[Criticism Corner] The Green Lantern Story DC Wanted You to Forget (Patreon)

 So my video on Surprising Marvel Comics Hookups is my second most viewed video.  Clearly if I want some views, I should make one for DC.  Well when writing it, this portion ended up getting longer and longer.  THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A QUICK AND FUN VIDEO FOR A QUICK BUCK BUT NO!  So here it is guys, the first draft of the script for my next video.  Let me know what you think!

Hal Jordan has had many lovers over the years from his on and off again girlfriend, Carol Ferris, to the implied threesome between him, Huntress, and Lady Blackhawk, but did you know that he was once in a relationship with an underage alien?  Well he was.  Because comics.

Hello and welcome to Because Comics, the show where we take a look at all the strange, weird, and straight up bizzare things that make comic books well… comic books.  I’m your host, Drake McWhorter.

With three thousand six hundred space sectors and a minimum of two Lanterns for each of them, the Green Lantern Corps is filled to the brim with strange alien races.  Yet for every talking chipmunk, lava person, or literal living planet, there seems to be a LOT more humanoid aliens out there.  It’s rare to see these more alien looking corpsmen getting it on, but romance between characters that look relatively human?  Fair game.

Take for example Arisia Rrab, a Graxosian from the planet Graxos IV located in Sector 2815, practically right next door to Earth’s solar system.  Arisia is the latest in a lineage of Green Lanterns and did plenty of research on the corps to be the best she could when it was eventually her time to take up the ring. (Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps #3 - 2009)  This caused her to become a massive fan girl, getting starstruck by Hal Jordan when they first met.  From the get go, Jordan referred to Arisia as “little sister” and that kid attitude was played up quite a bit

See around this time, the Green Lantern series was starting to turn into more of an ensemble cast with Arisia serving the role as the plucky child, sort of like Kitty Pryde of the X-Men who was introduced a year prior to great success.  It was during this time that Arisia started crushing on Hal hardcore, but thankfully he nipped that in the bud ASAP.

By Earth standards, Arisa was fourteen years old and the Green Lantern was not about that.  She argued though that because the years on her home planet are half as long as Earth’s, that would make her twenty eight. (Green Lantern Vol 2 #204 - 1986) Despite this, Hal still said no, but he did call her “honey” with uncomfortable regularity.  

Still, even though Jordan rejected her advances, Arisia kept at it.  She even redesigned her costume to be a bit more revealing in an attempt to make her look older, but when trying to pressure Hal into commenting on it, he refused.  At every opportunity, Arisia would try to flirt, pose seductively and fight to show of how mature and independent she was, but considering that Jordan’s ring literally runs on willpower, he continued to reject her advances and even pulled her aside to knock it off.

That SHOULD be the end of it, but Arisa’s desire to be with Hal was so strong that she subconsciously tapped into the power of her ring to physically change her body.  It started off with the occasional spell of dizziness, but when the two were trapped together during a cave in her will to be older manifested itself by the ring literally aging her into an adult.  Wasting no time at all, Arisia tried working the moves on Hal, but he assured her that rockin’ bod or not, he wasn’t interested.  He did however argue that her mind must have matured as well.  This has since confirmed to have just been Arisia pretending to act like an adult though.  Regardless, this seems to be the first indication of Jordan trying to justify his attraction to her.

So despite Hal reiterating that they weren’t going to get together, they did by the end of the issue and their teammates discovered them making out.  This clearly made some members of the corps uncomfortable.  After all, Arisia was far from subtle all these years regarding her crush.  They silently judged Jordan and talked about him behind his back which the couple picked up on.  Heck, Hal straight up mentioned that he didn’t want to be see as a…  Wow book, you are not making it easy to avoid demonetization… I’ll just let you guys read that. (Green Lantern Vol 2 #207 - 1986)  The corps seemed to get over it pretty quickly though with the couple sucking face on a regular basis and sneaking out to get frisky in the woods during a drunken company party.

However, due to a massive depowering of the Central Power Battery, almost all of the Green Lantern Corps was depowered.  Hal kept his ring, Arisia didn’t.  This prompted her to move in with Jordan and the Green Lantern series ended right there, being transitioned into the Action Comics series.

Yeah, slight aside here.  There was a period of time where Action Comics turned into an anthology series featuring a bunch of characters and Superman ended up taking a backseat.  Kind of weird considering that Action Comics is where he got his start and it’s that book that pretty much brought the superhero genre to popularity.  That’s why I also need to apologize in advance for the image quality of this next section.  Since these books didn’t really feature Superman, they haven’t been released digitally and people didn’t bother to properly archive them.

Anyway, while Hal adventured as one of the few remaining Green Lanterns, Arisia ended up becoming the breadwinner of the couple by becoming a model.  Basically, it was just an excuse to dress her up like this…  Remember, she’s still fourteen.  Well that’s not exactly true.  At this point, she was retconned back to being thirteen.  As if that makes things any less creepy.

This relationship ended up lasting for about two years of publication history, but as with many couples, moving in together didn’t quite work out.  They both had their own issues and it certainly didn’t help that Hal’s ex-girlfriend, Carol Ferris, showed up and murdered the wife of his former partner, John Stewart.  There was just a LOT going on and the two eventually broke up and went their separate ways. (Action Comics #620 - 1988)

Arisia would more or less vanish from comics for almost ten years, but she was brought back and revealed to have still been modeling all this time.  But what would DC do with this character now that she’s back?  How about having her get struck on the head and fully regress into a childlike mindset?  Oh and it’s also confirmed that although almost a decade passed in our real world publication history, she was still thirteen in universe.  Because comics. (Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #1 - June 1992)

Now, Arisia is obsessing over Hal once again and it’s made even weirder because she’s written to be a lot more childish going to far as to literally have her playing with toys and throwing temper tantrums.  It’s really weird, but thankfully Hal didn’t take advantage of the situation.  Thank god.  Arisia did end up getting more of her mental capabilities back, but she since couldn’t become a Green Lantern again, she ended up hanging out with Guy Gardner which led to her donning one of the most 90s costumes I’ve ever seen.

Spending time with Guy and company is where Arisia stayed until she was killed by a bad guy named Major Force.  It’s sort of implied that Guy and Arisia had a bit of a thing since before killing her, Major Force claimed that he was killing Gardner’s “sweetheart”.  Plus at her funeral, Guy said he loved her and it doesn’t really seem like it’s a friendly love.  As far as I know, this hasn’t been touched on since so it probably didn’t happen or was just forgotten. (Guy Gardner: Warrior #44 - 2006)

Now the video’s still got some run time left so you know there HAS to be a bit more to it.  Well it turns out that Arisia wasn’t really dead.  She kind of went into a healing coma and was discovered by Hal Jordan alongside a bunch of other thought to be deceased former Green Lanterns.  He saved them and they all got their rings back. (Green Lantern Vol 4 #13 - 2006)

Arisia thanked Hal with a kiss and that seemed to FINALLY be the end of things between them, especially since she was given a new romantic interest in the form of Sodam Yat, a Green Lantern from Daxam who’s almost as strong as Superman.

In this modern era, we haven’t really seen DC talk about this relationship at all despite articles and videos like this one not letting people forget.  I think that’s the smart move an frankly, Arisia’s relationship with Sodam Yat is just a lot more interesting than simply a kid crushing on Hal Jordan.  With DC’s track record though, it’s probably just a matter of time until this is brought up again.

Hey DC!  I know you guys watch my videos sometimes!  Don’t try to deny it, y’all sent me this piece of paper labeling me as an official verified fan.  If you’re watching this, please just let this die.  I’m making this for the shock value.  You guys?  Please keep pretending like this never happened like you did with Supergirl and her horse.