Originally Posted by
Bored at 3:00AM
You didn't enjoy the issue in which Hal punches out God and arrests the entire planet Earth for being intoxicated? That issue was all comedy.
The 2000AD comparison is apt. Each issue is a different genre and tone. Some are horror, some are farce, some are fairy tales. The beauty of Hal Jordan's character is that he's such an elegantly simple archetype, the superhero space cop, that you can slot him into almost any kind of story and he'll work because the guy isn't fazed by anything. Whatever you throw at him, he'll dive in and get the job done.
It's both a throwback and radical because mainstream escapist fiction doesn't really do this anymore, where the focus is so squarely on examining the psychology of the protagonist. This isn't really able that. Hal Jordan isn't riddled with self-doubt or haunted by past trauma anymore. This isn't to say he's without depth, but what Morrison has done is show how complicated a guy like that, who's seen and done things beyond imagination, while putting him in increasingly complex situations to see how he'll respond.