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In an infinite and ever expanding universe there are silent emerald guardians. They fight with honor, integrity, bravery, and most of all they fight on the side of good; and some of them are really really bad at it. Here are the top 5 WORST Green Lanterns.

5. Mogo

It case you didn’t know already, I’ll take care of the elephant in the room. He’s a freaking planet. A planet! How is a god damn planet in the Green Lantern Corp? It’s like the Marines making Pluto a staff sergeant or Venus being in your mother’s book club. Your mom and her friends keep insisting it’s a member but it never shows up to any of  the meetings and you’re all pretty sure it never read Tuesdays With Morrie like it was supposed to. Your mom really just likes asking the neighbors why they don’t have planets in their book club, as if it’s some sort of progressive social eventuality.

One can’t even fathom the logistics of this. Does it wear the ring? If it does, it must be the size of Cuba. Who trained him? Teachers have enough trouble as it is without having to deal with a kid in class with its own gravitational pull and gross national product. As a species we can’t even get global warming on our own planet under control let alone teach it an allegiance oath.

Even if a planet does somehow become sentient enough to know good from evil, HOW DOES IT FIGHT CRIME? It can’t do anything! If it even moves slightly out of its orbit every piece of life on its surface would die and whole solar systems would be thrown out of whack.

If there is suddenly injustice somewhere in the universe what could it possibly do? Do its days get longer? Do the tides go in and out? Seriously, what could it possibly do?

4. Ch’p

After Ch’p’s home planet of H’lven was invaded by the Crabster Army of Dcotor Ub’x and was sentenced to death, he was given a Green Lantern ring by the Guardians of the Universe to fend off the invasion and save his home planet…duh!

Now, besides the plot sounding like the creation story in Dianetics there is still the odd factor one must consider in Ch’p’s story: he’s is a cartoon squirrel.

“But hey, these are comics, of course he’s a cartoon.” Well, what makes it even worse is even in the Green Lantern Universe, he’s a cartoon squirrel.

That’s right, just like all of his H’lven brethren, Ch’p is a walking talking alien who happens to look just like an Earth cartoon character. He even has giant goofy overalls and a bow tie. One should find it hard to believe that somewhere in our universe there is in fact a life-sustaining planet that has evolved completely independent of any other planets to consist of solely Roger Rabbits.

If that isn’t bad enough, in one particular story arc, Ch’p becomes depressed and disillusioned with life and contemplates suicide. He even almost goes through with it, noose around his neck and everything. One can see the charm of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh in always being depressed but you don’t think he has a gun and a bottle of Wild Turkey stashed in a cigar box under his bed, you know, just in case. Frankly, stories where cute and cuddly animals are trying to off themselves just isn’t a good read.

3. The Iron Lantern

In a crazy alternate universe (if you are unfamiliar, this is a writing device that comic book writers rarely, if EVER, use) there is a billionaire playboy pilot by the name of Hal Stark who is summoned by blah blah blah. Essentially all you need to know is that a couple of lazy writers took the Green Lantern canon, stuffed it into a shot gun, pointed it at the face of the Iron Man canon and pulled the trigger. The results were the Iron Lantern.

This should sound pretty rad, right? Except that the writers continued to create this magical and wondrous world by doing absolutely nothing new. For example: the Iron Lantern’s archenemy? Mandarinestro, an exact combination of Green Lantern’s nemesis Sinestro and Iron Man’s nemesis Mandarin. For god’s sake they even had to cram their names together! They do that for almost everything in the universe.
It’s like if the police and fire departments were merged and their biggest threat suddenly became drug-dealing house fires called drug-douse-fires.

2.Green Arrow

Right now you’re probably screaming at your computer screen in a high pitched falsetto with bits of pop-tart spraying here and there while shouting, “But Green Arrow is already a super hero! And he’s not even in the Green Lantern Corp! What gives? Why the copious consumption of hate-er-aid?” Well guess what?  There was a brief moment when Green Arrow did in fact don the power ring in order to protect an unconscious Hal Jordan. You know what happened? He choked.

The power ring is based off of will power, intelligence and imagination. Three things that you’d think a super hero should be pretty well versed in right? Normally Green Lanterns are throwing B52 bombers at each other while using the ring to decode an infinite array of alien languages as they fly through outer space. When Green Arrow got his hands on the ring, he dug deep within himself, mustered up all his strength and courage and with a blustering war cry shot a single green arrow out of the ring. He then proceeded to pass out.

Obviously it was just too much for him to handle, and that might be a valid excuse. Except for the fact that almost everyone else besides Hal Jordan has had to use the ring at one time or another and they all seemed to do just fine.

1. Sinestro

“What? Sinestro? But he…and then he…and after that he…” EXACTLY. Sinestro was once the best and simultaneously worst Green Lantern ever. He brought peace and safety to his home planet, then  his solar system and soon the whole sector. He was even chosen to train the infamous Hal Jordan. All was going quite swimmingly until Hal realized Sinestro was actually an insane bad guy who would soon become his greatest arch nemesis. You know, that old chestnut.

Hal inevitably exposed Sinestro’s Fascist ways of keeping law and order in the universe. He ruled with a tyrannical fist of fear, which in the heroic Green Lantern book is a big no-no. Everyone was shocked, even though his name was Sinestro and he looked like an even more evil Daniel Day Lewis from There Will Be Blood. If you hire a clown for your kid’s birthday party named Molesto and he drives a bloody tool shed to the gig, don’t be surprised if the party is over before the candles get blown out.

This ultimately led to Sinestro’s downfall and a crazy yellow shit storm to follow. He started hunting down and killing all of the Green Lantern Corp. Did a pretty good job of it too. He even started up his own Yellow Lantern Corp based on power and fear, with a very progressive flex-time scheduling and day care center, also most likely based on fear. If you want to learn more about Sinestro, he is pretty much the same as Darth Vader but replace the Jedi with Green Lanterns and Yoda with these little blue dudes.

Do you like what you see boy!? DO YA? Well take a picture it will last longer, or check out monkeywithamonocle’s other post :What your first Pokemon says about you & Truths in Star Wars even George Lucas missed (Part I) 

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