herbal tea.”

“I...don’t...want...to be...soothed!”

“Connor, chill,” Kyle said, placing a hand on his shoulder. Huge Samoan Guy #2 was now lumbering their way, and if Connor didn’t notice that, Kyle sure did.

Connor slapped the hand away and bared his teeth at the mountainous guard staring down at him. Kyle stepped back.

“Just get the hell out of my way,” Connor said. “I don’t know who you think you are, but they call me Green Arrow. It’s a name with a history. It started with my father, who is buried here. Can you even begin to imagine how angry I am right now?”

Kyle ground his teeth. There was silence, but he knew that wouldn’t last. Everything came down to the next words that were spoken....

“You are a funny little man,” Anton chuckled. “If you were going to tell me you were a superhero, shouldn’t you have picked someone a little more impressive?”

Five hundred pounds of muscle was down on its back with a mouthful of broken teeth like that.

Kyle looked up - and his jaw dropped.

“Oh, my God,” he said to himself. “I blinked, and I missed it.”

Connor stood over the unconscious form of Anton, fists clenched, legs scissored. The second guard charged, and Kyle saw a flash of light across brass knuckles. A massive fist hurtled at Kyle’s friend -

And then Connor was suddenly up and over the arc of the guard’s swing, his knees drawn up tight against his chest, and a split-second later his right leg straightened to strike the behemoth’s shoulder. It came dislocated with a violent crack of splintering bone. The guard sank to one knee, bellowing his agony, as Connor backflipped over him and settled onto the ground at his back. The giant reached inside his loincloth and whirled at Connor with a handful of pistol -

Which landed in the hands of a rapidly blinking Kyle Rayner a second later.

The guard clenched fingers that swelled from the force of Connor’s kick and screamed.

“Pain isn’t real,” Connor told him. “The material world is an illusion. Haven’t these people taught you anything useful?”

“You...” the man blubbered. “You broke my hand....”

“I broke your shoulder. And I did you a favor. Six inches to the left and my first kick would have hit you in the face and broken your neck. The second kick would have only hurt you if it weren’t for the brass wrapped around your hand. Jarring it broke your fingers, but I consider that more your fault than mine.... Kyle, you coming?”

Kyle just stood there, goggling at the gun in his hand. “Uhhhhh....”

“You were right,” Connor said. “I was showing off at the diner. That’s how you take care of a problem without getting fancy.”

A spurt of green fire from Kyle’s ring finger took the shape of an incandescent green Pac-Man. Kyle fed it the gun, paying it no mind as he stared at Connor and shook his head in amazement.

“That was like the effects reel of The Matrix, man...are you sure you’re not really Bruce Lee’s kid?”

“These guys would have been better off.”

“Yeah, well....” A point of green light appeared at Kyle’s hand and expanded out into a vertical beam that swept around before him a full 360 degrees, cloaking him in the costume of the Green Lantern as it went. “The problem is....” He looked at the broken-shouldered guard. “You don’t mind if I talk about you like you’re not here, do you?”

The man moaned.

“Okay, great.” To Connor: “The thing is, I think we’re still in kind of an awkward position here. Morally, like, probably, and legally for sure. What you just did was cool and all, but we can’t just go in there and kick Jefferson Jacks’ ass until he does what we say without, you know, kind of being bad guys ourselves.”

“Your point?”

“My point? Dude, I’m in the Justice League! How much clearer do I need to be?”

“You’re in the Justice League. I’m a ruthless urban vigilante.”

“Yeah, you’re not,” Kyle said. “Let’s just think about this for a second, okay? I know you’re used to going it alone, but your dad...I mean, whatever you feel you owe him, the JLA owes him at least as much. They have to be able to do something, man!”

Connor turned his back and began to push open the wrought-iron gates. “No.”

“I wasn’t finished.” A glowing green padlock the size of a truck tire materialized to hold the gates in place.

Connor faced Kyle, crossed his arms, and leaned back against the bars. “It’s not like I can’t hop it, you know.”

“Let me call them. Superman, Connor. If Superman asks you to give a piece of property back to its rightful owner, are you gonna tell him no?”

Connor laughed derisively. “You know something? For a superhero, you’re awfully afraid of confrontation.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“What it means. You came two thousand miles to see Carol Ferris and then you turned around without talking to her because it was getting dark? Dwell for ten seconds in the incredible lameness of that, Kyle. And now here we are, faced with a job to perform that I know you know is right, but - oh, no, let’s get Superman, he’ll know what to do! Well, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you don’t need Superman, because you are Green Lantern.”

“I....” Kyle swiped his hair. “...I’ve been Green Lantern for like five minutes.”

“You’re Green Lantern now. I’m Green Arrow. We both have some serious shoes to fill, but we are filling them - like it or not. We don’t go running to the big guys whenever the world gets a little complicated. We are the big guys.”

Kyle looked at his boots.

“You know?” Connor asked.

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “I know.”

“So...?”

Kyle’s body lifted off the ground, swathed in emerald electricity. He met Connor’s eyes. “So wait here.”

Connor flinched. “What? This is my - “

“This is a JLA matter,” Kyle said. “Right now, I’m the JLA, vigilante guy. Wait here or get arrested for beating up a couple of guys whose crime was inviting you to a tea party. Got me?”

“I....” Connor grinned. “You’re gonna convince me you’re a superhero yet.”

“Count on it,” Kyle said, smiling back. “Watch this.”

Kyle soared into the night sky above Zenworld, and disappeared from view. For a moment, nothing happened. And then:

“Oh....” Connor said, green light playing over his stunned features. “...Wow.”

Nathan Hawke stood in the midst of the charnel house that had been his kitchen, holding a shaking shotgun on a murderous beast from another world. Seven minutes before, he had been dreaming of the pleasant afternoon he and his wife had spent on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls in May of 1956. He was not dealing with the shift in gears well.

“What the hell are you?” he demanded. “And what the hell are you doing in my house?!”

The Predator’s blood-slicked lips peeled back from thousands of silver, needle-sharp teeth. The obsidian creature was now almost entirely scarlet, save for his silver teeth and eyes, bathed as he was in the blood of a slaughtered cow. The creature looked the old man dead in the eye and crunched loudly through a hipbone. Thoughtfully, the Predator ground the severed chunk up in the workings of his jaws, swallowing the marrow as he spoke.

“Lossssssssst the ssssscent,” he said.

The sibilant voice of the Predator hurt Nathan’s ears, his inner ears, in a funny sort of way that nauseated him. Not that he hadn’t been about to puke already. When he’d first seen the thing, he’d felt his ticker seize up, and for a minute he thought that was the ballgame. Over the thirty seconds or so that followed, he’d been able to adjust to the surreality of the situation; and while he was still scared out of his mind, he was keeping it together. The goddamned thing could talk, so that meant it had to have some kind of intelligence. He could talk to it, reason with it....

...And, if that didn’t work, he could always just shoot it and hope for the best. He had to admit, though, the odds didn’t seem to be much in his favor.

“The...the scent?” Nathan asked. “Is that what you said?”

“Mmmmmmmmm,” the Predator said, nodding a little. “Greeeeeeeeen Lahn-tern. Wassssss heeeere, yesssss?”

Nathan shook his head, confused. “Green Lantern...you mean the superhero, Green Lantern? Why in the hell would Green Lantern.... No, no, you got it wrong. He’s in Metropolis, I think. I’m not sure. But there ain’t no super people here. This is Idaho.”

The slick tentacles that protruded from the creature’s back writhed slowly, like fronds of seaweed stirred by the gentle susurration of an oceanic current. The Predator’s eyes narrowed to luminous slits as he pondered this.

“Losssssst the sssscent,” he said. “Why doesssss he hide? Greeeeeen Lahn-tern isssss afraid of meee. Thisss makesss meee...sssad.”

What neither man nor beast could have understood was that Kyle Rayner hadn’t used his ring in days. At that very moment, Kyle was still running after Connor Hawke, approaching the gates of Zenworld. In the past forty-eight hours, the ring had emitted nothing more than trace elements of ambient energy. In the emptiness of space, that would have been more than sufficient for the Predator’s scent-catchers. But on earth, faced with a mind-boggling array of odors, it simply wasn’t enough. The trail of the Green Lantern ended here.

“L-listen,” Nathan said. “What I told you was the truth. No one’s been here at all in I don’t know how long, except - “

Except Connor, he thought. Connor and that friend of his, the one from New York, used to live in California -

“ - Just the postman. Maybe...I don’t know, maybe the Green Lantern flew over the place one night, I just missed it or something....”

With a wet, squelching sound, the Predator rose from the abattoir of murdered cow, and in a series of unearthly, fluid motions, he began to slither toward the old man.

“No!” Nathan shouted, his finger trembling on the gun’s triggers. “Y-you back away, I mean it! I - “

The Predator’s leering face got within a foot of Nathan’s, then was washed away in an explosion of hot white light and a black cloud of burnt gunpowder. The gun kicked Nathan’s shoulder hard, punching him into the wall. He slid down its surface, landed hard on his ass, and fixed hopeless eyes on the haze before him -

The Predator’s hand shot forth and closed around Nathan’s throat.

Gagging, the old man struggled uselessly in the grip of the creature as the smoke dissipated and the Predator came into view. Its flesh, Nathan saw, was flawless, not a whorl or a wrinkle anywhere on it, and the force of both barrels had left its face without so much as a pockmark.

“Pointlessssss to meeeee,” the Predator told him. “Unlesssss....”

“No,” Nathan gasped. “Not my boy. Not Connor. No way.”

The beast nodded slightly, as if he somehow understood. He looked up at Nathan Hawke and inclined his head to the side, regarding him. A long, black tongue emerged from the Predator’s mouth, slathered in reddish saliva, and slowly lapped at the side of the old man’s face. Nathan grimaced and tried to twist out of its way, but it was futile.

“Perhapsss,” the Predator said, “you ssshould think about thisss...I do not know how long I can make you lassst...but we ssshall ssseee....”

Nathan squeezed his eyes closed -

And they suddenly popped open as the Predator hissed involuntary and the hold around Nathan’s throat tightened. Now fighting for his life, Nathan Hawke thrashed in the creature’s grip, and stared into its eyes....

Eyes that had gone from pure silver...to a glowing, radiant green.

“Yesssss!” the Predator cried with delight. “There you are, Greeeeeen Lahn-tern! There you are!”

“But I...but I don’t understand, Mister Jacks,” the pudgy little exec said. His beady eyes were huge behind thick spectacles, and he kept mopping sweat off the top of a shiny scalp, bald save for a few stray strands of black hair. “I feel that what I’ve done all these years is wrong. I mean, that’s why I came to Zenworld - to try and somehow reinvent my life! I’ve become a very wealthy man, but I just can’t face myself anymore. For one thing, it’s all come at the expense of others. For another, I don’t think anyone in my life really cares about me at all, or wouldn’t, if it weren’t for my money. My own children pray for my death before they go to bed at night! In a loud voice, so that I can hear! It’s very damaging to my self-esteem.”

Murmurs of assent came from the masses huddled under the roof of Harmony Plaza. The tall man on the podium before them hushed the crowd and spoke.

“Now, Jason,” Jefferson Jacks said, grinning widely to show off his capped, oversized teeth. “Do you honestly believe that your bank account is the source of all your problems?”

“Honestly, Mister Jacks?” the exec said. “Yes! I should...I should just give it all away. It’s the bane of my existence. So many people need it more than I do - most of them the people I stole it from in the first place! I think my life is the living hell I’m being forced to endure for being such a terrible human being!”

Jacks chuckled richly. “Oh, me. Jason, Jason, Jason. Don’t you see? Money isn’t a punishment - money is a reward! If you’ve gotten rich profiting from the misfortune of others, then it was their own deficient karma that compelled them to gift you for your higher place on the spiritual plane. Naturally, they resent you, but it’s only because they sense your superiority. In time, the wheel of fate may advance them to your level, but there’s not much that can be done for them right now. We here at Zenworld know that, and that’s why to them we say, ‘Hey...whatever.’ But by golly, Jason...the minute your membership check clears, you’re already halfway to enlightenment.”

Jason blinked away tears. “Then...it’s not my fault? I...I don’t have to change anything about my life?”

“Not a thing!” Jacks said proudly. “It’s evolution, Jason...natural selection. Why, if God didn’t want us to be in charge, well, He’d just say so!”

Thunder roared.

Jacks laughed gently. “Well, well,” he said. “I wouldn’t read too much into that....”

The very ground underneath their feet rumbled, tossing Jacks from the podium as the audience screamed in terror. Rain battered the building around them, and the earth shook with the force of a barrage of monstrous explosions.

“JEFFERSON JACKS!” a voice boomed. “HEARKEN UNTO ME! YOUR GOMORRAH WILL NOT STAND!”

Jacks struggled to his feet, rubbing the back of his skull. “What the hell...?”

“My God!” Jason said, standing at the door. “Look! All of you, look out there! Mister Jacks - “

“Get your gigantic ass the hell out of my way, you ridiculous little troll,” Jacks said, shoving the exec violently aside. He looked outside...and felt a warm trickle of urine ooze down the inside of his thigh.

“Oh, my...God....”

“THE HEAVENLY HOST WILL NOT BE DENIED!” the angel shouted. The winged, emerald-armored man who hovered in the darkened skies - the green of a grisly bruise - held a sword in his left hand, pointed upward to indicate a small, descending army of green seraphs. Green rain slashed down, liquefying the earth; licks of green lightning struck all around, miraculously injuring none of the screaming and scattering faithful. The angel’s right hand formed a fist with the index finger extended to point at the quivering guru. “BEHOLD! THE FALSE PROPHET!”

“M-me?” Jacks said, pointing at himself. He looked around. “He...he means me, right?”

“YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I MEAN YOU! YOU’VE SERIOUSLY PISSED GOD OFF, LITTLE BUDDY!”

Two of the seraphs swept down to grab Jacks under each arm and lift him, kicking and screaming, into the air, to face the avenging angel.

“Nooooooo!” Jacks cried, the green rain spattering his face; the condensation soaked into the weave of his toupee, and the expertly-coiffed mop slid off his scalp to ooze down his cheek. To Kyle Rayner, it looked like someone had skinned a chiuahua and hit him with the pelt.

“SAY SOMETHING FOR YOURSELF, MORTAL DOG!” Kyle shouted through the amplifiers he’d incorporated into his armor’s helmet. And PLEASE be quick about it, Kyle thought, but did not say; small-scale divine invasion was easily the most insanely elaborate thing he’d ever attempted with the ring, and already it felt like his brain was starting to melt. “THOU HAST ENRAGED THE ALMIGHTY!”

Jacks’ lower lip quivered. “Who are...who are y--?”

“I KICK ASS FOR THE LORD! WILT THOU MAKE ME, um, LAY HIS VENGEANCE UPON THEE?”

“N...no! Uh, don’t do that. What...what do you need me to - ?”

“RELEASE THESE PITIABLE HUMANS FROM YOUR BONDAGE! ABANDON THIS LAND, WHICH IS HOLY, COME HERE NO MORE, AND GENERALLY LEAVE! ALSO, DO IT NOW, AND STOP STUTTERING, FOR YOUR INABILITY TO CONVERSE IN AN INTELLIGENT FASHION ANGERS YOUR MAKER!”

“Oh...o-okay...uh....”

“STUTTERING....”

“Sorry.” Jacks looked down, where hundreds of his followers were already crashing the gates, and still more were congregating under cover to take in the spectacle above their heads. “All of you! All of you, you must go! I...Jefferson Jacks, am a false prophet. I apologize for our no-refunds policy....”

“AHEM.”

Jacks closed his eyes and sighed. “Refunds will be granted within seven to ten business days....”

“AHEM!”

“Full refunds, is that better, angel man?! But...all of you must go. Zenworld...Zenworld is closed.”

“I cannot believe you did that....”

Kyle laughed. “You thought it was funny. Don’t lie. I know you thought that was funny.”

Connor tipped his head back; the open air blew over the convertible, catching his hair. “You know,” he said, suppressing a grin, “I don’t subscribe to western notions of heaven and hell...but if I did....”

“Ow,” Kyle said, a hand flying off the wheel to clutch at his cheek.

Connor looked over. “What was that? Mosquito?”

“No,” Kyle said, furrowing his brow. “No, man, I think God just bitchsmacked me.”

Now Connor did laugh, if only a little. “I’m not surprised.”

“You’re the one who wouldn’t let me call Superman. I just went for the most suitable substitute.”

“Well, I will say one thing...that’s definitely not what Hal Jordan would have done.”

“Yeah,” Kyle said, his mood darkening a bit. He looked out onto the open road. “Yeah, I thought about that.”

“Thanks, Kyle. By the way.”

“It’s cool,” Kyle said, distant. “Don’t mention it.”

“It’s good to have it back. The ashram. And you managed to do it without hurting anybody, which is more than I probably would have been able to do. You did a heroic thing tonight, Kyle.”

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “Yeah, I guess.”

Connor closed his eyes. “I think you’d better go see her tomorrow.”

“I’m terrified, Connor.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“I hate this. I hate feeling like this. Hal wasn’t afraid of anything. That was why they made him Green Lantern. I got picked at random, and I am scared out of my mind right now.”

“Everything’s arbitrary.”

“Is that more stuff they taught you at Kung Fu College?”

“More or less,” Connor said. “It breaks down one of two ways...either everything is random, and the only pattern that exists is the one we impose on it, or everything is a product of some underlying order. Whichever the case may be, either everything happens for a reason - in which case you were meant to be Green Lantern - or nothing happens for a reason, in which case you weren’t meant to be Green Lantern, and neither was Hal. Opposite assumptions, same conclusion. Once you accept this as the nature of the universe, you are free to act at all times secure in the knowledge of your righteousness.”

Kyle raised an eyebrow. “For real?”

“For real.”

“Do you think...I mean, do you think Hal thought that he was being righteous when he...?”

“No,” Connor said. “Because he wasn’t.”

Kyle nodded. “Tomorrow.”

“Good.” Connor was silent for a moment, seeming to be deep in thought. “Kyle?”

“Yeah, man?”

“Uhh...when was the last time you called Donna?”

“I’d really like to,” Donna Troy said into the cell phone she had squeezed between shoulder and ear. She was crouched down in front of Kyle Rayner’s CD tower, hunting for something she could tolerate while she picked up around here: All she’d volunteered to do was come in every once in a while and turn some lights on and off while Kyle was busy on his boys’ own adventure with Connor, but she couldn’t help herself...God, Kyle was such a complete slob. She smiled and blushed at the next words that were spoken.

“Robert...look, I really appreciate the offer, but I am involved...yes, really...which part can’t you believe, that I have a boyfriend or that I could ever possibly consent to a date with you?”

Donna’s shoulders sank as she scanned the names on the spines of the jewel cases. Nine Inch Nails. Monster Magnet. Ice Cube. The only CD on display that spoke to her at all was Elvis Costello’s My Aim Is True; she’d left it here the last time she’d stayed over. It was like she was dating a twelve-year-old....

“No, well...” Donna said, sighing. “Yeah, he was gone a few days a couple of weeks ago, I know, but that was business, it couldn’t really be helped...yes, I’m sure it was business! You’re a persistent devil, aren’t you? I...well, thank you. No, I do appreciate it, but Kyle.... He does appreciate me. ...Yes. He does! Look, I’m not some needy little girl who needs to be constantly doted on. He has things he has to do, and so do I. We have a mutual respect....”

Donna slid the Elvis Costello CD out of its groove on the rack and pried it open. The disc inside was Rob Zombie’s The Sinister Urge.

“...For each other. Um...well, look, maybe sometime. No, I...I am not blowing you off. I’m saying that I’ll entertain the notion. I’ll think about it. I - “

There was a knock at the door. Donna breathed a heavy sigh, and relaxed. Oh, thank God, she thought. Good timing, Rayner....

“Gotta go,” she said, and punched the talk button. Robert’s objection was silenced by a sharp dial tone.

Donna stood, tossing the phone on Kyle’s rumpled, thrift-store couch, and practically skipped to the door. No need to peer through the peekhole before she swung it open - Donna Troy wasn’t scared of much, and anyway, it wasn’t like she didn’t know....

“Hi.”

...Who it was going to be.

“Um,” Donna said. Her smile collapsed. “Hello.”

The woman on the other side of the door was stunning, a petite raven-haired knockout decked out in an outfit that was just this side of obscene - a crisp black tux over a white shirt, black bowtie to match, and even a coal-black top hat...all of which was fine...but the bottom half of her....

Were those...fishnets? And...black stiletto heels?

“Hi,” the woman said again. “I hope I didn’t - “

“What the hell are you supposed to be, the lovechild of David Copperfield and Britney Spears?”

The woman jumped back as if struck. “Uh...wow. That’s a new one. But no.” She smiled politely, and extended a hand. “My name’s Zatanna. Zatanna Zatara? I’m a magician. I try not to make too big a deal out of it, but I’m a little bit famous? Maybe you saw my special on HBO.”

Donna stared at the hand as if it held in its grasp a wet, rotting, dead fish.

“Must have missed it,” Donna said. “From the looks of you, though, I have a pretty good idea what it must have been rated.”

“Right,” the magician said, withdrawing her hand to clasp it around its mate behind her back. “Anyway, I can’t believe we’ve never met before. You used to be Wonder Girl, right? And then you were in the Darkhawks.”

“The Darkstars,” Donna intoned.

“Dark something, I knew that,” Zatanna said brightly. “Very imposing. I do the superhero thing, too, when I get the time. It’s fun. A great hobby, way better than stamps. I’m sure we’d have a lot to talk about. Mind if I come in?”

“What do you want, Miss...Zatara?”

“Ah,” Zatanna said. “I thought you might want to know. Actually, I’m here to see Kyle Rayner. I understood he lived here, so I suppose you’re possibly...what?...house-sitting for him? Watering his plants?”

“If you must know...I was just leaving.”

Zatanna’s expression went serious and reproachful. “Wait, I...okay, I should tell you, this is a...well, I guess you could call it a business matter, not a - “

“Social call?” Donna asked, brushing past her. “I have some business matters of my own to take care of. It’s all yours. If he ever grows up and comes home, you can tell Kyle I said to have a nice life.”

“I....” But Donna was already moving past her, storming down the hallway. “Miss Troy...Donna...I didn’t mean to - “

Donna stopped at the end of the hall and looked back.

“You know where you can stick that wand, lady,” Donna said. “And after you pull it out, put on some pants, for God’s sake. You look like a hooker.”

Donna rounded the corner, and was gone. Zatanna stood there in the open doorway, eyes on her stilettos.

“Huh,” she said after a moment. “I guess that went well....”

She stepped into Kyle Rayner’s apartment and closed the door behind her.

Hey again, all. GL #6 generated a little bit of notice, which is always nice; my thanks to Will Short and Mike Exner and everybody else who had pleasant things to say about it, and I’m sure Russ thanks you, too. Mike and Will’s reviews can be found on the JLU message boards, if you’re interested. In the meantime, we did actually get one bona fide piece of e-mail. Derrick Ferguson - who writes a whole bunch of stuff, not the least of which is DILLON AND THE VOICE OF ODIN for Frontier (and, okay, yeah, I’m a little biased when it comes to Frontier, but regardless, check out DILLON if you haven’t done so...you won’t be disappointed) - had this to say:

Mike,

I gotta admit, I was frankly curious as to how you were going to handle a mainstream superhero like Green Lantern. While I’m a huge fan of your past work (especially Ghost Rider ’57) I couldn’t see how you would adapt your mature, graphic style to Green Lantern. So when I read #6 and saw that you instead changed up your style to suit the character you were writing, I kinda slapped my head over my stupidity.

But there’s a lot here that you haven’t changed, thank goodness...the witty, clever dialog and sharp, crisp descriptions are all in place. Most fan fiction readers annoy me up the yinyang when they complain that certain titles ‘don’t have enough action.’ A story like this demonstrates that in the hands of a writer who knows his craft, a heart-to-heart conversation between two men, sharing their views of life and the world while having beers can be as exciting as a Khundian fleet attacking Warworld.

I always loved those road trips the original GL and GA would go on and it’s a good move to start a new story arc with the new generation emulating their predecessors. Good beginning, Mike...

Derrick"

Thanks, Derrick. Just about all of the coolest stuff in #6 came straight from the Word program of Russ Anderson, I hasten to point out, including the scene you mentioned with Kyle and Connor’s grandpa - that scene especially I wrote maybe two sentences of. What happened, in essence, was that Russ sent me a draft of #6 that he had written and kinda invited me to cannibalize it if I wanted...and that scene in particular made me realize that the story that Russ had started was too good to pass up.

As far as action vs. character goes, my feeling is that - as writers of prose, not writers of comic books - we should maybe play a little more to the strengths of our medium. A battle that would dazzle me in a comic book all too frequently comes across as a set of stage directions to me when I read it in a fanfic story. For all that, though, I have to admit that most action-oriented comics don’t really do a whole lot for me, unless they’re just seriously well-executed. I remember an ancient article by Heidi McDonald in The Comics Journal that was entitled something like “The Bane of Superhero Stories: Endless Fight Scenes,” and it’s a criticism I sorta have to agree with. Anyway, there should be enough zapping of bad guys and fisticuffs in GL to satisfy those who are looking for it (I hope), but with any luck it’ll remain at least somewhat intelligent.

NEXT: Kyle Rayner must face three of the most fearsome threats of his brief career: A terrifying alien monster, Hal Jordan’s ex, and a very bad hangover. Which has the best chance of doing him in? Hey, you make the call...but I know which one’s the scariest to me....

Chewing Tylenol,
Mike
January 20, 2002