Green Lantern’s ring was the most powerful weapon in the universe except against the color yellow. I’m not kidding, his weakness was the color yellow. You might think he’d try to keep something like that secret, but there is nothing Green Lantern liked to talk about more. He’d wave a fist at the bad guys and shout, “Justice will prevail today, villains! Unless you learn that my power energy cannot affect that which is yellow!” And to make Green Lantern the most unlucky person in the universe, his nemesis Sinestro had a ring that made things that were yellow. That’s like twin brothers fighting, only one gets baseball bat with spikes and has a giant purple head.
Green Lantern got his super ring when a navy bean-headed alien crash landed on Earth and handed it to him right before he died. I guess in space no one makes out a will. When you think you’re about to die, you pick up a phone book and give everything you own to whatever name your finger lands on. And if you’re handing over a potentially universe-threatening weapon, even better that it goes to a randomly selected stranger!
Serious Fact: I keep a white board by my VCR, and marked down every time Green Lantern’s powers worked against yellow. Out of 30 episodes where Green Lantern appeared, his powers worked against the color yellow 24 times. In fact, in 3 episodes, the stuff he made was yellow already. It had to be something wrong with my TV, since I figured if you made a yellow rocket that couldn’t touch the color yellow, the world would explode. No, my TV was fine. Either the guys who colored the show had all their green markers dry up, or they got hammered before they started.
The ring could make anything he could think of which usually wasn’t much. Once or twice he’d go crazy with it and if he needed to knock something over, he’d create himself a crazy robot bulldozer and a viking hard hat, but most days he would just shoot green energy at the thing until it fell over. The Wonder Twins may have sucked, but when they needed to knock something over, they never took it out the easy way. At their most sensical, they’d turn into a giant lobster (with water backpack) or a rhino squid (in ice belt). Green Lantern would punch people with things as uncreative as a giant hand. He had to know kids were watching; he could have tried harder to make it more interesting. Like a giant hand with breasts or a talking hamburger.
 It’s a pretty common assumption that Batman and Robin were lovers, but Batman at least tried to hide it. He put a little belt on Robin so it looked like he was a fellow crime fighter, not just some kid he puts his tongue in when there’s no evil to punch. Kids watching the show could defend him. They could tell their parents, “No, look. Robin has his own crime belt. I told you he wasn’t his boyfriend.” Green Lantern wasn’t so clever. Kairo had nothing that indicated he should be fighting for justice, and spent most of his time with his crotch firmly pressed against Green Lantern’s ass. While we’re talking about it, I don’t think Aquaman and Aqualad were romantic, but only because it’s impossible to imagine Aquaman getting laid by anyone. |
Green Lantern’s sidekick was the coolest. The cartoon called him “Hal Jordan’s Venutian helper.” He was a little boy from Venus named Kairo and he never did anything other than get captured. He was real good at that, though.
He could get captured 8 times during a four minute episode. He would already be tied up by one villain and a new villain would stop by just to tie him up some more and have his henchmen throw a net on him. Then he’d wander into an open well filled with scorpions. A few hours alone, and Kairo would have been dead with or without evil’s help. The other Super Friends all had sidekicks that were a tiny bit better than useless. Robin had bat-shaped tubes of paste he could throw, Hawkman’s bird could scream and peck, Aqualad had a seahorse and a walrus, and Kid Flash could run fast. Kairo had a pantsuit and his ears came to a point. Those are the exact same powers as a housepainter that grew up underneath power lines.
Kairo didn’t care. He never got his own flying saucer or invisible jetski or any type of weapon. You know how he travelled? He actually had to ride Green Lantern’s ass through space. Of all the heroes in the universe, Green Lantern’s the only one that can make a motorcycle with his mind. Kairo should have been the last sidekick that needed to resort to a piggyback ride. And when they got to other planets, Green Lantern didn’t make him a green boomerang. Kairo had to pick a fight with nothing but a vacant smile. Hey, atomic monster. Try a taste of Kairo’s innocent sense of well being!
I don’t know how Green Lantern recruited him. Kairo was probably selling candy bars door-to-door, and after Green Lantern bought 12 cases, he received the bonus prize, “Spend a day the rest of your life with Kairo!”
