It’s no secret that, for many years, Green Lantern had probably the dumbest Achille’s heel in comics. His power ring (capable of creating any construct the character could think of) was rendered useless against the color yellow, and in Justice League of America #44, we see that even Hal Jordan understands how lame this is.
For the uninitiated, yes, you read that correctly: back in the day technically anything from a sunflower to a banana was enough to potentially take Hal Jordan out. Before Geoff Johns’ iconic run with the character introduced an explanation for the vulnerability (every Green Lantern ring contained a “yellow impurity” due to the monstrous fear-entity known as Parallax being held prisoner by the Guardians in the Corps’ giant Central Power Battery….trust us, it makes sense if you read it) yellow was just something Hal had to try his darndest to avoid. Unfortunately, try as he may, the dastardly hue seemed to pop up over and over again, and in a Golden Age adventure of the Justice League, we see him ponder aloud the absurdity of this constant conundrum.
“What I’d like to know is – how come I always seem to come up against menaces that use yellow?” Hal asks the cold and indifferent stars above as he’s attacked by giant yellow tentacles just moments after defeating a bug-ish humanoid who just so happens to change color every time it takes a breath. “It’s enough to give me a complex!” Is he asking the writers for an explanation in the first instance of meta-writing in comics ever? Maybe it’s an early form of the fourth wall being broken, with Green Lantern imploring for sympathy from his readers. Either way, it’s obvious that he’s fed up with the hold the terrible tint has over him, and you really can’t blame him.
Over the years, other comic writers took notice of this problem. One of the funnier instances of this can be found in Frank Miller’s All-Star Batman and Robin when the Dark Knight and Boy Wonder lure Green Lantern into a room where absolutely everything, including themselves, has been painted yellow, thus giving them the upper hand in their impending scuffle. As Miller points out, all you needed was a quick trip to the hardware store and a paintbrush and you could kick the butt of one of the most powerful heroes in the universe. Let’s hope for Hal’s sake that this weakness isn’t reinstated in some future universe-rebooting event DC might come up with. The poor guy’s been through enough.