Oh that Wacky Sinestro

Ok...this time, Sinestro, you've Gone Too Far! In Green Lantern #52 (Thank you, Showcase #3!) which teams up Hal Jordan, Alan Scott AND Doiby Dickles! A matchup made in heaven. Not to mention Pieface, his wife, Doiby's Princess AND Doiby's beloved taxi-cab Goitrude. What really boggles my mind, is that everyone refers to the taxi specifically as Goitrude...not Gertrude.

There is a lot going on, very little of which makes much sense, but By God, the butt-shots are plentiful and lovingly rendered. Especially Alan's which I find rather surprising. Usually when you wear a cape, you don't get great pans of your buttocks, but Alan's cape sure seems to blow straight out from his shoulders a lot. A LOT!

So, Tom "Pieface" Kalmaku is mooning over a letter from Hal. He even calls him the Emerald Gladiator for heaven's sake. Alan and Hal are having dinner together and whispering a lot. for some reason, they decide that they are going to send Doiby his beloved taxi, as a present for his first wedding anniversary to the Princess. A charming thought indeed...except it has been stolen! Stolen, while leaving Alan's deluxe sportscare alongside of it, untouched! It probably gets better gas mileage.

Actually it hasn't been stolen at all, it's driving around...by itself! Picking up and abetting bank robbers! Oh, Goitrude, what has come over you? Not only is Goitrude up to no good, but she manages to beat both Hal and Alan by flashing on her high beams and blinding them! Alan immediately sends out an urgent message to good ol' Doiby who receives it on his Super-Galactic-Ring Reciever! He rushes back to earth to help, and Alan and Hal have to break the bad news to him. Goitrude has gone...BAD!

At this point I am having convulsions. John Broome was a genius! A MAD genius, but a genius nevertheless.

Finally, it is revealed...Goitrude has actually been taken over by none other than Sinestro! Just so that nobody can fail to realize just what a rat Sinestro is, there is a lovely Editor's Note box in the bottom corner of the panel, that says "The renegade Green Lantern, who has always stood in these pages as the very personification of EVIL!" Goitrude is destroyed (horrors!), Doiby, Hal and Alan are paralyzed, and Sinestro flies off with his band of ...bank robbers? Is it me, or is Sinestro more or less just slumming here? It's hard to take over the universe with henchmen of this caliber.

On far-off Oa, the Guardians are standing around congratulating themselves about how the Power Battery is working just perfectly, and how NOTHING could possibly go wrong. Cue the ominous music at this point. For, behold! The battery has...vanished, and Sinestro's giant head is now taunting the Guardians! An emergency is called, all hands to the deck! Hal finally figures out how to use his magnificent will-power to free himself! Doiby in the meantime uses his Space-Scooter tool kit, to create a Dimension Changer, so that they can pursue Sinestro to his alternate dimension (Qward?) Doiby even manages to get there ahead of anybody, and discovers Sinestro and the Battery. Sinestro then refers to Doiby as "the Green Lantern's fatso friend", which is rather harsh of him.

Hal and Alan eventually show up and defeat Sinestro's minions, who have been charging their rings at the purloined Great Battery. Oddly enough, they are all wearing outfits that resemble Sinestro's and look eerily like the most recent versions of the Sinestro Corps! Sinestro's had this idea for a looooooong time.

Blah blah blah, Alan and Hal defeat the bad guys, beat up Sinestro, and return him and the Power Battery to Oa. Then Alan recreates Goitrude for Doiby, but as a miniature car model. Doiby bursts into tears, Alan and Hal congratulae each other in a properly manly fashion, and Pieface smirks and closes the pages of another story from his Green Lantern Case book. All of which begs the question...exactly WHAT was it that Pieface was smoking, while he was writing all of this down? Or was he just high on jet fumes?

The world may never know.