Post by HoM on Feb 13, 2017 15:53:40 GMT -5
Previously, in GREEN LANTERN CORPS…
After a violent, horrifying resurrection, BLACK HAND stalked the shadows of America, murdering countless innocents while he searched for HAL JORDAN, the retired former Green Lantern of Earth.
Despite their best efforts, HAND remained hidden, his current undead state somehow keeping him untraceable! All the authorities could do is deal with the aftermath, all the while knowing an shambling boogeyman with murder on his mind walks the streets, awaiting his next victim…
During all this, JOHN STEWART and HANK HENSHAW were sent hurtling into the universe of Earth-3, where the diabolical POWER RING created his own VOLTHOOM CORPS, a legion of ring-slingers that took all the Green Lanterns’ prowess to take down!
With their success came thousands of Green Lantern power rings without bearers, giving Earth-1’s Corps a chance at increasing their numbers, but thanks to an Earth-3 Kryptonian weapon, a new threat was borne from HENSHAW’s genetic imprint… the CYBORG-ULTRAMAN, who escaped through the multiverse to parts unknown--!
Meanwhile, GUY GARDNER and THAAL SINESTRO searched for weapons capable of helping in the ongoing war of attrition with PARALLAX and his EFFIGIES, but have so far found themselves coming up empty handed.
Finally, HAL JORDAN and KYLE RAYNER are MIA, with no trace or trail to help in the search for them. Their friends don’t even know if they’re still alive, and with BLACK HAND on the loose, even if the former still lives, it might not be for long…
Welcome back to the ongoing adventures of the GREEN LANTERN CORPS!
The tinny radio sat in the other room played old love ballads. Their platitudes amused the listener, the steady, un-obnoxious rhythm keeping him settled as he worked to repair the old fob watch he’d found at the garage sale down the street earlier in the day. He was content with his efforts, so engrossed in them that he didn’t hear the lock mechanism on the back door to his small home fizzle away.
Next to the front door was the badge he wore to work at the mini-mart. ‘Hello, I’m Neal! How can I help today?’. In most cases, they would have changed his name when he went into witness protection, but with his already fragmented psyche, they allowed him to keep the name. Not that many knew the face behind the mask, not that many people knew that Neal Emerson had once been known as Doctor Polaris.
What Neal didn’t hear, he soon smelt, as a man shuffled behind him, stinking of something vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn’t place. His curiosity caused him to turn without thinking about what might have caused the smell, why it hadn’t been in his workshop before… He was midway through his question before he saw the source. “What is that--?”
Black Hand smiled, decay scabbed lips and blackened, rotted teeth barred.
“Nnnaaa--!”
Neal scrambled backwards, swiping his project off his desk, his tools flying off with it, panic rushing through his body.
“No, no, what do you-- I’m not-- I’m not--”
Hand stepped forward and put a finger against Neal’s lips. A delicate gesture in most contexts, but a horrifying one for his victim. The stench of human rot filled Neal’s nostrils, and in his struggle to escape he pushed forward, causing the nail on Black Hand’s fingertip to peel off.
The villain’s unwashed hands were caked with blood and other grim substances up to the elbows, and he wore a black hoody that, if you removed it, would have revealed a gaunt, hollowed out chest. He was rot. He was decay. He was a walking dead man, and the only suggestion of the cause was the unearthly glow at his cataract-sheened eyes.
“I’m not him anymore, William. I’m not. I got better. The doctors, they cured me of him. He doesn’t come out. I’m monitored, the doctors, the police, they, they… I don’t want to be bad again,” whispered Neal, tears streaming down his face, snot running from his nose.
Black Hand pushed Neal over and knelt on top of him, pinning his arms down at the shoulder with his knees. He then wiped his grimy hands across Neal’s shirt, shaking his head all the while. He almost looked disappointed.
“I’m not-- I’m not him anymore-- please,” gibbered Neal.
Hand drove his hand through Neal Emerson’s chest, clutched his heart, then yanked it out in one, vile motion. Blood spurted across the floor, over Hand’s hoody, but he didn’t care. He began to devour the heart like he was a starving child with no self-control. He bit and he chewed and he ground his teeth together, savouring the taste of human flesh as it slithered down his oesophagus and into his once barren belly.
Once he had finished his feast he shuffled back to his feet, then looked down at the still-warm body of the man once known as Doctor Polaris. He wiped the blood from his mouth, and his horrid smile returned to his lips.
Behind Hand, a woman gagged and vomited, unable to hold her stomach at the sight before her. She whispered a prayer, an apology, but there came no answer. She felt his eyes on her, and she saw him smile even wider, the corners of his mouth tearing like wet paper.
“Wh-why are y-you doing this, Will?” she asked, wiping her mouth of the traces of sick left there.
Hand put a finger to his lips and shushed her. All would be revealed.
Issue Seventy: "…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead”
Guy Gardner excused himself from the science chambers in the Citadel and found a side room. He wasn’t used to receiving phone calls while he was in space. Not many people had his number, and not many had the inclination to use it when they did.
He knew that sometimes he was an ass, and it wasn’t a decision that haunted him, but he sometimes wondered what it would be like to text somebody, to call someone and see if they wanted to grab a beer, rather than stumbling into intergalactic bars with whichever Green Lantern was closest at the time. When was the last time he’d got laid? That was a good question. He remembered Arisia, then dismissed the recollection. He didn’t regret their decision to break up, but he wasn’t what she needed. But what did he need?
“Guy?”
Gardner recognised the voice of his sister immediately. “Glory? What’s going on? It’s been ages.”
And he regretted that, but his siblings and he were never particular close. Gloria was his little sister, and he’d do anything for her, but their lives had diverged when they were teens. His older brother was no better. Gerard was an ass, and if anything, it just proved to Guy that his asshole-ness was genetic.
She sounded resigned, and a little bit sad. She rarely had patience for Guy’s bullshit, and was known for cutting to the chase in her dealings with him. “Yeah, yeah, I know. You’ve been busy being whatever it is you are. Space cop or whatever. But look, I need you back here. There’s… well, just get home quick, okay? I think it’s… Green Lantern business, or something?”
“Yeah, sure, of course,” said Guy.
“Okay. Good. See you soon, big brother.”
The interstellar phone call ended and Guy stared at his ring. “‘Big brother’,” he repeated. He hadn’t been called that in years. Something really was wrong.
Gardner returned to the science room, where Hank Henshaw, John Stewart, Thaal Sinestro and Katma Tui were observing the current power ring tests. A few days ago, Hank and John had returned from a parallel dimension along with a truckload of power rings, created when an evil double of the latter sent the duplication protocols into overdrive in the hope of creating his own Corps*.
Of course, Hank and John had saved the day. Routed this new Corps before they could be a threat, but that left these power rings to be dealt with. All scans confirmed that there was no trace left of the entity known as Volthoom inside them, and the Green Lantern Corps were a shade of their former self ever since Evil Star engineered the power drain that left every ring powerless across the galaxy*.
Thousands died. Rings were lost in the void without a trace of energy left for recall. The Corps had managed to recover some, but not all. Did they put these rings into service? Or did they hold off, carry out more tests to ensure that whatever evil influence once inside them was gone?
Stewart turned back when he saw Guy return, and he could immediately tell something was up. “Guy?”
“I gotta head back to Earth. Family stuff. Uh, if that’s all right?”
Sinestro nodded. “Acceptable, Gardner. Do what you need to do.”
“You don’t need all of us for this; you have our ring telemetries and debrief data. We’ll head back to 2814,” said John.
“You guys go ahead, these diagnostics are going to run for days,” said Katma.
John thanked her with a nod, then said, “call us if you need us.”
“Likewise,” replied Sinestro. He still hadn’t looked back at them.
Hank watched the exchange happen and realised that there was something going on, but he didn’t question it. He followed Guy and John out, then lifted off when they left orbit, before finally asking, “wanna fill me in, boys?”
“Nothing. Everything’s fine. Just gotta get home,” said Guy.
“Guy, something’s up and that’s fine. But you were polite to Thaal back there, so I’m concerned,” said John.
“Godammit, Johnny-- if I wanted your damn help I’d--” The outburst came out of him before he could clamp down on it, but he shook it off and exhaled. “M’sorry. My sister got in touch. Something’s up.”
“You have a sister? That’s a surprise,” said Hank.
“Why’s that, Spaceman?”
Hank smirked. “Didn’t think you were born of man, Warrior. Thought you just grouched into existence.”
“Ha, ha, funny. Nah, I got a mom and dad like all the rest of yous. Well, just pops now. Mom passed away before the ring. But I got a brother and a sister. Both cops, just like my dad was. Like he wanted me to be, but I went into the air force instead. Yet another point of contention between him and me. And for the first time in years, lil’ sis gave me a call. So, I go running. You know how it is?”
Hank nodded, no trace of amusement on his face. “I got a sister, man. I get it.”
“Christ, we don’t talk much about our personal lives, do we?” said John.
He’d learned more about his two comrades in the past thirty seconds than he had over the last couple of years. Hank had a sister? News to him. And the deep dive into Guy’s personal history? Completely new information.
“No reason to. Life’s green, isn’t it? That’s all that really matter, nowadays,” said Guy.
“Subluminal tunnel up ahead,” said Hank, his words followed by their rings prepping for immediate interstellar travel.
“Not everything, Guy. You need a hand, you call us. We’ll be there in a heartbeat,” said John.
Before he entered the subluminal tunnel, Hank looked back and shrugged. “Speak for yourself.”
Guy headed to his sister’s place while Hank and John went in the other direction, picking up on Earth as best they could since they’d last left for space. He kept himself invisible on approach, no need to draw attention to himself, then shifted into his civvies when he landed on the long stretch of street that would lead him to his sister’s home.
He knocked on the door, quiet at first, then regretted his passivity immediately and followed it up with a thumping that he also felt was over the top and completely unnecessary. Why had this whole thing thrown him for a loop?
The door opened and Gloria checked it for damage. “Jeez, we just repainted this, you mook.”
Guy scratched the back of his head sheepishly. “Sorry, Glory. I, well, you know--”
“Get in here, you lump,” said Gloria, ushering him inside.
He did as he was told and she closed the door after him. They stood in silence in the hallway for a few seconds as she looked him up and down. Finally, nodding, she said, “go on, then. Show us your badge.”
“What?”
She took a small wallet from her jeans and flipped it open, showing off her detective’s badge and police ID. “You’re a cop now, ain’t ya? C’mon. I made detective, you’re, what, cosmic beat cop?”
“You made detective? That’s great news, kiddo,” said Guy. He held out his hand and she gripped his fingers, examining the ring on his fingers. “I… I didn’t know, I wish I had, I woulda…”
Gloria released his hand then shook her head. “Made an appearance like you did academy graduation? Fuck off, Guy; you turned up drunk and made a scene, I ain’t repeating that, am I? I get enough of that from pops.”
“Gloria… I’m not…”
“I don’t want nothing to do with this whole thing, y’hear? All this cosmic nonsense, it ain’t right. Yet it comes to my doorstep, and I have to talk to you. If this is some attempt to, I dunno, reconciliation, it’s… well, fine. You’re here now. Here it is.”
She held up a small evidence bag containing a note. A location. A time. And a name. Two names in fact, and a sign off.
“Hell’s this?” asked Guy.
“Slipped under my door yesterday morning. Who’s ‘Pathfinder’?”
Guy’s brow creased. Pathfinder was an informant that had fed the Justice League intel. He’d led that team to a cache of Apokoliptikan weaponry*, and John had given him the lowdown when they’d next spoken. Why would this mook get in touch with him?
“I don’t know, kid. But look at this… this is a location, and these names… Neal Emerson… that’s…” He tried to pluck the name from his memory. Some guy that Highball had once faced…*
“Doctor Polaris, magnetic powers. I made some calls, and apparently he’s rehabilitated and relocated, away from trouble. You know what I think this?” She jabbed the location and time, “I think this is where they’ve holed him up. Why would anyone want you to have this information, Guy?”
“I don’t know. But I intend to find out, yeah? Thanks for this, Glory. I owe you,” said Guy.
“No, no, not like that, you don’t. I don’t want people thinking they can get to me through you. Plenty of people have died like that. You need to think this through. If people start-- hell, if aliens start thinking that they can go through me to get to you, I ain’t happy. So sort this. Right?”
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” said Guy.
Gloria shook her head then nodded, coming to an agreement after the argument in her head. “Right. Good. Good.”
“And… congratulations, I guess,” said Guy.
“For what?” said Gloria.
“We both got rings on our fingers,” said Guy, motioning to her ring-finger where a wedding band sat comfortable. “And your ID, it don’t say Gardner. So, congratulations. I’m sorry I missed the wedding.”
Gloria looked at her own hand and then back at her brother. “Guy…”
Guy exhaled, sad, then headed back toward the front door. “I ain’t him anymore. I’m not the man you knew when I was younger and stupider. I’m not. Just… I want you to know that. I’m not gonna become dad.”
He phased out the front door and turned invisible on his exit. She stared at where he had been, then rubbed her wedding band, sadly.
Hank and John had decided to have a quick drink before parting ways, and the former was silent after they sat, something hanging between them that the latter couldn’t place.
“Okay, spill,” said John.
Hank looked up from his bottle of ale, immediately pausing his tearing of the ornate label. “Hmm?”
“Ever since landed back in… this reality… you’ve been quiet. Something to do with that Cyborg-Ultraman bastard, or is it something else?” asked John.
Hank shrugged. They’d sent out an all-points-galactic-bulletin for the cybernetic entity. People were warned that he resembled Superman, but his powers were unlike anything they’d faced before. There were no reports back, so he had either gone to ground, or he had never arrived back in this reality. Had Henshaw created a threat to the multiverse that he’d never see again, or would this monster, spliced with his genetic profile, come back and haunt him?
“That hospital planet put me straight. Screwed my head back on and helped me overcome some of the demons lurking up here,” said Hank, jabbing his temple.
“Yeah, you said. You did good work when we were--”
Hank held up his hand. “Hell of a final session. Like I said before. Mongul’s kids. That’s immersion therapy, for sure*. But, yeah, Dolchechk died in the crossfire. And he told me something before he died. Put something in my ring to prove his point. He told me about Alice.”
There were parts of the story Hank would omit. The fact he slept with Alice Brand, the former soldier who worked with Stewart back in his marine days. She was damaged, but so was Hank. It was her support, her words of encouragement, along with him finding what made him worthy of the Green Lantern ring in the first place, that allowed him to reclaim it and help save the day. It was the connection he had with her helped ground him amongst the demons that crawled inside his headspace. But that wasn’t important. What was important was the fact that she had died*, and now she was alive.
“Ah,” said John. He took a swig from his own bottle. “So. You know.”
“I do. She died. You somehow uploaded her consciousness to your ring then downloaded it into a clone body. That’s… a big thing you did without telling anybody.”
John nodded. “Yeah. But it was nobody’s business but mine. She deserved a second chance.”
“Everybody does; that’s why you dropped me off there, wasn’t it?” said Henshaw.
John finished his drink. “You really want to have this conversation now?”
“No, John. I never wanted to have this conversation. But hey. We’re here, aren’t we?”
John almost laughed. “I guess we are.”
“So?”
“I lost friends, Hank. And you forget, I’ve died once before*, same as you**. I came back, and now I know that… well. The ring is capable of wonders, isn’t it? Miracles? I think that… with the Guardians gone, the gloves are off. If… we fail… maybe there’s a bigger safety net than ever before. Maybe nobody has to die.”
Hank pushed his bottle away from himself. “Are you listening to yourself, John?”
“I sound like a crazy person. I know. But I managed it. I helped bring a friend back from the dead. Sinestro helped me come back from the dead. There are… the rules are changing.”
“If you become some mad man with a penchant for resurrecting dead people, I sweat to god…” started Hank. He picked up his bottle, and took a swig. “…No, look. Listen. Whatever. You’re a good man. One of the best. Saved my life when it was on the brink. You need to be careful, but you know that. We’re Green Lanterns. We do the impossible. And if… if it comes down to it, I’ve got your back, okay? But let’s not be on the wrong side of history with this. You need to be careful, I need to be careful, and--”
Guy’s voice interrupted them. <Boys, I need a hand. We need to go to Coast City.>
Hank laughed. “Right, I guess that’s that tabled then.”
John considered the last five minutes. “Hank, I’m not a lunatic. I’m not going mad with power. But I appreciate you saying all that. Checks and balances, right?”
“Right. Now, Guy’s been weird since this morning, so let’s go help him before he blows his top,” said Hank.
Stood in the back garden of the dinky house his agents were currently swarming around, King Faraday felt the itch to smoke a cigarette. He’d not done so for a while, not since he lost his job as the head of the Department for Extranormal Operations, and he intended to keep it that way. He was FBI now, and that meant there was more red tape to go through for anything, and he was trying his best to keep his head above the ever-rising water that flooded his life.
“Then again, maybe I could use a smoke…”
He looked up in disgust when an emerald light seeped into his line of vision. He was even more disgusted for the source of the light to be Guy, who landed with a thud next to the FBI agent.
“No one asked you to be here, Lantern. So why the appearance?” he asked.
“Where’s Polaris?” said Guy.
“How the hell do you… oh, you got your ways, don’t you? Always did, the two of you,” said King.
“I’d wave a white flag if my ring could generate one, but I don’t think you’d be remotely amused. Someone sent a note to my sister’s, Faraday. Something about Polaris. So, where is he?”
Faraday didn’t respond. Instead, he beckoned Guy forward, into the house, and past the swarm of FBI officials that were working the scene. The rooms had been picked clean, until they reached the basement, where the stench of rotting meat and recent blood spillage filled the air.
“The techs have measured at least ten pints of his blood on the floor. There’s no body. I think we know whose MO this is,” said Faraday.
Gardner could follow. “Black Hand.”
“Oddest thing though. Back here, by the stairwell. You see that?”
Faraday pointed to a dried pool of something that Guy felt in his gut was vomit.
“Black Hand is dead. He barely functions like a human being would. He wouldn’t-- couldn’t-- be sick. And it’s not like his actions would make him sick. He’s got an accomplice?”
“A hostage,” said Faraday.
“Who?”
“His older sister. The last surviving member of the Hand family, saved from murder at his hands by the fact she moved out the family home at eighteen-- a few months before he went on his killing spree.”
“My God…” whispered Guy.
“It gets worse. The sister? Priscilla Turner? She vanished from hospital two months ago. She’s got breast cancer, Gardner. Terminal. She was getting chemo when the cameras all shorted out and a fire alarm was pulled. In the commotion, she vanished, and she’s not been seen since.”
“You think Hand has been dragging her from murder to murder? To what end?”
Faraday grumbled under his breath, then sighed. “C’mere. Got something to show you.”
He led Gardner back upstairs and out onto the drive where an unmarked van was parked. He opened the doors, and barked an order at the four agents inside. There were computers lining every wall, paperwork on the tables, and a surprising amount of space used up for such a small vehicle. “Everyone out! Everyone!”
“Sir?” said one of the FBI’s finest, grabbing his stuff.
Faraday shook his head. “You heard, son. Get out.”
The four agents inside were left outside in the cold, while Faraday closed the doors to the van, sealing Guy and himself inside. He typed something on the computer nearest to him, and an array of information appeared on the screens.
The largest image was a map of North America, and numerous red dots in a straight line that pointed toward their current position in Reseda. Faraday leaned back in his chair and looked at Gardner, who was trying to figure out what it meant.
“What is this? Are those?”
“Murders. But more specifically, murders wherein the victims were supervillains. Or, we suspect there were murders. You know what they say about needing a body for it to be a murder? The MOs of each of these scenes is exactly the same. An entire body’s worth of blood spilled and no corpse. The blood matches that of criminals who have… well… here’s where it gets ugly… criminals who have had dealings with Green Lanterns.”
“You’re kidding,” said Guy.
“I don’t joke about this stuff, Gardner. Your boy Hal Jordan may not have been on Earth much, but he made enough enemies to count. Folks like Doctor Polaris, Black Hand, the Masters of Disaster. You don’t read much about their dealings, but they fought, they lost, and Jordan ended up looking like a star. And now? They’re all dead. Well, more accurately, missing, presumed dead. We’ll know more when we find their god damn bodies..”
“So you think Black Hand is killing Hal’s enemies?” said Guy.
“Yeah, that’s what we’re thinking. I don’t know what he’s doing with the bodies, but I can guess… and I think he’s making his sister watch,” said Faraday, shivering.
“And what are these? The black dots between each crime scene?” said Guy, pointing at the screen.
“Grave desecrations. Have you been on Earth recently, Gardner?”
“Not… really…” admitted Guy.
“Yeah, well ever since Black Hand came back on the scene, every graveyard between right here,” King pointed at their current location in Reseda, “and where he came back,” he pointed at San Francisco, where Guy remembered the work of the scientists at the Steadborne Stack regarding medical advancements*, “has been the victim of grave robberies. Corpses are going missing.”
“But this started in Coast City,” said Guy, jabbing his finger at the screen. “Why aren’t there any desecrations there… oh.”
It clicked.
Faraday nodded slowly. “You see it?”
“It’s an arrow. A straight line. He’s going back. He’s headed back to Coast City.”
“With tens of thousands of dead bodies with him. Beyond the fact we don’t know what he does with the bodies, the fact he has them is a public health nightmare waiting to happen. Think of the diseases he could spread. We have no idea how he’s transporting them, we have no idea what he’s doing with them.”
“Hand came back from the dead once,” said Guy.
“And now you’re thinking…” started King.
“…He could be planning on bringing the bodies he’s stolen back as well… if he’s not already.”
“You know what my grandpappy always said to me, back when the world was simple?” said King, turning off the computers, confident that the Green Lantern had recorded everything he needed with his ring.
“What’s that?” asked Guy, his head swarming with terrible thoughts.
“The dead will always outnumber the living.”
Guy knew what was needed. He activated his ring’s comms and sent out a message. “Boys, I need a hand. We need to go to Coast City.”
“It’s been a while since I’ve been here,” said Hank.
He sat on the observation deck of the Rodriguez Cermeno Tower alongside John, waiting for Guy to make his way there. They were in their civvies; white polo neck, leather jacket and jeans for Hank, chinos, shirt and sweater on John. They’d slipped in quietly, and now it was past closing and they were alone up there.
Coast City was known, somewhat unaffectionately, as a ghost town. In the wake of two alien invasions and catastrophic damage to her infrastructure, people just… left. Those who could afford to leave left after the Mongul raid*, sold up and moved inland, or wherever they wanted to be fair. Less economically-able families had to stay, and they were struck down during the Predator attack*.
Now a city that once bustled with millions limped along with tens of thousands. Imagine going from a population comparable to San Jose—close to a million—to a handful of that. People drowned in the abandoned urbanity of it all, the scale of which they never had a chance at understanding.
And even though the city was near empty, there was an eerie calm over it, and Hank couldn’t figure out why. Last time he’d been here, Carol Ferris had refused to see him*, and with no job tying him down and no other reason to try to stay, he moved on with his life, found a tiny studio apartment in New York and kept it maintained thanks to the ‘Thanks-And-Keep-Quiet’ fund the Air Force had given him when he’d left the service under a cloud.
“Do you feel that?” Hank suddenly asked.
“There’s something… in the air,” replied John, but he couldn’t place what…
“The streets are empty. Have been since we landed. This place was always vibrant, always full of life and energy… but it’s so subdued. Like something…”
“… Is sapping the life out of the city?” said Guy, landing behind his friends.
“Less word play, more answers,” said Han.
“Nothing concrete. Black Hand has tens of thousands of corpses in his possession. We don’t know where, and we don’t know his plan. Colour me scared, boys. He came back from the dead once, I’m thinking he can do the same for the poor sops he’s dug up.”
John followed so far. “And your sister?”
“Someone slipped her a note. Pathfinder. Add that to you Justice League mystery scrapbook. Doctor Polaris is dead. And I have a list of others,” said Guy.
“And we’re thinking it’s Black Hand? I never dealt with the guy, what’s his deal?” asked Hank.
Guy gripped the rail nearest to him and looked out across the city. “I’ll field this. Originally, he was a nobody creep with a physics degree who built a device that could channel energy sources. When he got a taste for Highball’s ring, he became obsessed, started chasing him for every last drop. Unfortunately for Hand, he was soon diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, and his last gambit was a body swap jig, but Hal was able to get out of that thanks to Wonder Woman*…”
Hank shuddered. He’d been worn like a glove by the Predator entity some time ago, and while it still haunted him, he had learned to accept that the actions perpetrated while under its possession were not his. He could hardly imagine what it felt like for Hal to be in the body of a villain like Black Hand.
“…When he was taken to Alcatraz, it wasn’t long that he was signed out and sent to be studied by a group called the Steadborne Stack. They wanted to see if they could figure out why he hadn’t keeled over after such a terminal diagnosis. Thought there was some secret cancer cure waiting inside that broken body of his. So obviously, he died pretty soon after that. But then he came back. He’s been off the grid ever since, killing indiscriminately and off the radar of our rings. We can’t pick up his genetic profile and we can’t track him down. Hell, he doesn’t even show up on camera anymore. Something did a number on him, and now he’s gonna do a number on us.”
“Damn. There’s something really wrong here. It’s like a storm is about to hit. You can taste it in the air, but my ring isn’t picking up anything. Could be Black Hand,” said John.
As the three Green Lanterns contemplated what it all meant, the answer eluding them for the time being, their melancholy was interrupted by a massive explosion that tore into the sky-- but there came no sound.
“What in the hell’s name is that?” asked Guy, hopping over the rail and in flight with the others before they could question their actions.
“No sound. Probably connected,” said Hank.
They shot across the city until they landed in the harbour gardens, the immense botanical glass houses that lined one half of Coast City’s actual coast. There was a fire and Hank was on suppression duties, putting it out quickly and preventing damage spreading from the source. There was nobody else in sight, the gardens closed at this time of night.
Hank looked over at the others, who were doing sweeps of the area, and shouted something in their direction, but no sound came from his mouth. He put his fingers to his Adam’s Apple, could feel the vibrations coming out of his throat, but no words came out from between his lips. He clicked his fingers, but again, no sound.
Before he could communicate with the others via the ring’s silent comms, a massive blast caught him in his back, sending him tumbling forward. He turned, his ears bleeding, and realised he’d been hit by a wall of pure sound, but he still couldn’t hear a thing.
The source? The villainous Sonar, his costume ragged, blood dribbling from a wound at his hairline, his Sonic Sceptre, raised threateningly at the fallen Green Lantern. He was screaming, but again, Hank could hear nothing.
“Need a hand, Henshaw?” John’s voice came via Hank’s ring, directly into his brain.
Behind Sonar, two dense, emerald boxing gloves materialised and swung forward, socking the villain in the back of the head. An old school team-up by Guy and John, like the good old days.
Suddenly, all the ambient sounds returned to the area, and Hank could hear bells ringing in his brain.
“Ow,” said Hank, checking himself over. “That was god damn weird.”
“No worries, man,” said Guy as he took custody of the Sonic Sceptre, while John hoisted Sonar himself up, slapping him in emerald handcuffs.
“He must have sucked all the sound out from the explosion and into that’s sceptre of his, then kept it running while we landed; explains the mute field,” said John.
Sonar jerked up, straining against his restraints. He thrashed about, but couldn’t free himself from the construct. “No! No! You don’t understand! They’re coming for me! They’re coming!”
“Who?” asked Guy. “Are you talking about Black Hand?”
“No-- no-- his--”
Detonations of cascading energy sent the Green Lanterns sprawling, and the construct around Sonar’s arms dissolved as John’s concentration broke. There was a loud splashing sound as a large shape emerged from the waters behind the botanical garden, and Sonar screamed as he was wrestled to the ground behind a large tree that had been undamaged by the explosion.
Hank pulled himself up and rushed to Sonar’s aid, but was horrified by what he witnessed-- a hulking, rotting giant-- nine, maybe ten feet tall-- resembling an immense shark, was currently gnawing on Sonar’s corpse.
The massive shark-thing had an eye missing, half its face torn free but who knows what, and a hole in its chest where its heart might once have been. Dried blood surrounded these vicious, life-ending wounds, but they didn’t seem to faze the creature. It wore a rudimentary belt around it’s waist, and attached was an empty bodysuit, scuffed in places, an incongruous sight for an otherwise horrifying visual.
“My… God…” whispered Hank, his ring revving up to
“Not God, no,” came a hushed voice from behind Hank.
When Hank immediately turned-- shields up-- the Green Lantern was slammed in the face by another blast of energy, shattering his aura and sending him to his knees. He tried to see the source of the voice, and his attacker, but all he could hear was the gnashing of razor sharp teeth against flesh, and the blood pounding in his rattled skull.
“Tiger Shark doesn’t have stomach anymore, but I think that makes him even hungrier.”
Hank couldn’t see his attacker, but sent out a low-level pulse to try and get a bead on his location, but to no avail. Another blast caught him in the throat and he choked, unable to breathe as black spots began to creep at the edges of his vision.
“Light doesn’t mean much to me anymore, Green Lantern. To be fair, it never did. I have a particular relationship with that spectrum, but you don’t care, do you? You don’t even know who I am. Well. You can call me the Invisible Destroyer. Heaven knows the media did.”
Another blast sent Hank back, but he managed to stand and reinforce his protective aura. He was taking heavy, pained drags of air through bloodied lips, and all he needed was an opening to take his opponent down.
“Invisible Destroyer? Nice name… but you… that means you’re there… aren’t you?”
He grabbed a pile of dirt from a nearby flower bed with a digger construct and threw it at the source of the voice. A figure became clear as it tried to swat away the dirt, but Hank had his chance and took it-- he dove at the figure and pummelled him with his fists, relishing a momentary chance to unload.
He took a step backwards when he saw what he’d just beaten to a pulp-- the corpse of a villain, oddly dressed in segmented armour, lay motionless at his feet.
“What… is going on…?” he asked, his ears ringing.
The Invisible Destroyer’s eyes opened and a rictus grin formed on his face, just as blasted Henshaw with an energy beam from his mouth. Henshaw toppled over, his face on fire, even as he could see Guy and John engage in their own battles with his one good eye.
John was about to create a shield to give Guy and him some room, when a man’s hand clasped around his left arm. He looked back and saw an obese, gibbering man laugh, skin falling off the bands of fat around his waist in thick, meaty sheets. The sight was sickness-inducing, but what was worse was the effect of his hand around John’s limb-- the Green Lantern’s arm became grey, discoloured, and suddenly crumbled into ash, causing Stewart to cry out at this sudden amputation.
“Day… day… used da call… me… dah… Crumblah…” laughed the man, his body in a much worse state than the Invisible Destroyer’s. It seemed like every mocking syllable out his reeking mouth was an effort, but that didn’t stop him. “Can… ya tell… why?”
John reeled back and bumped into Guy, who spun around and blasted the Crumbler with a beam that sent him through the already broken glass windows and into the ocean. John gripped the stump of his left arm, gripped it tight, and found more flesh falling off in ashen clumps. He fell to a knee, then took a drastic measure-- he lopped off part of his own arm that was untouched by the decay, and cauterised the wound. The meat and muscle of the decapitated limb rotted away like the rest, but he had separated himself from the apparent infection.
When Guy tried to send a shockwave across the room to scatter everybody but his teammates, he realised he had his own problems. For some reason, he wasn’t able to form stable constructs, and his ring kept fluctuating as his will faltered. His protective aura shimmered, going from there to not, and in one of the off moments, something struck him in the abdomen, and he couldn’t understand why-- why there was a javelin sticking out of his torso.
“It’d be a disaster if your ring wasn’t working properly, wouldn’t it?”
Guy recognised the voice as belonging to one Major Disaster, the bulky collar of his coat obscuring a face that seemed greying instead of pink with life. Behind him was another man, more skeletal than Disaster, holding another javelin ready to be aimed at the wounded Green Lantern. Something clicked. It was the z-list assassin known, almost un-ironically, as Javelin.
“They’re… they’re all dead,” mumbled Guy, severing the tips of the javelin either side of his body.
He would have to deal with the puncture wound separately, and that meant keeping the offending object in for the time being, all the better to plug the gap. It still hurt like all hell, so he triggered the release of additional endorphins into his bloodstream, but he still had a hunk of metal in his body.
“They got… the jump… on us…” spat John.
“Out, out, out,” cried Hank, half of his face a burning wreck, as he shot toward the others and grabbed them in his aura, sending them tumbling out of the botanical gardens and into the night sky. They reached up-- up-- up--!
--And saw that a massive black, opaque shield currently blocked them from the heavens.
Guy took control of their flight from Hank, while John used his ring to salve the burns across Hank’s face. He’d managed to prevent the crumbling effect that caught his arm from spreading up his body, but he was pale, sweating profusely, and clearly in shock.
Guy’s ring sent out a ping-- it wasn’t just a shield covering the skies, there was some kind of sphere surrounding the entirety of the city, from top to bottom, cutting water lines, electricity lines, gas… somehow, during their battle with the cadre of villains in the garden, a sphere had been erected, blocking the trio-- and the rest of Coast City’s citizens-- from getting out.
“Oh, God,” whispered Gardner, the world spun as he clutched the shaft of the javelin in his side, blood staining his gloves. He looked down and saw the stain that ran down his legs from the puncture wound, then his eyes rolled up into his head, his loss of consciousness causing the trio to plummet down-- down-- down---!
Atop the Rodriguez Cermeno Tower, Black Hand watched as a beautiful form of chaos unfolded across the city. His sister was curled up behind him on one of the benches, shivering from the cold, unable to control the wretched feeling that riddled her body. Priscilla didn’t have long left, he could taste it.
Below, minor explosions that promised to billow into something much worse as the gas lines continued to rupture. Water sprayed up from the streets, the lights that lined the roads fizzled and failed. Cars crashed as their engines cut out, fire prevention measures failed to trigger and offices burnt. There were gunshots, screams, a horrific cacophony of bedlam falling across Coast City.
And then a second sound-- the yawning, aching sound that emerged from the maws of his legions-- as the dead stumbled out of the black shield, out of the darkness realm he’d stored them and into the confines of Coast City… ready to create more of their own through bite or scratch.
He’d never been a fan of zombie films as a child. He preferred the real thing down in his father’s mortuary. He remembered playing down there, talking to his friends that never left, never argued, and that warmed the cold cockles of his body. He looked back at his sister, tears lining her face, and then at the woman who sat beside her, playing Priscilla’s toes absentmindedly.
“Well, this is a beautiful sight, but when do we get to the real fun?” she asked, breaking away from amusing herself and instead wandering over to where Hand stood. She leaned over the rail, and breathed in deeply, preening as she enjoyed the horrors being perpetrated down below.
Black Hand said nothing. His tongue had rotted off in the last few hours, and he’d swallowed it in the pieces that made it down his throat. What words were left? What else, other than...
NEXT ISSUE: Hell comes to Coast City! How did Black Hand become so powerful? How did he resurrect the dead? With the Green Lanterns maimed and wounded in equal measure, it’ll take all their guile to not only survive, but escape from the confines of this brand new City of the Dead. Cut off from the world, will they manage to find allies? Or will they face the hordes of undead villains and shambling corpses alone? FIND OUT NEXT MONTH!
After a violent, horrifying resurrection, BLACK HAND stalked the shadows of America, murdering countless innocents while he searched for HAL JORDAN, the retired former Green Lantern of Earth.
Despite their best efforts, HAND remained hidden, his current undead state somehow keeping him untraceable! All the authorities could do is deal with the aftermath, all the while knowing an shambling boogeyman with murder on his mind walks the streets, awaiting his next victim…
During all this, JOHN STEWART and HANK HENSHAW were sent hurtling into the universe of Earth-3, where the diabolical POWER RING created his own VOLTHOOM CORPS, a legion of ring-slingers that took all the Green Lanterns’ prowess to take down!
With their success came thousands of Green Lantern power rings without bearers, giving Earth-1’s Corps a chance at increasing their numbers, but thanks to an Earth-3 Kryptonian weapon, a new threat was borne from HENSHAW’s genetic imprint… the CYBORG-ULTRAMAN, who escaped through the multiverse to parts unknown--!
Meanwhile, GUY GARDNER and THAAL SINESTRO searched for weapons capable of helping in the ongoing war of attrition with PARALLAX and his EFFIGIES, but have so far found themselves coming up empty handed.
Finally, HAL JORDAN and KYLE RAYNER are MIA, with no trace or trail to help in the search for them. Their friends don’t even know if they’re still alive, and with BLACK HAND on the loose, even if the former still lives, it might not be for long…
Welcome back to the ongoing adventures of the GREEN LANTERN CORPS!
The tinny radio sat in the other room played old love ballads. Their platitudes amused the listener, the steady, un-obnoxious rhythm keeping him settled as he worked to repair the old fob watch he’d found at the garage sale down the street earlier in the day. He was content with his efforts, so engrossed in them that he didn’t hear the lock mechanism on the back door to his small home fizzle away.
Next to the front door was the badge he wore to work at the mini-mart. ‘Hello, I’m Neal! How can I help today?’. In most cases, they would have changed his name when he went into witness protection, but with his already fragmented psyche, they allowed him to keep the name. Not that many knew the face behind the mask, not that many people knew that Neal Emerson had once been known as Doctor Polaris.
What Neal didn’t hear, he soon smelt, as a man shuffled behind him, stinking of something vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn’t place. His curiosity caused him to turn without thinking about what might have caused the smell, why it hadn’t been in his workshop before… He was midway through his question before he saw the source. “What is that--?”
Black Hand smiled, decay scabbed lips and blackened, rotted teeth barred.
“Nnnaaa--!”
Neal scrambled backwards, swiping his project off his desk, his tools flying off with it, panic rushing through his body.
“No, no, what do you-- I’m not-- I’m not--”
Hand stepped forward and put a finger against Neal’s lips. A delicate gesture in most contexts, but a horrifying one for his victim. The stench of human rot filled Neal’s nostrils, and in his struggle to escape he pushed forward, causing the nail on Black Hand’s fingertip to peel off.
The villain’s unwashed hands were caked with blood and other grim substances up to the elbows, and he wore a black hoody that, if you removed it, would have revealed a gaunt, hollowed out chest. He was rot. He was decay. He was a walking dead man, and the only suggestion of the cause was the unearthly glow at his cataract-sheened eyes.
“I’m not him anymore, William. I’m not. I got better. The doctors, they cured me of him. He doesn’t come out. I’m monitored, the doctors, the police, they, they… I don’t want to be bad again,” whispered Neal, tears streaming down his face, snot running from his nose.
Black Hand pushed Neal over and knelt on top of him, pinning his arms down at the shoulder with his knees. He then wiped his grimy hands across Neal’s shirt, shaking his head all the while. He almost looked disappointed.
“I’m not-- I’m not him anymore-- please,” gibbered Neal.
Hand drove his hand through Neal Emerson’s chest, clutched his heart, then yanked it out in one, vile motion. Blood spurted across the floor, over Hand’s hoody, but he didn’t care. He began to devour the heart like he was a starving child with no self-control. He bit and he chewed and he ground his teeth together, savouring the taste of human flesh as it slithered down his oesophagus and into his once barren belly.
Once he had finished his feast he shuffled back to his feet, then looked down at the still-warm body of the man once known as Doctor Polaris. He wiped the blood from his mouth, and his horrid smile returned to his lips.
Behind Hand, a woman gagged and vomited, unable to hold her stomach at the sight before her. She whispered a prayer, an apology, but there came no answer. She felt his eyes on her, and she saw him smile even wider, the corners of his mouth tearing like wet paper.
“Wh-why are y-you doing this, Will?” she asked, wiping her mouth of the traces of sick left there.
Hand put a finger to his lips and shushed her. All would be revealed.
Issue Seventy: "…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead”
HoM / FLINCHUM
OA:
Guy Gardner excused himself from the science chambers in the Citadel and found a side room. He wasn’t used to receiving phone calls while he was in space. Not many people had his number, and not many had the inclination to use it when they did.
He knew that sometimes he was an ass, and it wasn’t a decision that haunted him, but he sometimes wondered what it would be like to text somebody, to call someone and see if they wanted to grab a beer, rather than stumbling into intergalactic bars with whichever Green Lantern was closest at the time. When was the last time he’d got laid? That was a good question. He remembered Arisia, then dismissed the recollection. He didn’t regret their decision to break up, but he wasn’t what she needed. But what did he need?
“Guy?”
Gardner recognised the voice of his sister immediately. “Glory? What’s going on? It’s been ages.”
And he regretted that, but his siblings and he were never particular close. Gloria was his little sister, and he’d do anything for her, but their lives had diverged when they were teens. His older brother was no better. Gerard was an ass, and if anything, it just proved to Guy that his asshole-ness was genetic.
She sounded resigned, and a little bit sad. She rarely had patience for Guy’s bullshit, and was known for cutting to the chase in her dealings with him. “Yeah, yeah, I know. You’ve been busy being whatever it is you are. Space cop or whatever. But look, I need you back here. There’s… well, just get home quick, okay? I think it’s… Green Lantern business, or something?”
“Yeah, sure, of course,” said Guy.
“Okay. Good. See you soon, big brother.”
The interstellar phone call ended and Guy stared at his ring. “‘Big brother’,” he repeated. He hadn’t been called that in years. Something really was wrong.
Gardner returned to the science room, where Hank Henshaw, John Stewart, Thaal Sinestro and Katma Tui were observing the current power ring tests. A few days ago, Hank and John had returned from a parallel dimension along with a truckload of power rings, created when an evil double of the latter sent the duplication protocols into overdrive in the hope of creating his own Corps*.
*Green Lantern Corps #67-69
Of course, Hank and John had saved the day. Routed this new Corps before they could be a threat, but that left these power rings to be dealt with. All scans confirmed that there was no trace left of the entity known as Volthoom inside them, and the Green Lantern Corps were a shade of their former self ever since Evil Star engineered the power drain that left every ring powerless across the galaxy*.
*One of the many threats faced during the epic seven-part event that ran through Green Lantern #44-50
Thousands died. Rings were lost in the void without a trace of energy left for recall. The Corps had managed to recover some, but not all. Did they put these rings into service? Or did they hold off, carry out more tests to ensure that whatever evil influence once inside them was gone?
Stewart turned back when he saw Guy return, and he could immediately tell something was up. “Guy?”
“I gotta head back to Earth. Family stuff. Uh, if that’s all right?”
Sinestro nodded. “Acceptable, Gardner. Do what you need to do.”
“You don’t need all of us for this; you have our ring telemetries and debrief data. We’ll head back to 2814,” said John.
“You guys go ahead, these diagnostics are going to run for days,” said Katma.
John thanked her with a nod, then said, “call us if you need us.”
“Likewise,” replied Sinestro. He still hadn’t looked back at them.
Hank watched the exchange happen and realised that there was something going on, but he didn’t question it. He followed Guy and John out, then lifted off when they left orbit, before finally asking, “wanna fill me in, boys?”
“Nothing. Everything’s fine. Just gotta get home,” said Guy.
“Guy, something’s up and that’s fine. But you were polite to Thaal back there, so I’m concerned,” said John.
“Godammit, Johnny-- if I wanted your damn help I’d--” The outburst came out of him before he could clamp down on it, but he shook it off and exhaled. “M’sorry. My sister got in touch. Something’s up.”
“You have a sister? That’s a surprise,” said Hank.
“Why’s that, Spaceman?”
Hank smirked. “Didn’t think you were born of man, Warrior. Thought you just grouched into existence.”
“Ha, ha, funny. Nah, I got a mom and dad like all the rest of yous. Well, just pops now. Mom passed away before the ring. But I got a brother and a sister. Both cops, just like my dad was. Like he wanted me to be, but I went into the air force instead. Yet another point of contention between him and me. And for the first time in years, lil’ sis gave me a call. So, I go running. You know how it is?”
Hank nodded, no trace of amusement on his face. “I got a sister, man. I get it.”
“Christ, we don’t talk much about our personal lives, do we?” said John.
He’d learned more about his two comrades in the past thirty seconds than he had over the last couple of years. Hank had a sister? News to him. And the deep dive into Guy’s personal history? Completely new information.
“No reason to. Life’s green, isn’t it? That’s all that really matter, nowadays,” said Guy.
“Subluminal tunnel up ahead,” said Hank, his words followed by their rings prepping for immediate interstellar travel.
“Not everything, Guy. You need a hand, you call us. We’ll be there in a heartbeat,” said John.
Before he entered the subluminal tunnel, Hank looked back and shrugged. “Speak for yourself.”
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS:
Guy headed to his sister’s place while Hank and John went in the other direction, picking up on Earth as best they could since they’d last left for space. He kept himself invisible on approach, no need to draw attention to himself, then shifted into his civvies when he landed on the long stretch of street that would lead him to his sister’s home.
He knocked on the door, quiet at first, then regretted his passivity immediately and followed it up with a thumping that he also felt was over the top and completely unnecessary. Why had this whole thing thrown him for a loop?
The door opened and Gloria checked it for damage. “Jeez, we just repainted this, you mook.”
Guy scratched the back of his head sheepishly. “Sorry, Glory. I, well, you know--”
“Get in here, you lump,” said Gloria, ushering him inside.
He did as he was told and she closed the door after him. They stood in silence in the hallway for a few seconds as she looked him up and down. Finally, nodding, she said, “go on, then. Show us your badge.”
“What?”
She took a small wallet from her jeans and flipped it open, showing off her detective’s badge and police ID. “You’re a cop now, ain’t ya? C’mon. I made detective, you’re, what, cosmic beat cop?”
“You made detective? That’s great news, kiddo,” said Guy. He held out his hand and she gripped his fingers, examining the ring on his fingers. “I… I didn’t know, I wish I had, I woulda…”
Gloria released his hand then shook her head. “Made an appearance like you did academy graduation? Fuck off, Guy; you turned up drunk and made a scene, I ain’t repeating that, am I? I get enough of that from pops.”
“Gloria… I’m not…”
“I don’t want nothing to do with this whole thing, y’hear? All this cosmic nonsense, it ain’t right. Yet it comes to my doorstep, and I have to talk to you. If this is some attempt to, I dunno, reconciliation, it’s… well, fine. You’re here now. Here it is.”
She held up a small evidence bag containing a note. A location. A time. And a name. Two names in fact, and a sign off.
“Hell’s this?” asked Guy.
“Slipped under my door yesterday morning. Who’s ‘Pathfinder’?”
Guy’s brow creased. Pathfinder was an informant that had fed the Justice League intel. He’d led that team to a cache of Apokoliptikan weaponry*, and John had given him the lowdown when they’d next spoken. Why would this mook get in touch with him?
*Justice League #55
“I don’t know, kid. But look at this… this is a location, and these names… Neal Emerson… that’s…” He tried to pluck the name from his memory. Some guy that Highball had once faced…*
*Way back in Tales of the Green Lantern Corps #9, from 2016-- #deepcut
“Doctor Polaris, magnetic powers. I made some calls, and apparently he’s rehabilitated and relocated, away from trouble. You know what I think this?” She jabbed the location and time, “I think this is where they’ve holed him up. Why would anyone want you to have this information, Guy?”
“I don’t know. But I intend to find out, yeah? Thanks for this, Glory. I owe you,” said Guy.
“No, no, not like that, you don’t. I don’t want people thinking they can get to me through you. Plenty of people have died like that. You need to think this through. If people start-- hell, if aliens start thinking that they can go through me to get to you, I ain’t happy. So sort this. Right?”
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” said Guy.
Gloria shook her head then nodded, coming to an agreement after the argument in her head. “Right. Good. Good.”
“And… congratulations, I guess,” said Guy.
“For what?” said Gloria.
“We both got rings on our fingers,” said Guy, motioning to her ring-finger where a wedding band sat comfortable. “And your ID, it don’t say Gardner. So, congratulations. I’m sorry I missed the wedding.”
Gloria looked at her own hand and then back at her brother. “Guy…”
Guy exhaled, sad, then headed back toward the front door. “I ain’t him anymore. I’m not the man you knew when I was younger and stupider. I’m not. Just… I want you to know that. I’m not gonna become dad.”
He phased out the front door and turned invisible on his exit. She stared at where he had been, then rubbed her wedding band, sadly.
NEW YORK CITY:
Hank and John had decided to have a quick drink before parting ways, and the former was silent after they sat, something hanging between them that the latter couldn’t place.
“Okay, spill,” said John.
Hank looked up from his bottle of ale, immediately pausing his tearing of the ornate label. “Hmm?”
“Ever since landed back in… this reality… you’ve been quiet. Something to do with that Cyborg-Ultraman bastard, or is it something else?” asked John.
Hank shrugged. They’d sent out an all-points-galactic-bulletin for the cybernetic entity. People were warned that he resembled Superman, but his powers were unlike anything they’d faced before. There were no reports back, so he had either gone to ground, or he had never arrived back in this reality. Had Henshaw created a threat to the multiverse that he’d never see again, or would this monster, spliced with his genetic profile, come back and haunt him?
“That hospital planet put me straight. Screwed my head back on and helped me overcome some of the demons lurking up here,” said Hank, jabbing his temple.
“Yeah, you said. You did good work when we were--”
Hank held up his hand. “Hell of a final session. Like I said before. Mongul’s kids. That’s immersion therapy, for sure*. But, yeah, Dolchechk died in the crossfire. And he told me something before he died. Put something in my ring to prove his point. He told me about Alice.”
*Green Lantern Corps #66
There were parts of the story Hank would omit. The fact he slept with Alice Brand, the former soldier who worked with Stewart back in his marine days. She was damaged, but so was Hank. It was her support, her words of encouragement, along with him finding what made him worthy of the Green Lantern ring in the first place, that allowed him to reclaim it and help save the day. It was the connection he had with her helped ground him amongst the demons that crawled inside his headspace. But that wasn’t important. What was important was the fact that she had died*, and now she was alive.
*Back in Green Lantern #43
“Ah,” said John. He took a swig from his own bottle. “So. You know.”
“I do. She died. You somehow uploaded her consciousness to your ring then downloaded it into a clone body. That’s… a big thing you did without telling anybody.”
John nodded. “Yeah. But it was nobody’s business but mine. She deserved a second chance.”
“Everybody does; that’s why you dropped me off there, wasn’t it?” said Henshaw.
John finished his drink. “You really want to have this conversation now?”
“No, John. I never wanted to have this conversation. But hey. We’re here, aren’t we?”
John almost laughed. “I guess we are.”
“So?”
“I lost friends, Hank. And you forget, I’ve died once before*, same as you**. I came back, and now I know that… well. The ring is capable of wonders, isn’t it? Miracles? I think that… with the Guardians gone, the gloves are off. If… we fail… maybe there’s a bigger safety net than ever before. Maybe nobody has to die.”
*Ooph, you best check out Green Lantern #49 (it didn’t stick)
**At the hands of Mongul in Green Lantern #35 (this also didn’t stick)
Hank pushed his bottle away from himself. “Are you listening to yourself, John?”
“I sound like a crazy person. I know. But I managed it. I helped bring a friend back from the dead. Sinestro helped me come back from the dead. There are… the rules are changing.”
“If you become some mad man with a penchant for resurrecting dead people, I sweat to god…” started Hank. He picked up his bottle, and took a swig. “…No, look. Listen. Whatever. You’re a good man. One of the best. Saved my life when it was on the brink. You need to be careful, but you know that. We’re Green Lanterns. We do the impossible. And if… if it comes down to it, I’ve got your back, okay? But let’s not be on the wrong side of history with this. You need to be careful, I need to be careful, and--”
Guy’s voice interrupted them. <Boys, I need a hand. We need to go to Coast City.>
Hank laughed. “Right, I guess that’s that tabled then.”
John considered the last five minutes. “Hank, I’m not a lunatic. I’m not going mad with power. But I appreciate you saying all that. Checks and balances, right?”
“Right. Now, Guy’s been weird since this morning, so let’s go help him before he blows his top,” said Hank.
RESEDA, CALIFORNIA:
Stood in the back garden of the dinky house his agents were currently swarming around, King Faraday felt the itch to smoke a cigarette. He’d not done so for a while, not since he lost his job as the head of the Department for Extranormal Operations, and he intended to keep it that way. He was FBI now, and that meant there was more red tape to go through for anything, and he was trying his best to keep his head above the ever-rising water that flooded his life.
“Then again, maybe I could use a smoke…”
He looked up in disgust when an emerald light seeped into his line of vision. He was even more disgusted for the source of the light to be Guy, who landed with a thud next to the FBI agent.
“No one asked you to be here, Lantern. So why the appearance?” he asked.
“Where’s Polaris?” said Guy.
“How the hell do you… oh, you got your ways, don’t you? Always did, the two of you,” said King.
“I’d wave a white flag if my ring could generate one, but I don’t think you’d be remotely amused. Someone sent a note to my sister’s, Faraday. Something about Polaris. So, where is he?”
Faraday didn’t respond. Instead, he beckoned Guy forward, into the house, and past the swarm of FBI officials that were working the scene. The rooms had been picked clean, until they reached the basement, where the stench of rotting meat and recent blood spillage filled the air.
“The techs have measured at least ten pints of his blood on the floor. There’s no body. I think we know whose MO this is,” said Faraday.
Gardner could follow. “Black Hand.”
“Oddest thing though. Back here, by the stairwell. You see that?”
Faraday pointed to a dried pool of something that Guy felt in his gut was vomit.
“Black Hand is dead. He barely functions like a human being would. He wouldn’t-- couldn’t-- be sick. And it’s not like his actions would make him sick. He’s got an accomplice?”
“A hostage,” said Faraday.
“Who?”
“His older sister. The last surviving member of the Hand family, saved from murder at his hands by the fact she moved out the family home at eighteen-- a few months before he went on his killing spree.”
“My God…” whispered Guy.
“It gets worse. The sister? Priscilla Turner? She vanished from hospital two months ago. She’s got breast cancer, Gardner. Terminal. She was getting chemo when the cameras all shorted out and a fire alarm was pulled. In the commotion, she vanished, and she’s not been seen since.”
“You think Hand has been dragging her from murder to murder? To what end?”
Faraday grumbled under his breath, then sighed. “C’mere. Got something to show you.”
He led Gardner back upstairs and out onto the drive where an unmarked van was parked. He opened the doors, and barked an order at the four agents inside. There were computers lining every wall, paperwork on the tables, and a surprising amount of space used up for such a small vehicle. “Everyone out! Everyone!”
“Sir?” said one of the FBI’s finest, grabbing his stuff.
Faraday shook his head. “You heard, son. Get out.”
The four agents inside were left outside in the cold, while Faraday closed the doors to the van, sealing Guy and himself inside. He typed something on the computer nearest to him, and an array of information appeared on the screens.
The largest image was a map of North America, and numerous red dots in a straight line that pointed toward their current position in Reseda. Faraday leaned back in his chair and looked at Gardner, who was trying to figure out what it meant.
“What is this? Are those?”
“Murders. But more specifically, murders wherein the victims were supervillains. Or, we suspect there were murders. You know what they say about needing a body for it to be a murder? The MOs of each of these scenes is exactly the same. An entire body’s worth of blood spilled and no corpse. The blood matches that of criminals who have… well… here’s where it gets ugly… criminals who have had dealings with Green Lanterns.”
“You’re kidding,” said Guy.
“I don’t joke about this stuff, Gardner. Your boy Hal Jordan may not have been on Earth much, but he made enough enemies to count. Folks like Doctor Polaris, Black Hand, the Masters of Disaster. You don’t read much about their dealings, but they fought, they lost, and Jordan ended up looking like a star. And now? They’re all dead. Well, more accurately, missing, presumed dead. We’ll know more when we find their god damn bodies..”
“So you think Black Hand is killing Hal’s enemies?” said Guy.
“Yeah, that’s what we’re thinking. I don’t know what he’s doing with the bodies, but I can guess… and I think he’s making his sister watch,” said Faraday, shivering.
“And what are these? The black dots between each crime scene?” said Guy, pointing at the screen.
“Grave desecrations. Have you been on Earth recently, Gardner?”
“Not… really…” admitted Guy.
“Yeah, well ever since Black Hand came back on the scene, every graveyard between right here,” King pointed at their current location in Reseda, “and where he came back,” he pointed at San Francisco, where Guy remembered the work of the scientists at the Steadborne Stack regarding medical advancements*, “has been the victim of grave robberies. Corpses are going missing.”
*Green Lantern Corps #62
“But this started in Coast City,” said Guy, jabbing his finger at the screen. “Why aren’t there any desecrations there… oh.”
It clicked.
Faraday nodded slowly. “You see it?”
“It’s an arrow. A straight line. He’s going back. He’s headed back to Coast City.”
“With tens of thousands of dead bodies with him. Beyond the fact we don’t know what he does with the bodies, the fact he has them is a public health nightmare waiting to happen. Think of the diseases he could spread. We have no idea how he’s transporting them, we have no idea what he’s doing with them.”
“Hand came back from the dead once,” said Guy.
“And now you’re thinking…” started King.
“…He could be planning on bringing the bodies he’s stolen back as well… if he’s not already.”
“You know what my grandpappy always said to me, back when the world was simple?” said King, turning off the computers, confident that the Green Lantern had recorded everything he needed with his ring.
“What’s that?” asked Guy, his head swarming with terrible thoughts.
“The dead will always outnumber the living.”
Guy knew what was needed. He activated his ring’s comms and sent out a message. “Boys, I need a hand. We need to go to Coast City.”
COAST CITY:
“It’s been a while since I’ve been here,” said Hank.
He sat on the observation deck of the Rodriguez Cermeno Tower alongside John, waiting for Guy to make his way there. They were in their civvies; white polo neck, leather jacket and jeans for Hank, chinos, shirt and sweater on John. They’d slipped in quietly, and now it was past closing and they were alone up there.
Coast City was known, somewhat unaffectionately, as a ghost town. In the wake of two alien invasions and catastrophic damage to her infrastructure, people just… left. Those who could afford to leave left after the Mongul raid*, sold up and moved inland, or wherever they wanted to be fair. Less economically-able families had to stay, and they were struck down during the Predator attack*.
*Green Lantern #35
**Green Lantern #40
Now a city that once bustled with millions limped along with tens of thousands. Imagine going from a population comparable to San Jose—close to a million—to a handful of that. People drowned in the abandoned urbanity of it all, the scale of which they never had a chance at understanding.
And even though the city was near empty, there was an eerie calm over it, and Hank couldn’t figure out why. Last time he’d been here, Carol Ferris had refused to see him*, and with no job tying him down and no other reason to try to stay, he moved on with his life, found a tiny studio apartment in New York and kept it maintained thanks to the ‘Thanks-And-Keep-Quiet’ fund the Air Force had given him when he’d left the service under a cloud.
*Green Lantern #52
“Do you feel that?” Hank suddenly asked.
“There’s something… in the air,” replied John, but he couldn’t place what…
“The streets are empty. Have been since we landed. This place was always vibrant, always full of life and energy… but it’s so subdued. Like something…”
“… Is sapping the life out of the city?” said Guy, landing behind his friends.
“Less word play, more answers,” said Han.
“Nothing concrete. Black Hand has tens of thousands of corpses in his possession. We don’t know where, and we don’t know his plan. Colour me scared, boys. He came back from the dead once, I’m thinking he can do the same for the poor sops he’s dug up.”
John followed so far. “And your sister?”
“Someone slipped her a note. Pathfinder. Add that to you Justice League mystery scrapbook. Doctor Polaris is dead. And I have a list of others,” said Guy.
“And we’re thinking it’s Black Hand? I never dealt with the guy, what’s his deal?” asked Hank.
Guy gripped the rail nearest to him and looked out across the city. “I’ll field this. Originally, he was a nobody creep with a physics degree who built a device that could channel energy sources. When he got a taste for Highball’s ring, he became obsessed, started chasing him for every last drop. Unfortunately for Hand, he was soon diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, and his last gambit was a body swap jig, but Hal was able to get out of that thanks to Wonder Woman*…”
*Green Lantern #15-17
Hank shuddered. He’d been worn like a glove by the Predator entity some time ago, and while it still haunted him, he had learned to accept that the actions perpetrated while under its possession were not his. He could hardly imagine what it felt like for Hal to be in the body of a villain like Black Hand.
“…When he was taken to Alcatraz, it wasn’t long that he was signed out and sent to be studied by a group called the Steadborne Stack. They wanted to see if they could figure out why he hadn’t keeled over after such a terminal diagnosis. Thought there was some secret cancer cure waiting inside that broken body of his. So obviously, he died pretty soon after that. But then he came back. He’s been off the grid ever since, killing indiscriminately and off the radar of our rings. We can’t pick up his genetic profile and we can’t track him down. Hell, he doesn’t even show up on camera anymore. Something did a number on him, and now he’s gonna do a number on us.”
“Damn. There’s something really wrong here. It’s like a storm is about to hit. You can taste it in the air, but my ring isn’t picking up anything. Could be Black Hand,” said John.
As the three Green Lanterns contemplated what it all meant, the answer eluding them for the time being, their melancholy was interrupted by a massive explosion that tore into the sky-- but there came no sound.
“What in the hell’s name is that?” asked Guy, hopping over the rail and in flight with the others before they could question their actions.
“No sound. Probably connected,” said Hank.
They shot across the city until they landed in the harbour gardens, the immense botanical glass houses that lined one half of Coast City’s actual coast. There was a fire and Hank was on suppression duties, putting it out quickly and preventing damage spreading from the source. There was nobody else in sight, the gardens closed at this time of night.
Hank looked over at the others, who were doing sweeps of the area, and shouted something in their direction, but no sound came from his mouth. He put his fingers to his Adam’s Apple, could feel the vibrations coming out of his throat, but no words came out from between his lips. He clicked his fingers, but again, no sound.
Before he could communicate with the others via the ring’s silent comms, a massive blast caught him in his back, sending him tumbling forward. He turned, his ears bleeding, and realised he’d been hit by a wall of pure sound, but he still couldn’t hear a thing.
The source? The villainous Sonar, his costume ragged, blood dribbling from a wound at his hairline, his Sonic Sceptre, raised threateningly at the fallen Green Lantern. He was screaming, but again, Hank could hear nothing.
“Need a hand, Henshaw?” John’s voice came via Hank’s ring, directly into his brain.
Behind Sonar, two dense, emerald boxing gloves materialised and swung forward, socking the villain in the back of the head. An old school team-up by Guy and John, like the good old days.
Suddenly, all the ambient sounds returned to the area, and Hank could hear bells ringing in his brain.
“Ow,” said Hank, checking himself over. “That was god damn weird.”
“No worries, man,” said Guy as he took custody of the Sonic Sceptre, while John hoisted Sonar himself up, slapping him in emerald handcuffs.
“He must have sucked all the sound out from the explosion and into that’s sceptre of his, then kept it running while we landed; explains the mute field,” said John.
Sonar jerked up, straining against his restraints. He thrashed about, but couldn’t free himself from the construct. “No! No! You don’t understand! They’re coming for me! They’re coming!”
“Who?” asked Guy. “Are you talking about Black Hand?”
“No-- no-- his--”
Detonations of cascading energy sent the Green Lanterns sprawling, and the construct around Sonar’s arms dissolved as John’s concentration broke. There was a loud splashing sound as a large shape emerged from the waters behind the botanical garden, and Sonar screamed as he was wrestled to the ground behind a large tree that had been undamaged by the explosion.
Hank pulled himself up and rushed to Sonar’s aid, but was horrified by what he witnessed-- a hulking, rotting giant-- nine, maybe ten feet tall-- resembling an immense shark, was currently gnawing on Sonar’s corpse.
The massive shark-thing had an eye missing, half its face torn free but who knows what, and a hole in its chest where its heart might once have been. Dried blood surrounded these vicious, life-ending wounds, but they didn’t seem to faze the creature. It wore a rudimentary belt around it’s waist, and attached was an empty bodysuit, scuffed in places, an incongruous sight for an otherwise horrifying visual.
“My… God…” whispered Hank, his ring revving up to
“Not God, no,” came a hushed voice from behind Hank.
When Hank immediately turned-- shields up-- the Green Lantern was slammed in the face by another blast of energy, shattering his aura and sending him to his knees. He tried to see the source of the voice, and his attacker, but all he could hear was the gnashing of razor sharp teeth against flesh, and the blood pounding in his rattled skull.
“Tiger Shark doesn’t have stomach anymore, but I think that makes him even hungrier.”
Hank couldn’t see his attacker, but sent out a low-level pulse to try and get a bead on his location, but to no avail. Another blast caught him in the throat and he choked, unable to breathe as black spots began to creep at the edges of his vision.
“Light doesn’t mean much to me anymore, Green Lantern. To be fair, it never did. I have a particular relationship with that spectrum, but you don’t care, do you? You don’t even know who I am. Well. You can call me the Invisible Destroyer. Heaven knows the media did.”
Another blast sent Hank back, but he managed to stand and reinforce his protective aura. He was taking heavy, pained drags of air through bloodied lips, and all he needed was an opening to take his opponent down.
“Invisible Destroyer? Nice name… but you… that means you’re there… aren’t you?”
He grabbed a pile of dirt from a nearby flower bed with a digger construct and threw it at the source of the voice. A figure became clear as it tried to swat away the dirt, but Hank had his chance and took it-- he dove at the figure and pummelled him with his fists, relishing a momentary chance to unload.
He took a step backwards when he saw what he’d just beaten to a pulp-- the corpse of a villain, oddly dressed in segmented armour, lay motionless at his feet.
“What… is going on…?” he asked, his ears ringing.
The Invisible Destroyer’s eyes opened and a rictus grin formed on his face, just as blasted Henshaw with an energy beam from his mouth. Henshaw toppled over, his face on fire, even as he could see Guy and John engage in their own battles with his one good eye.
John was about to create a shield to give Guy and him some room, when a man’s hand clasped around his left arm. He looked back and saw an obese, gibbering man laugh, skin falling off the bands of fat around his waist in thick, meaty sheets. The sight was sickness-inducing, but what was worse was the effect of his hand around John’s limb-- the Green Lantern’s arm became grey, discoloured, and suddenly crumbled into ash, causing Stewart to cry out at this sudden amputation.
“Day… day… used da call… me… dah… Crumblah…” laughed the man, his body in a much worse state than the Invisible Destroyer’s. It seemed like every mocking syllable out his reeking mouth was an effort, but that didn’t stop him. “Can… ya tell… why?”
John reeled back and bumped into Guy, who spun around and blasted the Crumbler with a beam that sent him through the already broken glass windows and into the ocean. John gripped the stump of his left arm, gripped it tight, and found more flesh falling off in ashen clumps. He fell to a knee, then took a drastic measure-- he lopped off part of his own arm that was untouched by the decay, and cauterised the wound. The meat and muscle of the decapitated limb rotted away like the rest, but he had separated himself from the apparent infection.
When Guy tried to send a shockwave across the room to scatter everybody but his teammates, he realised he had his own problems. For some reason, he wasn’t able to form stable constructs, and his ring kept fluctuating as his will faltered. His protective aura shimmered, going from there to not, and in one of the off moments, something struck him in the abdomen, and he couldn’t understand why-- why there was a javelin sticking out of his torso.
“It’d be a disaster if your ring wasn’t working properly, wouldn’t it?”
Guy recognised the voice as belonging to one Major Disaster, the bulky collar of his coat obscuring a face that seemed greying instead of pink with life. Behind him was another man, more skeletal than Disaster, holding another javelin ready to be aimed at the wounded Green Lantern. Something clicked. It was the z-list assassin known, almost un-ironically, as Javelin.
“They’re… they’re all dead,” mumbled Guy, severing the tips of the javelin either side of his body.
He would have to deal with the puncture wound separately, and that meant keeping the offending object in for the time being, all the better to plug the gap. It still hurt like all hell, so he triggered the release of additional endorphins into his bloodstream, but he still had a hunk of metal in his body.
“They got… the jump… on us…” spat John.
“Out, out, out,” cried Hank, half of his face a burning wreck, as he shot toward the others and grabbed them in his aura, sending them tumbling out of the botanical gardens and into the night sky. They reached up-- up-- up--!
--And saw that a massive black, opaque shield currently blocked them from the heavens.
Guy took control of their flight from Hank, while John used his ring to salve the burns across Hank’s face. He’d managed to prevent the crumbling effect that caught his arm from spreading up his body, but he was pale, sweating profusely, and clearly in shock.
Guy’s ring sent out a ping-- it wasn’t just a shield covering the skies, there was some kind of sphere surrounding the entirety of the city, from top to bottom, cutting water lines, electricity lines, gas… somehow, during their battle with the cadre of villains in the garden, a sphere had been erected, blocking the trio-- and the rest of Coast City’s citizens-- from getting out.
“Oh, God,” whispered Gardner, the world spun as he clutched the shaft of the javelin in his side, blood staining his gloves. He looked down and saw the stain that ran down his legs from the puncture wound, then his eyes rolled up into his head, his loss of consciousness causing the trio to plummet down-- down-- down---!
Atop the Rodriguez Cermeno Tower, Black Hand watched as a beautiful form of chaos unfolded across the city. His sister was curled up behind him on one of the benches, shivering from the cold, unable to control the wretched feeling that riddled her body. Priscilla didn’t have long left, he could taste it.
Below, minor explosions that promised to billow into something much worse as the gas lines continued to rupture. Water sprayed up from the streets, the lights that lined the roads fizzled and failed. Cars crashed as their engines cut out, fire prevention measures failed to trigger and offices burnt. There were gunshots, screams, a horrific cacophony of bedlam falling across Coast City.
And then a second sound-- the yawning, aching sound that emerged from the maws of his legions-- as the dead stumbled out of the black shield, out of the darkness realm he’d stored them and into the confines of Coast City… ready to create more of their own through bite or scratch.
He’d never been a fan of zombie films as a child. He preferred the real thing down in his father’s mortuary. He remembered playing down there, talking to his friends that never left, never argued, and that warmed the cold cockles of his body. He looked back at his sister, tears lining her face, and then at the woman who sat beside her, playing Priscilla’s toes absentmindedly.
“Well, this is a beautiful sight, but when do we get to the real fun?” she asked, breaking away from amusing herself and instead wandering over to where Hand stood. She leaned over the rail, and breathed in deeply, preening as she enjoyed the horrors being perpetrated down below.
Black Hand said nothing. His tongue had rotted off in the last few hours, and he’d swallowed it in the pieces that made it down his throat. What words were left? What else, other than...
NEXT ISSUE: Hell comes to Coast City! How did Black Hand become so powerful? How did he resurrect the dead? With the Green Lanterns maimed and wounded in equal measure, it’ll take all their guile to not only survive, but escape from the confines of this brand new City of the Dead. Cut off from the world, will they manage to find allies? Or will they face the hordes of undead villains and shambling corpses alone? FIND OUT NEXT MONTH!