BIZARRO BREAK #8 – It’s Not Easy Being Green

BIZARRO BREAK #8 (Green Lantern)
“It’s Not Easy Being Green”
Writer – Jason Yungbluth
Art – Jason Paulos
Edits – Joey Cavalieri


Welcome back to the #BizarroBreak… yeah, I know, I’m sorry.


These certainly aren’t among the more popular pieces I put together, but… they’re relatively short, and ya boy’s tired.  Over the course of the past four articles, I wrote nearly 20,000 words… and wasted away countless hours of quarantined bliss.  I hope everyone dug what I put out those days… but, this day is going to have to be a (relative) “cheat day“.


Today’s is a fun one though… I’d wager you’ll all enjoy it!


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We open with a quick n dirty take on Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern origin… you know the drill, dyin’ alien hands him a ring… Hal becomes a hero, capable to handling any problem the universe might throw at him… unless, of course, that problem is colored yellow.  We see here that Hal and I share a particular weakness… Marshmallow Peeps!  I tell ya what, we’re currently in the midst of what has been the hardest “Easter Season” for me in years.  I’ve been dieting, and had to kick the Peeps habit… the damned things are haunting me… invading my dreams… sapping my soul.  A-hem, where were we?  Oh yeah, Hal’s afraid of yellow things.  This all came to a head in a very public way when the “Banana Republican” stormed the field of a football game, and proved to be Hal’s better.

This resulted in Hal Jordan being dismissed as a joke… the news spread like wildfire, even reaching the despotic Darkseid, who had a nice belly laugh at our hero’s expense!

Hal continued to deal with his issue… and reflected back to times in his life when yellow got the best of him.  We learn here that Hal was a bedwetter (Hal’s dad is a prick)… and wasn’t the best at brushing his teeth.  He runs yellow lights in order to “win one”, and over-relies on a construct octopus (constructopus?) in order to fight crime.

Anyhoo, one day he’s called up to Oa.  Ya see, the Guardians are really concerned over Hal’s aversion to all things yellow… and want to try and get to the bottom of it.  Here’s the thing: Green Lanterns don’t have any weakness against yellow… that was just a joke that a Guardian named Larry told Hal to screw with him!  Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

Before we know it, Hal’s all straightened out… but, he’s still got a reputation to repair.  Now, where does a Hal Jordan go when he wants to fix his rep?  Well, you read Action Comics Weekly… so, you know he’s headed for The Oprah Winfrey Show, of course!

He even has Superman with him for some moral support.  Superman assures the viewing public that Green Lantern is no joke… and he’s afraid of absolutely nothing.  Why, the only thing that can stop Green Lantern is… Superman himself!  This is, of course, before we spy a nice big chunk of Kryptonite on set… which, ya know, really gets under the Big Guy’s skin.

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This was a lot of fun.  I’m not usually a fan of the, pardon the crassness, “piss-take” on superheroes.  I mean, there’s only so many times we “enlightened” fans can all nudge each other in the ribs and scoff at how ludicrous comic book situations are… “Durr hurr, it’s just a pair of glasses!  How is that a disguise?!” sort of stuff… but, this story actually managed to make one of the silly Silver Age contrivances funny!


Playing around with Hal Jordan’s aversion to yellow is a neat idea… especially when it’s eventually revealed that it never actually existed at all.  It was just some jerk of a Guardian screwing with him!  Of course, we students of comics history know all about the hows and whys of the “Yellow Impurity”, but still… I had a good time with this one.  Was happy to see that Hal and I share the same weakness for marshmallow Peeps… and was also happy to see the callback (intentional or not) to Hal’s ACW visit to Oprah!


Next #BizarroBreak: Batman hangs ’em up!