Comic review: Green Lantern #37- Godhead, Act 3, Part 1: Ranting away about sofa geek culture

Writer: Robert Venditti
Artist: Francis Portela
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 3rd December 2014


I had something like six or seven back episodes of Gotham (the new television show about a young Bruce Wayne) to watch on my futuristic surveillance device/television, but yesterday I deleted them all.

I did this after watching half an hour of an episode that was focussed on the young Penguin character. He’s the best thing about the show, but as I was watching his violent and manipulative adventures something dawned upon me. It was the realisation that this man on my television set, a murdering psychopath, was being portrayed as a strong willed hero, a man that we should be looking up to as a role model. The television viewer was being manipulated into feeling admiration and empathy for the man. Everything the Penguin was doing was made to look cool and empowering. I could almost here a voice coming from my television set saying:

‘Hey comic book geeks, isn’t it cool to be a psychopath? Don’t you just want to be a psychopath as well?’ 

Okay, so I’m exaggerating to make my point, but I hope you understand what I’m getting at here. I keep seeing this glorification of illness, with diseased, feeble, broken cowards made to look like the coolest guy in the room. It’s the Dexter effect, the Breaking Bad effect, the Game of Thrones effect, the Joker tormenting Batman with his own face held on by rubber bands behind his ears. It’s this sense of joy at embracing the worst elements of humanity. A celebration, a glorification of inhumanity towards your fellow man, but all dressed up in this soft voyeurism that screams suburbs and smart bombs and drone attacks and pathetic, lame, flabby cowardice.

Is this a 2014 trend, or was it always there, lurking in the back of sofa geek culture? I call it ‘sofa geek’ culture for a good reason. It’s a flabby watching but not getting involved culture that isn’t really a culture at all. It’s the reason why I don’t attend comic-cons, even though I’m sure I’d pick up some good rare books there. It’s this feeling that my comic book hobby reflects the worst aspects of myself. It turns me into something that I don’t want to be. A lazy, silent watcher, an audience member, an anonymous face in the braying idiot crowd, a man who thinks that violence is cool, but has never been in a real fist-fight in his entire life.

Why I am bringing up this unappealing sense of weakness and the revelling in disease and violence from a distance that is indelibly imprinted upon the sofa geek culture? Why am I mentioning the Penguin character and my deleting back episodes of the Gotham television programme? It’s because there’s a character in Green Lantern #37 who encapsulates every sick aspect that I’ve just been railing against. That character is another sofa geek hero/psychopath called, ‘Black Hand.’

Black Hand sadly laments, ‘I was born after all the good wars.’ No you weren’t mate. You are living in a period of never-ending war right now. If he really is supposed to be some creature that gets off on war then he would know that, but no, he’s that curious mainstream media murder junky that can’t see reality past his television set.

This Black Hand character dominates the narrative of Green Lantern #37. He’s seen revelling in the worst aspects of humanity. He loves war and death, but he’s strangely stuck on the History channel version of war and death, and doesn’t appear to recognise that war didn’t end after the Nazi’s were ‘defeated’ in 1945.

His character reminds me of somebody who sees war as a story told in a history book, not something that is happening all around him right now. Not something that he himself funds through quiet acquiescence to the unaccountable state apparatus of slavery, torture, incompetence, misery and death.

War is Hitler isn’t it? War is a dusty history book, a black and white television documentary, a DVD box set? It’s that kind of mentality, that kind of wilful ignorance about the world as it is today that I see again and again in my comic books and it bugs the Hell out of me.

It really does sicken me, and for the rest of the book this death obsessed, but out of touch sofa geek is portrayed as a grim reaper with cool factor. He’s a child with suburban serial killer fantasies, but with access to power that backs up what he’s saying, making him look far more important and impressive than Hal Jordan, the character in this book who is supposed to be the hero that the audience identifies with.

I’m getting the sense here that writer Robert Venditti actually admires the Black Hand. The Black Hand is soooo kewl, and Green Lantern is so lame after all. I can’t stand it, and that voice is talking to me again, it’s saying again and again:

‘Hey comic book geeks, isn’t it cool to be a psychopath? Isn’t it cool to be a psychopath? Isn't it cool to be a psychopath?

ENOUGH!!!!!!!

It is not cool to be a psychopath. It is not cool to obsess over death and stamping on your neighbour’s face forever. Torture is not cool. Drones are not cool. War is not cool. Death is not cool. These things are a symbol of weakness, not strength. Celebrating these aspects of humanity makes you spindly, feeble, enslaved, stupid, weak and ugly. You are a drone pilot with a jumbo carton of Pepsi diet poison, medals on his chest, flabby gut hanging out, press fire on the console, wedding party destroyed, time for more medals and football. Oh, a kid just shot up a school again? How did that happen? We better ban guns now, eh? War is peace, ignorance is strength, I’m voting for Bush/Clinton again.

That is the image I get when I see the Black Hand, or the Joker or the Penguin or whatever new psycho of the week portrayed as a sofa geek hero. It bother’s the Hell out of me, because it’s a symptom of the underlying disease that runs through the comic book industry, and the entire mainstream media as a whole.

It’s ugliness, celebrated, lauded and then put up against Batman, the Green Lantern, Commissioner Gordon, all of these statist control freaks who are there to restore order and protect the poor innocent victims/civilians. It’s a con game, a simplistic light and dark show for simpletons where the light are uniformed order followers and the dark are celebrated sofa geek cool psychopaths.

It’s a slaughterhouse psychological operation targeting the collective mind of the corporate media consuming slave public. They are telling you that it’s cool to be a psychopath, but at the same time they are telling you that the state must prevail to protect you against the very thing that is being pushed as cool and desirable. I’m not saying it’s deliberate. I’m not saying it’s a ‘conspiracy,' but it’s there, a disease that is messing with us all. That’s a mind trip, don’t you think?

I need to explore this celebration of psychopathy and it’s duel aspect the control system of the state a bit deeper, but for now I’ll finish this up as it’s already far too long. Hopefully I’ve managed to convey something in this review, something more than you’ll get in your typical comic book review anyway. That’s the entire point here. That is why I am doing these ‘reviews.’ They are not really ‘reviews’ at all, but you knew that, right? Thanks for reading. Hopefully I managed to say something here, and yes, this train of thought will continue on my blog, writing, as I do, free from corporate constraint, and free to say whatever the Hell I want to say.

It’s not about comics, it’s not about getting myself a job on a stupid keep your mouth shut and get re-tweets corporate comic book web-site. It’s about saying whatever is on my mind. Comic books and the other media that I consume feed my mind, and stimulate a response. I’m a big-mouthed annoying guy, and when I read something I like to tell people all about it. I say things that people don’t want to hear, but sod it. I’d rather say it than keep it to myself. That’s why I’m here, that’s why I’m writing on this blog. 

Rating: 5/10 (for the narrative progression that is keeping me interested in the arc)