The Batman: "Ring Toss"

"Above average"
Musical rings anyone?

In Batman's latest Justice League team up, we have Green Lantern (GL). Not Kyle Raynor. Not John Stewart. But Hal Jordan.

Fine with me.

This episode seemed to cram a lot in. Maybe too much.

It opens with Dick at grade school waiting for a pickup. Some kids invite him to play basketball, but when Alfred shows up in the limo, Dick slinks off embarrassed. He complains to Alfred about not fitting in with the other kids. Alfred reminds Dick that he goes winging through the night in tights, wearing a mask, fighting bad guys at Batman's side, and our Boy Wonder clams up.

Then Alfred mentions that Master Bruce is entertaining another visiting hero: GL. Dick gets psyched up, and we don't hear another word of feeling apart from the other kids at school. What's the point of bringing it up in the first place?

Anyhow, Bats is scanning the known galaxy from the Batcave (nice) in search of GL's nemesis who escaped from an interstellar jail cell to wreak vengeance on him. I'll give you three guesses--it's Sinestro. Who else? With merely 21st century Wayne Corp. technology, Bats can't find a trace of this week's Big Bad. Dick shows up soon afterward and gushes over GL. After weathering Dick's fanboy adulation, GL goes to the Gotham? Airport to step back into his secret ID and recharge his power ring--except Sinestro shows up to take his ring to get even more powerful and lays a hurting on him.

GL puts up a good fight, but yellow trumps green--and his ring still needs a new charge. Before Sinestro can take his ring, GL sends it away with instructions to find Bats.

Sinestro leaves Hal unconscious and goes searching for the ring, which bumps into Penguin who's on his way to crash Bruce Wayne's latest charity event. After bumping into Pengie's top hat, the ring lets Mr. Cobblepot try it on for size.

I raised an eyebrow at this. I thought that all green lantern rings were set up to 1) seek out only worthy users and 2) not perpetrate evildoing.

Penguin goes on to gleefully rob Bruce's charity, a bank, a jewelry shop, and an antique car dealership. When I compare this to the Season Five JLU episode "The Great Brain Robbery" where the Flash and Lex Luthor switched bodies, this character trait mixing episode seemed a bit flat to me. I thought we could see Penguin using GL's ring to create an illicit Cobblepot estate or something rather than use his newfound superpower to go on a stereotypical robbery spree. And this seemed to take away from the main? issue of the GL vs Sinestro battle.

Batman and Robin soon catch up with Penguin, who holds 'em off with a ring that still hasn't run out of juice. Then Sinestro finally reappears and chases after Pengie, who lights out like a chicken with its head cut off. Hal also wakes up and somehow stays on the periphery as Penguin zips all over Gotham with Bats, Robin, and Sinestro hot after him.

Penguin soon gives the ring up to Bats, who starts to give Sinestro a challenge--except the ring is starting (again) to run low on juice.

Bats then tosses the ring back to Hal, who charges it back up, and can suddenly stand up to Sinestro even though his ring isn't supposed to be able to handle yellow projections.

Bats steps in to pickpocket Sinestro's yellow power ring and put him down for the count. Hal then soars heavenward to deliver Sinestro back into his "stasis field" to cap this week's adventure. What's the moral of this episode except to show that Hal and Sinestro aren't too extraordinary without their rings?

Batman on the other hand showed a nice touch with GL's ring. It woulda been interesting to see what he would've done with it for a full twenty minutes, except it wasn't his "style" and he doesn't need it to be a hero. This wasn't a bad episode, but I felt it could've been better.