Green Lantern # 181

Writer: Len Wein, Paul Kupperberg
Artist: Dve Gibbons, Don Newton
Colorist: Anthony Tollin
Publisher: DC
Published: October 1984

G is for gee that little brown puff ball is cute - aw shit he's got a deadly green ball thing!

I think I own a couple Green Lantern issues, and this is one of them. I've had this issue over 15 years now, and until yesterday I've never read it. The only reason I read it was because:

1. Today is the letter G - Aw yeah! and it was this or another GI Joe issue, so yeah,
2. It has a Star Wars-esque tale attached, but...
3. instead of a Luke Skywalker character starring we have a Green Lantern squirrel.
4. It was about time I read the damn thing. I mean, leave it to a comic collector to keep a comic in pristine condition without having ever read it. We're sick folk...

So, the opening chapter has Hal Jordan turning in his papers. That's right. He's had enough of those old guys on councils shit, and he's decided to focus his attention on his woman. Awww yeah, it's business time. Meanwhile, the other Green Lantern corps aren't too happy with this and try to dissuade him. Hal will have none of this and demands to be stripped of his Green Lantern power. The tale ends with Hal and Carol starring off into space, and Hal questioning his decision to turn in the ring.

Now the fur ball. The tale begins much the same way Return of the Jedi does. Alien folk are partying, and in the back is silhouetted a little guy in a Jedi type cloak. He enters the bar, and the patrons begin to give him a hard time. The little guy tears off his cloak, and lo and behold it's a squirrell Green Lantern. Fuck he's cute as shit! The baddies don't think so as he summons green shaped weapons from his ring to pummel them. Turns out the baddies are space pirates that just killed a space liner's passengers, and he's there to bring some LAW! AWWW YEAH!Until this issue, I hadn't given it much consideration that because the Green Lantern Corps are space cops comprised of inhabitants of different galaxies, that there would, logically, be a squirrel cop. I mean why not? The universe is huge, and I'm sure somewhere there is a galaxy with planets inhabited with squirrels. So it only makes sense one of them would be a cop. Imagine that. A little squirrel cop, wearing a green suit with a green mask and a little green ring, cute, but not so cute as he summons up a phantom hammer to crush in your skull all the while staring at you with black unblinking eyes of utter impassiveness. It's not personal. It's just a job. As you lay there, pinned by his green hammer you struggle to fight off the encroaching blackness, the little green and brown fur ball stares straight into your blood shot eyes and says: "Don't fuck with the nut."

Get it? Squirrels like nuts. You should watch the little guys go nuts for nuts. Shit, I gotta bunch of them living near my house, and the little guys just bound up and down, 24/7, racing for the next nut. And their smart too. They even catch a glimpse of another creature nearing them, and they're gone. It's all about the nuts. Aww yeah...oh wait....