"Purity Of The Sport?" Don't Make Me Laugh

With an NFL lockout and shenanigans regarding collective bargaining in Wisconsin and Ohio, it got me thinking about how fucked up it is that we pay people millions of dollars to play a game (and yet they still want MORE) while our public workers have to fight tooth and nail to keep what little they have.

I won't go into the injustice of it all, but I will mock sports in general for having all these issues with how much to pay their players and the frequent steroid scandals that come up while they preach on and on about upholding the purity of the game.

Purity of the sport, purity of the game, keeping thinks on an even keel-- that all went out the window a long time ago when sports teams began getting players according to the highest bidder. It's laughable that they always talk about this fair play nonsense when it comes to steroids and performance enhancement when we all know the teams that have the most are going to pay the best players the most money. How is that fair?

I find sports inane in general. I don't care to watch glorified frat boys get paid to play a fucking game, the result of which has absolutely no bearing on my life. If you're into sports, good for you. But you have to admit how silly it all is, when you boil it down: grown men, whose sole occupation is to play a fucking game.

These people get paid obscene amounts of money to entertain us, and yet they keep them from 'enhancing' their performance through steroid bans and pussify their own sports with rule changes that protect their investments (read: players). Really? The only thing that holds my interest during an NFL game is the possibility that some big cocksucker might lay out a running back and fold him up like a goddamn accordion! Fuck these people!

Let quarterbacks get drilled right after they call hike. Let 'em take a fuckin' chance and actually earn their money! Let these guys take steroids and shrivel their balls into raisins. I don't fucking care about any of these assholes who skated through their education just because they could throw a ball, and neither should you.

I'd be into sports if they focused more on the violent, physically-debilitating injuries that can result from engaging in their all-important game. If I was guaranteed that at least once a season I'd get to see some douche have his leg broken in two or three places because he couldn't get away from Mongo fast enough, I'd be a sports fan for sure. I'd tune in as much as possible and watch Sportscenter just to see the instant replay again and again.

I'll take it a step further in advocating steroid use and just about any other substances they wanna pump themselves full of: I want more enhancements allowed. I want some of that crazy prosthetic technology put to the test and ramped up to almost lethal levels: I'm talking about a pitcher throwing a 200 MPH ball with his newly-minted cybernetic arm and the giant batter with his spine and arms replaced hitting back so hard it breaks the sound barrier!

You wanna talk about protecting your investment? Let these corporate criminal pricks who own all the teams and players find a way to write off these unnecessary surgical procedures like you would new floors on your house. Sounds silly, doesn't it? But the reality is that our society right now is not far from this type of thinking. It's kind of sad to think about how the team owners already consider human beings as assets to their business.

So let these idiots enhance away, I say. Fair play in the real world is on short supply, so why not in sport? Just stop kidding yourselves, team owners. We know you're dishonest and lacking in morals; we won't think less of you for admitting it publicly, I promise. Just get back to me on my proposal, wouldja? You'd be in on the ground floor of all that Ghost In the Shell and Blade Runner science and at the same time gain a sports fan the first time somebody shatters their collarbone because they went for the low tackle on a player whose legs were replaced with titanium hyperspeed appendages.

All right, enough for now. Hope to update with some stuff (and pictures!) of the trip to Pittsburgh. Later, kids!

-Swift

Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #1-6 Review, or This Is Why I Don't Buy Comics Every Month Anymore

After the events of Blackest Night, they announced a third monthly Green Lantern book (on top of the eponymous title and Green Lantern Corps). To say the least, I was a little apprehensive. I was less apprehensive, however, to learn it would star the Green Lantern Corps' resident shit-kicker, Guy Gardner.

Bear with me for a short history lesson...

Guy has had a rough time in his history as a published character, not all of which I'm privy to. I'm pretty sure the first time I remember Guy being in a story was The Death of Superman arc, and that made a pretty big impression on me.

I'm jumping the gun, though. A lil' history first: Guy was originally supposed to be, well, the  guy. He was incapacitated or something when the Green Lantern ring was scanning earth for Abin Sur's replacement. Or was he closer? Knowing comics, either one could be correct. Anyway, if Hal Jordan hadn't been where he was at the time the ring went looking for a being who had the power to overcome great fear, Guy would've gotten the ring. So originally, he was a rival to Hal, and after many years of being a dick about not being the guy, Gardner was made a Green Lantern and subsequently (and famously) punched out by Batman, left powerless when the Corps went tits-up, and stole Sinestro's yellow ring, which is where I came in.

Before Sinestro had his own Corps, he was just one dude with a yellow ring that worked the same as a Green Lantern ring. So Guy steals it and ends up being part of the Justice League when Doomsday rampaged through on his way to 'kill' Superman. At one point, Guy is blinded, and when asked how effective he can be in battle, says something to the effect of "Just point my ring at that thing."

Guy may be an asshole and a cocky prick to his teammates in the League, but that one act of blind determination, to me, was a defining moment. I realized he could be an interesting, kickass character despite the fact that he was more than a bit of a douche.

He went through some ups and downs, gaining alien powers after losing the yellow ring and opening a bar called Warriors (the less said about his time as "Warrior" the better. It was a product of the "extreme" nineties).

So I was happy that when they brought back Hal they returned Guy to the fold as a lantern. He was still a prick, but they made him a more serious character who kicked a lot of ass (even gaining a red ring during Blackest Night which allowed him to kill the Black Lanterns in droves). He pissed off Salaak, the Guardians' go-to lantern, built a new bar on Oa, and became like a brother to Kyle Rayner, his lantern partner. Gardner was the 'dirty job' man in the Corps, being assigned to cases that other lanterns couldn't hack. He left behind his joke character status and became a layered, believable character.

So, the series. Guy ends up on a secretive mission to explore the "Unknown Sectors" of the universe, even getting the Guardians' blessing to do so(suspicious, since the Guardians rarely listen to anyone). He gets help in the form of Kilowog and Arisia, both veteran lanterns. Over the course of the issues I picked up, it becomes clear that someone is draining all the colored lantern corps' power and that Guy made a pact with Atrocitus (the leader of the Red Lanterns) and Ganthet (former Guardian turned Green Lantern) to find out where the drain is coming from.

Guy becomes a sort of a renegade cop character as the story progresses, and his fellow lanterns don't approve. He's still having some side effects from his time as a Red Lantern, barely able to control his rage at points and coughing up napalm blood on a regular basis. He's even stopped by Bleez, one of the Red Lanterns, from having his body purged of the red influence, because he'll allegedly need that power to combat whatever threat is coming.

It turns out Sodam Yat, Daxamite Green Lantern (think Superman with a power ring. The Daxamites are 'cousins' to the Kryptonians) and former host of the Green Will entity, Ion, thought dead when he entered Daxam's sun to turn it yellow and give his people superpowers to ward off an invasion from Mongul Jr., has crashed back to his home planet and has a bit of a cult following him, praising him as Daxam's savior. He might be the source of the power drain, and he's also being mind-controlled by some dude named Zardor.

Zardor's got three eyes and a flaming sword and tends to puke up snakes that eat telepaths' eyes. Pretty cool, no? He's been kidnapping and enslaving telepaths to boost his own power and control rookie Green Lanterns into thinking our merry band are members of the Sinestro Corps.

The heroes find Zardor and get their butts handed to them long enough for Sodam to show up and leave a cliffhanger. This is my problem with monthly comics. They're paced so methodically that month to month it seems like nothing's really going on. That sounds like I didn't care for the series, but that couldn't be farther from the truth; I'm merely lamenting the fact that had I not found these at Carol and John's on the West Side while they were having a back issue sale, I'd be watching the story unfold at a snail's pace. These stories are designed for the collected editions, and here's my other problem: it left me on a cliffhanger with the promise that the seventh issue would lead into their next crossover, War of the Green Lanterns. I know they're trying to have a summer event to tie into the movie's release, but when are the lanterns gonna get a fuckin' break?

So, pacing issues aside, did I enjoy it? Hell yes. Guy has come a very long way from being a joke character to probably my favorite ringslinger at the moment. Peter Tomasi has a great grasp on writing the character, having done so well with him previously in Green Lantern Corps. He writes Kilowog and Arisia's disdain of Guy's methods with weight and seriousness (Kilowog's speech about how the Corps once stood for something and how the universe is a darker place was particularly effective), and even makes Bleez more than a one-dimensional, mono-syllabic character controlled by her rage.

The art is phenomenal. Fernando Pasarin has clean layouts and exaggerates his characters just enough, even keeping some of the more alien characters grounded in a semblance of reality not seen often enough these days in comics. Keep him penciling the series, please.

I probably won't pick up any more of the series until the collections start hitting, but I recommend it. With all things Green coming out of DC and WB's media machine in preparation for the Green Lantern movie this summer, I'm happy to see that they've yet to stretch the GL brand thin. So light 'em up, kids. Much more than Thor and Captain America, I'm looking forward to Green Lantern hitting theatres. I think it's going to take quite a few people by surprise with its scope, vast mythos and science-fictiony goodness.

-Swift

Anarchy In The US

So. Ohio Senate Bill 5 is on its way into becoming law. It's going to fuck over a great many people here in Ohio, and if other states follow suit, the agenda that our owners have against the middle class could conceivably succeed.

I won't get into why this is bullshit and how unfair it is. But I will say I'm having a hard time feeling bad.

Many of the unions who now stand to lose their collective bargaining rights were the ones who got him elected in the first place. Unions are political machines. They mobilize their members into voting one way or another, within their own organizations, of course, but if you belong to a union, let me ask: when was the last time a big election came along and you weren't inundated with flyers in the mail, phone calls or both? It's like that South Park episode: they don't care if you vote; they just care that you vote for who and what they want you to vote for.

So I'm having trouble not being indifferent to our plight. It almost seems as though our chickens have come home to roost. Or maybe I should say your chickens?
I don't vote. I've never believed my vote makes any sort of difference at a city, state, or federal level, and even if I thought it could, I prefer not to participate in corruption. The system is broken, and voting isn't going to fix it. Voting is contributing to the problem by electing officials who don't give a fuck about the average guy or gal. You're encouraging the bastards.

So what would be better?
I wish I knew an answer. I truly wish it wasn't like this, but think about it. Roughly half of congress are millionaires. They don't care about their constituents, which is why these pricks continue their agenda against the middle class by making all of us poorer. That's not the way it should be.

You know what gives me comfort? Entropy.
These rich fucks getting richer while they screw us over? Their chickens are comin' home, eventually. They're running the economy into the ground, and when the economy collapses, all their millions will mean nothing. And yeah, for those of us former middle class people, socioeconomic collapse will suck very bad, but I'll be holding onto that thought if I'm unfortunate enough to live through it. They'll be boned, too. See? I'm a closet optimist.

All right, enough for now. I think I need to have a geeky topic next to cleanse all our pallets of this gloom and doom and social commentary horseshit. Til next time, kids.

-Swift