http://io9.com/9-reasons-green-lanterns-are-the-universes-worst-prote-509355854
9 Reasons Green Lanterns Are the Universe's Worst Protectors This is the oath of the Green Lantern Corps: “In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight!” It’s a lot better than “We are terrible at our job of being space cops,” but it’s less accurate, too, unfortunately. In semi-honor of Geoff Johns final Green Lantern comic, coming out today, here are nine reasons we’d be better off having Starsky and Hutch policing the galaxy. 1) They Don’t Discriminate in Their Recruiting Often, discrimination is a bad thing when it comes to job interviews. But the Green Lanterns don’t discriminate on race, species, or sex — but they don’t discriminate on talent, aptitude, mental health, skill level or anything else, wither. Whenever a Green Lantern dies, his/her/its ring flies off an finds a new candidate, whether they want to or not, and whether they’re ready or not. See, the police force applicants to take psych exams before they’re allowed to become cops. The Guardians — the little blue people who created the Green Lantern Corps — are not so careful. Sure, Hal Jordan was a pretty good Green Lantern… at least until he went crazy and personally killed most of the Green Lantern Corps and the Guardians. So that was a bad call, but arguably the Guardians hiring a dude named Sinestro is even worse. They might as have given a power ring to dudes named Nefaria, Darth Sidious, or Evil E. Evilton. Even after Sinestro had tried to kill the Green Lanterns and the Guardians for years, the Guardians gave him another Green Lantern power ring and forced him into the corps — against his will. Good call, guys. SExpand 2) They Have a Weakness to Yellow For almost the entirety of the Green Lantern Corps existence, they have had one weakness — the color yellow. There was an impurity in the giant Green Lantern that powers their rings, so any time the Lanterns tried to manipulate or fight anything colored yellow, they’d be weakened or possibly even completely ineffective. Imagine if regular cops couldn’t arrest people wearing yellow. Not only would this be ridiculously inefficient, every bad guy on the planet would be wearing yellow cardigans before the week was out. It’s ridiculous that of all the DC universe’ bad guys, only Sinestro figured this out... eventually. 3) They Have Terrible Incarceration Policies That giant lantern/battery I mentioned that powers all the rings? Well, the Guardians of the Universe decided to store Parallax, the embodiment of the yellow emotion of fear, and one of the most powerful and evilest beings in the universe, in that giant lantern. It’s the reason the Green Lanterns’ rings were so weak against yellow, because Parallax was tainting their entire power supply from the inside. Now, I know this isn’t exactly like jailing a criminal inside the police armory, but I still wonder why the Guardians chose to incarcerate the gravest enemy inside their space police’s power supply as opposed to, say, a small room next to their space police’s power supply, of even any other single place in the goddamned universe. SExpand 4) The Guardians Are the Worst The Guardians of the Universe are very devoted to guarding the universe, as their name might suggest. However, they are fucking terrible at their jobs. Besides the number of genocidal maniacs that manages to end up in the Green Lantern Corps, the Lanterns were actually the Guardians’ second attempt to make a space police force, and the first was even worse — a group of robots called the Manhunters, who of course decided that every single organic life form needed to die. Recently, the Guardians realized the Green Lanterns were also flawed (no kidding) and decide to make a new, Third Army, which was less interested in keeping the peace as much as it was destroying the existing Green Lantern Corps, and killing or recruiting (by parasitically taking over their minds) any soul who got in their way. Oh, the and Guardians created the Third Army out of a dude called the First Lantern, a being who taught the Guardians about the Emotional Spectrum until they imprisoned him for millions of years. So they made their army out of a supremely powerful being who hated the Guardians and everything they’d ever created. Good call there, guys. 5) They Hired a Squirrel One of the Green Lantern Corps members was an alien squirrel named Ch’p. He was killed when a truck ran over him. This is why police officers do not deputize squirrels. 6) They’re Way Too Committed to The Lantern Motif The name Green Lantern strikes fear into the hearts of evil-doers every where… but also some confusion. This is because the Green Lanterns almost never, ever carry lanterns around — they have rings. But they’re not called Green Rings, they’re called Green Lanterns. The name comes from the Lanterns they use to charge the rings, which they seldom carry around in the same way you don’t bring your cellphone charger with you every single time you leave the house. Technically, the Green Lanterns are calling themselves “Magic Ring Extension Cords Corps.” 7) They’re Not Even the Noblest Color on the Emotional Color Spectrum One of Geoff Johns’ greatest accomplishments was adding powers and leagues assigned to each color in the ROYGBIV scale, meaning green was no longer some arbitrary color choice the universe really liked, but just one of many. Unfortunately, this means the Green Lantern Corps — powered by the “green” emotion of willpower (don’t ask) — aren’t technically good guys anymore, at least when compared to the Blue Lanterns (hope), the Indigo Tribe (compassion) and the White Lanterns (life). If the universe had a police force, wouldn’t you rather them be led by compassion instead of willpower? 8) Hal Jordan Had Sex with a 14-Year-Old Girl In all fairness, Arisia is an alien who is over 250 Earth years old. But on her home planet, she is merely 14, and she look, acts and thinks like a teenager. Gross. SExpand 9) No, Seriously, the Guardians Are the Worst Again, the Guardians have appointed themselves as the people in charge of the universe, and as such they have absolutely zero oversight. That’s how all the above stuff managed to happen on their watch, and often with their express approval. But here’s more horrible shit they decided whil osteinbly trying to keep the peace in the galaxy: • Destroying all magic and magic-using people in the universe • Hiding and ignoring the prophecy about the Black Lanterns, thus dooming many, many people who were unprepared for the attack • Ceding the safety of entire star systems because of politics • Left the most evil being in the galaxy, Darkseid, alone, because it was too hard to defeat him, and then destroyed all records of them getting their ass kicked • Exiled Hal Jordan for an entire year because he was protecting Earth “too much” And that’s not counting Guardians like Scar, who went crazy and tried to help bad guys like Nekron destroy all life in the universe. At the moment, the Guardians aren’t even just unsympathetic, they’re actually evil, what with their “trying to kill their own police force” business. Thanks for “protecting” the universe, guys. 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