Emerald Fallout: the Conclusion

At the end of issue 20, Hal as Parallax had just shown up in a humdinger of a cliffhanger. And to open issue #21, we have the following splash page:



Hoohah! That's what I call getting a story off to a real bang. Hal/Parallax then proceeds to go down and manhandle poor Arisia for a while before he slaps Alan Scott around. He drags them off to join the rest of the JLA, and is busy justifying his actions to himself.

The amazing thing about this book, is that just about EVERY SINGLE PAGE is a magnificent splash page. Ordinarily this wouldn't be my favorite way to tell a story, but for this particular tale, it works, and works well.

As Hal is communing with himself, who but Guy should body-slam him from behind, because impaling somebody can sometimes not be enough. Guy is prettty pissed off by now, and makes his displeasure known to Hal/Parallax quite graphically. There is a charming bit of dialogue where Guy points out that Hal was always tring to be the Boy Scout, and doing right, and therefore was always in danger of going postal and ending up with ulcers. He then points out that, "Well, Hal ol' buddy...Guy Gardner ain't got no ulcers!"

For some reason, Hal is more upset by Guy's insults than by getting clocked. The scary thing is, that Hal is quite honestly convinced that what he is doing is completely justified, and everything would be ok, if people would just stop trying to stop him. He's really sorry that he has to kill them, but it is their own fault.

Guy of course isn't buying this, and calls him a murdering psycho, so Hal/Parallax loses his temper and ABSORBS the yellow ring that Guy stole from Sinestro's corpse way back when. Hal HAS to take his power, he wants Guy to warn everyone, and tell them that he doesn't want to harm anyone, as long as he gets his own way. Then he'll make everything right again. He then strips the armor off of Guy and sends him back to earth, where he ends up in yet another coma. Guy must hold the record in the DCU for the number of comas.

Short, sweet and very very nasty. Mitch Byrd's art is great, and Beau's writing is just right. You feel that Hal really is completely nuts, and yet I have a bit of sympathy for him, he really can't understand why everybody is mad at him. Yeah, he killed a few people, but they MADE him do it. Guy of course is just outraged. Being Guy, the fact that Hal/Parallax could rip him into tiny pieces with a thought doesn't even slow him down. If you are being a twit, Guy will tell you so.

Thank goodness for the yellow space bug.