Comic review: Green Lantern #40- Corporate neo-liberal brainwashing 101

Writer: Robert Venditti
Artist: Billy Tan
Publisher: DC Comics
Date of publication: 4th March 2015


I couldn’t help but read this book as the corporate mainstream whore satanic system trying to make excuses for itself, it’s actions and the fact that the alternative media is destroying its credibility on an hourly basis.

What makes me say that? Just reading the book and seeing how the Green Lantern character (Hal Jordan) is acknowledging that the system that he represents is now seen as ‘Cops, and everywhere we go, people don’t want us.’

Soldiers are not ‘cops,’ they are not peacemakers, they are not flying around the world to save and help poor innocent victim/civilians. They are told that they are the heroes, but that is a lie. We know it is a lie, everybody knows it’s a lie, so let’s start pointing it out. Uniformed order followers of the state operate as the private mercenary army of powerful banking and corporate interests, the 1% that the Occupy movement has been talking about, and ridiculed for it’s truth telling in the corporate whore mainstream media.

Green Lantern #40 is the story of one individual order following soldier. He defends the system that he is a part of, leaving it in order to personally shoulder the blame for it’s recent abuses, all of which are characterised as ‘mistakes’ rather than anything that is inherently wrong with the system itself. He acknowledges that he is not to blame, but he is prepared to shoulder that blame in order to prop up a system that he has religious faith in.

Hal Jordan has deliberately turned himself into a villain in order to back up a discredited control system. The system itself will use this sacrifice to carry on with business as usual. He’s sacrificed himself, just like a good soldier would sacrifice himself for the benefit of his comrades on a battlefield. This is a standard technique used by control systems, and the best thing about it is that no coercion is required, as the indoctrinated individuals willingly sacrifice themselves for what they see as the greater good.

Green Lantern #40 is reflecting the religious faith system of mainstream western ideology. That faith system is an unquestioning belief in neo liberal capitalism, centralised, corporate statism and with an army of order following mercenary soldiers to back it up with violence. The act of sacrifice, of having faith in a system that is rotten to the core, is presented as a heroic thing for a soldier to do.

Sacrifice yourself to the gods of the corporations.

Sacrifice yourself to the gods of the banking sector.

Sacrifice yourself to the gods of the mainstream media.

Sacrifice yourself to neo-liberal crony capitalism.

Sacrifice yourself to wars based on lies.

That’s how it works, hundreds of thousands of Hal Jordan’s pumped up with false pride, indoctrinated, propagandised since birth, sacrificing themselves to the centralised control system, the borg collective hive mind that helps the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the entire planet enslaved…forever.


Rating: 4/10 (Subconscious mind-set of a neo liberal corporate slave)



*Lead Image on this review is the excellent movie cover variant front cover to Green Lantern #40 by Tony Harris