Green Lantern Corps - No Fear or No Intelligence?

In the latest issue of Green Lantern Corps, there was a very shocking moment near the end. A lot of people, including Kirk in his Weekly Crisis Reviews and Ryan in his Power Rankings, seemed to like it a lot. Me? I was just a little bit appalled at stupidity of the situation. But before I go on, if you haven't read the issue, do not keep reading, do not hit the jump for more, do not pass go, do not collect $200, since it's a pretty big spoiler.

If you have read the issue, or if you just don't care, hit the jump for more.

Now, Green Lanterns are not known for being the brightest crayon in the box. Hal Jordan has a long history of acting brashly and stupidly, like in the recent issue of Blackest Night where he decided that the safety of his former lover Carol Ferris was more important than that of the whole Earth, among many other things. Guy Gardner has the tendency to antagonize everyone, including Batman who one-punched him that one time. John Stewart caused a whole planet to die because he was being cocky. So when I saw the death of Kyle Rayner, all I could think of was "What a dumbass!".

Here's how the scene worked: the Black Lanterns have cracked open Alpha Lantern Chaselon, and have taken out the Greent Lantern battery he has inside of him. Kyle is the closest one, so he takes the battery, which is about to explode, away from them and goes flying up.

Eventually the battery does explode, taking out (seemingly) every Black Lantern that was in Oa, and also kills Kyle, who was at the center of the explosion. Before his death, he says goodbye to Soranik and Guy, in a very heartfelt scene.

Which is all well and good, until you realize one thing: did Kyle completely forget he has a freaking magic ring that can do anything he wishes?

Why did he fly up there with the battery himself? He could have just used his ring to elevate it until a certain point, and let it explode when he was at a safe distance. It's not like the Black Lanterns were following him anyway, earlier in the issue they made a point that they were ignoring the Green Lanterns in favor of attacking the central battery, and if the explosion was big enough to take out every Black Lantern in Oa, there was no need for him to be extremely accurate into where the explosion needed to happen.

And to make matters worse, he created a dome which stopped the Black Lanterns from escaping, but he completely forgot to raise a protective shell of his own? You figure that would be one of the things at the top of the "To-Do" list when you are carrying a bomb in your arms and being attacked from all sides by unstoppable killing machines.

And this is without mentioning the fact that up until that point, the Green Lantern's power hadn't been very effective in killing the Black Lanterns, Kyle basically sacrificed himself without knowing if his gamble would work or not. Hell, for all we know, the next issue is just going to be the Black Lanterns regenerating and laughing that stupid Green Lantern's pointless suicide. And there's a bunch of Black Lantern rings hovering over the body of Kyle as the issue ends, so to make matters worse, he's probably added one more soldier to the enemy's army.

Maybe the Guardians should start looking into people with some intelligence, instead of the ability to overcome great fear. Anyway, it's not like I'm going to drop this book or anything, as I enjoyed the rest of it very much, but the stupidity of the situation stole away from the emotional impact it was supposed to have on me. Add the fact that Blackest Night is all about reviving dead superheroes from the grave, and this death didn't resonate a whole lot with me. But for all I know, I'm in the minority in this one, as most people seemed to have enjoyed it. What did you think? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

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