Green Lantern John Stewart Appreciation Thread

[mace11]

You can be as frustrated as you want, but you actively hurt your cause with these constant and frankly unreasonable attacks against the very people who can remedy the problem.

Do you think HEAT and angry fans did Hal Jordan any favors with DC editorial? Nope. If anything, it only made them dig in their heels more and prolonged Hal, John, Guy and the Corps' restoration.

If you really want to see more John Stewart stories. Celebrate him. Buy good comics he's in. Spread the word about Van Jensen's run. Lend your copies to friends. But stay positive. Getting combative, insulting or disparaging towards towards other GL characters, creators and editorial for not delivering you the exact kind of comic book you want is not the way to accomplish your goals.

True.

So, things didn't work out at that time, so you just stop trying? Is that what John Stewart would do?



Where? Here, in this thread, which is supposed to be about appreciating John Stewart, but I end up spending far too much time wading through the same anger, spurious accusations and resentment over and over again.



And when the GLCorps movie gets more forward momentum, you'll see DC start soliciting pitches for John Stewart. There's only so many comics DC is going to publish each month, during which John currently appears twice as the leader of the DCU's most prominent cosmic team. Could he be given more prominence, certainly, but he's hardly being poorly served at the moment.

True again.

Anyway there is a reason why i tend stay out apprecation threads these days.

[Smoov-E]

Great post.

I honestly did not know Kyle was mandated by editorial.

He wasn’t

10charas

[skyvolt2000]

So, things didn't work out at that time, so you just stop trying? Is that what John Stewart would do?

Where? Here, in this thread, which is supposed to be about appreciating John Stewart, but I end up spending far too much time wading through the same anger, spurious accusations and resentment over and over again.

And when the GLCorps movie gets more forward momentum, you'll see DC start soliciting pitches for John Stewart. There's only so many comics DC is going to publish each month, during which John currently appears twice as the leader of the DCU's most prominent cosmic team. Could he be given more prominence, certainly, but he's hardly being poorly served at the moment.

What would John Stewart do? Understand the John fans are not going to BEG DC for a thing.

He would see through all this and realize it's Hal fans trying to beg other lantern fans to support a book that they have no interest in. Which is this speech in other GL threads Guy. Kyle and the GLC in general? It's ALWAYS John Stewart fans getting lectured to.

He would see the fake olive branch is just another cry to get support for a book that the WORLD is showing they don't care for.

He would understand while this is an appreciation thread-he APPRECIATES his fans not accepting crumbs from DC.

He APPRECIATES his fans not acting like other fanbases who have been OPENLY hostile to whatever they don't want around. Accepting crumbs gets you X-Men vs Inhumans. It gets you Civil War 3. It gets you a collection of badly done stories and events because folks don't understand the term WALK AWAY AND NOT BUY CRAP.

HE APPRECIATES his fans not begging.

When Marvel & DC crapped on POC in the past-what did we see? Milestone. Now it's Lionforge.

Beg for more John or support Lionforge's Noble?
Beg for more John or support Gasolina & Motor Crush at Image?
Beg for more John or support Miles & Falcon?
Beg for more John or support New Superman, Doom Patrol & Duke?

I am enjoying my 3rd year of no Green Lantern.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

He wasn’t

10charas

And you have evidence to back this up, right? Because I can point to years of interviews from various creators that prove that everything from Kyle's creation to him being the only GL allowed in the DCU was mandated by editorial.

[Marvell2100]

Could you give me specific examples of this editorial interference?

Editorial wanting to kill off John for sales, when he inevitably would have been brought back for even more sales is not exactly a sign that editorial doesn't like him, but rather that they like money. The exact same thing happened to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Barry Allen, Wally West, Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, Kyle Rayner, Aquaman, and literally dozens more. That's superhero comics.

Sorry for the late response.

I didn't say that editorial didn't like John. I said that there is editorial interference with characters that are detrimental to the characters. Killing John Stewart is not a benefit to him.

Yeah other heroes have died. But the majority of the characters you mentioned are white, A-list(or almost) and male with their own titles. We know their deaths are temporary and these characters will be back quickly.

That has not been the case for a lot of Black characters, particularly Black male.

When Black male characters die, they stay dead for a long time, especially if they are tied to another hero identity(GL, Superman). Writers aren't rushing to bring these characters back from limbo. They want to be the one to bring back Steve Rogers, Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark etc.

John and many other Black characters don't have the luxury of a writer rushing to bring them back.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

What would John Stewart do? Understand the John fans are not going to BEG DC for a thing.

He would see through all this and realize it's Hal fans trying to beg other lantern fans to support a book that they have no interest in. Which is this speech in other GL threads Guy. Kyle and the GLC in general? It's ALWAYS John Stewart fans getting lectured to.

He would see the fake olive branch is just another cry to get support for a book that the WORLD is showing they don't care for.

He would understand while this is an appreciation thread-he APPRECIATES his fans not accepting crumbs from DC.

He APPRECIATES his fans not acting like other fanbases who have been OPENLY hostile to whatever they don't want around. Accepting crumbs gets you X-Men vs Inhumans. It gets you Civil War 3. It gets you a collection of badly done stories and events because folks don't understand the term WALK AWAY AND NOT BUY CRAP.

HE APPRECIATES his fans not begging.

When Marvel & DC crapped on POC in the past-what did we see? Milestone. Now it's Lionforge.

Beg for more John or support Lionforge's Noble?
Beg for more John or support Gasolina & Motor Crush at Image?
Beg for more John or support Miles & Falcon?
Beg for more John or support New Superman, Doom Patrol & Duke?

I am enjoying my 3rd year of no Green Lantern.

Could you please point out where anyone, anywhere on this thread has asked you to beg, I'd be very curious to see it.

If easily disprovable accusations and anger are all you have in response to reasonable criticism, that should tell you something.

Please understand that I'm not trying to rile people up here. I am speaking from a place of experience and I see a lot of you making the exact same mistakes I did years ago. I've been where you are right now, railing against DC because they weren't giving me what I wanted, disparaging creators and editors because it made me feel better to have some enemy who's wronged my favorite characters and was actively working against their interests.

And, you know what? All it accomplished was me making an ass of myself in public and pointlessly hurling more crap at creators and editors who were just trying their best to come up with good superhero comics, but whose opinions on how to do that were different from my own.

Please don't make the same mistakes I did. That's all I am saying. Relax. Enjoy the comics you enjoy, ignore the ones you don't. Try to treat people respectfully, even when you disagree with them, and try not to assume the worst about them. I fail at this constantly, but it's important to try.

If you love John Stewart, as I do, celebrate him. If you are unhappy with the direction he's currently been given, it's perfectly reasonable to not want to support comics you don't want and express your dissatisfaction with them. However, it is not reasonable to disparage other fans of other GLs and assume that DC doesn't care about the character and its editors are working to diminish him because they simply aren't. They are a comic book company and there's only so many comics they can publish in any given month, during which John Stewart went from appearing once a month to twice a month. Those are facts.

Sorry if you aren't liking what I'm telling you, but it's the truth as I understand it. Believe it or not, we both want the same thing: Good John Stewart comics. I'd love to see him given more interesting stuff to do. I think calling it "Hal Jordan & the GLCorps" is a huge mistake, and a misrepresentation of what the book actually is. I think the book is creatively running in circles, rather than moving the characters forward. It's fun, but unessential, and I'd love a new creative team to come on board and shake things up.

That said, I think Robert Vendetti has done some good with the each of the GLs, and he shouldn't be regularly insulted here for trying his best to do right by a bunch of different fanbases, nor do I think Geoff Johns deserves as much grief as he gets for failing to do enough with John Stewart during his run or for wanting to give Simon & Jess a spotlight to grow away from the more established GLs, because they've both proven to be interesting characters in their own right.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Sorry for the late response.

I didn't say that editorial didn't like John. I said that there is editorial interference with characters that are detrimental to the characters. Killing John Stewart is not a benefit to him.

Yeah other heroes have died. But the majority of the characters you mentioned are white, A-list(or almost) and male with their own titles. We know their deaths are temporary and these characters will be back quickly.

That has not been the case for a lot of Black characters, particularly Black male.

When Black male characters die, they stay dead for a long time, especially if they are tied to another hero identity(GL, Superman). Writers aren't rushing to bring these characters back from limbo. They want to be the one to bring back Steve Rogers, Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark etc.

John and many other Black characters don't have the luxury of a writer rushing to bring them back.

I can understand that, and think it's simply a by-product of the vast majority of comic creators & editors being white males. It's inevitable that more and more POC will enter the comics industry and want to do more with characters like John Stewart. However, that will not happen in a day. That's gonna take time, but we're already starting to see it happen more and more. Like it or not, the comics industry was founded by scrappy young Jews and older often-conservative white guys with money. It's a very conservative industry, but it's also filled with a lot of liberal people with progressive ideas. As it's gotten more and more corporate, things have changed for the better and worse in different ways, but the old paradigms of the default white male hero are slowly, but surely starting to become less intractable. While comics fans are generally resistant to change, it is inevitable. Far more GL fans were born out of watching the Justice League cartoon than from reading a comic book. John Stewart's time will come again.

As to the exact details surrounding John Stewart's planned demise and no doubt inevitable resurrection, neither of us have any real information on this. Nobody does but whomever was involved in the decision and, given that it never happened, I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time getting particularly upset about a storyline that never even got published. I reserve my disdain for the bad comics that actually get published

[Star_Jammer]

John, to me, is *my* Green Lantern, as far as that goes anyway. I've never really been into the whole GL/GL Corps mythos, but John was there during my first biggest exposure to DC Superheroes (the JL and JLU cartoons) as a larger property (ie. not counting pre-2000 Batman/Superman movies).

Are there any "definitive" runs of the character (preferably collected in a trade) that one would suggest reading?

[Marvell2100]

John, to me, is *my* Green Lantern, as far as that goes anyway. I've never really been into the whole GL/GL Corps mythos, but John was there during my first biggest exposure to DC Superheroes (the JL and JLU cartoons) as a larger property (ie. not counting pre-2000 Batman/Superman movies).

Are there any "definitive" runs of the character (preferably collected in a trade) that one would suggest reading?

Van Jensen and Bernard Chang's run on GL Corp has been collected. They did a great job with John. I've read one trade already and working on the 2nd.

[Sirzechs]

Could you please point out where anyone, anywhere on this thread has asked you to beg, I'd be very curious to see it.

If easily disprovable accusations and anger are all you have in response to reasonable criticism, that should tell you something.

Please understand that I'm not trying to rile people up here. I am speaking from a place of experience and I see a lot of you making the exact same mistakes I did years ago. I've been where you are right now, railing against DC because they weren't giving me what I wanted, disparaging creators and editors because it made me feel better to have some enemy who's wronged my favorite characters and was actively working against their interests.

And, you know what? All it accomplished was me making an ass of myself in public and pointlessly hurling more crap at creators and editors who were just trying their best to come up with good superhero comics, but whose opinions on how to do that were different from my own.

Please don't make the same mistakes I did. That's all I am saying. Relax. Enjoy the comics you enjoy, ignore the ones you don't. Try to treat people respectfully, even when you disagree with them, and try not to assume the worst about them. I fail at this constantly, but it's important to try.

If you love John Stewart, as I do, celebrate him. If you are unhappy with the direction he's currently been given, it's perfectly reasonable to not want to support comics you don't want and express your dissatisfaction with them. However, it is not reasonable to disparage other fans of other GLs and assume that DC doesn't care about the character and its editors are working to diminish him because they simply aren't. They are a comic book company and there's only so many comics they can publish in any given month, during which John Stewart went from appearing once a month to twice a month. Those are facts.

Sorry if you aren't liking what I'm telling you, but it's the truth as I understand it. Believe it or not, we both want the same thing: Good John Stewart comics. I'd love to see him given more interesting stuff to do. I think calling it "Hal Jordan & the GLCorps" is a huge mistake, and a misrepresentation of what the book actually is. I think the book is creatively running in circles, rather than moving the characters forward. It's fun, but unessential, and I'd love a new creative team to come on board and shake things up.

That said, I think Robert Vendetti has done some good with the each of the GLs, and he shouldn't be regularly insulted here for trying his best to do right by a bunch of different fanbases, nor do I think Geoff Johns deserves as much grief as he gets for failing to do enough with John Stewart during his run or for wanting to give Simon & Jess a spotlight to grow away from the more established GLs, because they've both proven to be interesting characters in their own right.

You make some really great points and it's one of the reasons I avoid this thread as a fan of the entire GL mythos, because as there's hardly any appreciation done in here compared to the amount of bitter posts and conspiracies theories, what hurts the most is this is the thread that a GL veteran artist reached out to and instead of extending a olive branch and be professional with he was meant with the same type of behavior.

I agree with all of what you said.

[Marvell2100]

I can understand that, and think it's simply a by-product of the vast majority of comic creators & editors being white males. It's inevitable that more and more POC will enter the comics industry and want to do more with characters like John Stewart. However, that will not happen in a day. That's gonna take time, but we're already starting to see it happen more and more. Like it or not, the comics industry was founded by scrappy young Jews and older often-conservative white guys with money. It's a very conservative industry, but it's also filled with a lot of liberal people with progressive ideas. As it's gotten more and more corporate, things have changed for the better and worse in different ways, but the old paradigms of the default white male hero are slowly, but surely starting to become less intractable. While comics fans are generally resistant to change, it is inevitable. Far more GL fans were born out of watching the Justice League cartoon than from reading a comic book. John Stewart's time will come again.

As to the exact details surrounding John Stewart's planned demise and no doubt inevitable resurrection, neither of us have any real information on this. Nobody does but whomever was involved in the decision and, given that it never happened, I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time getting particularly upset about a storyline that never even got published. I reserve my disdain for the bad comics that actually get published

The problem lies in that fans aren't always going to wait forever for the Big 2 to get their act together when other creators and companies are putting out diverse comics(See: Lion's Forge). There are a minimum of 2-3 GL titles at any given time so there is opportunity to give face time to multiple characters. Everyone has their own ideas/opinions on what can or can't be done and how patient they are willing to be.

In regards to John's planned death and whatever speculation here was or wasn't, I'll just say this: Whether or not anyone gets upset, it was the idea to kill him in the first place no matter if the story was good or not.

[Johnny]

Could you please point out where anyone, anywhere on this thread has asked you to beg, I'd be very curious to see it.

If easily disprovable accusations and anger are all you have in response to reasonable criticism, that should tell you something.

Please understand that I'm not trying to rile people up here. I am speaking from a place of experience and I see a lot of you making the exact same mistakes I did years ago. I've been where you are right now, railing against DC because they weren't giving me what I wanted, disparaging creators and editors because it made me feel better to have some enemy who's wronged my favorite characters and was actively working against their interests.

And, you know what? All it accomplished was me making an ass of myself in public and pointlessly hurling more crap at creators and editors who were just trying their best to come up with good superhero comics, but whose opinions on how to do that were different from my own.

Please don't make the same mistakes I did. That's all I am saying. Relax. Enjoy the comics you enjoy, ignore the ones you don't. Try to treat people respectfully, even when you disagree with them, and try not to assume the worst about them. I fail at this constantly, but it's important to try.

If you love John Stewart, as I do, celebrate him. If you are unhappy with the direction he's currently been given, it's perfectly reasonable to not want to support comics you don't want and express your dissatisfaction with them. However, it is not reasonable to disparage other fans of other GLs and assume that DC doesn't care about the character and its editors are working to diminish him because they simply aren't. They are a comic book company and there's only so many comics they can publish in any given month, during which John Stewart went from appearing once a month to twice a month. Those are facts.

Sorry if you aren't liking what I'm telling you, but it's the truth as I understand it. Believe it or not, we both want the same thing: Good John Stewart comics. I'd love to see him given more interesting stuff to do. I think calling it "Hal Jordan & the GLCorps" is a huge mistake, and a misrepresentation of what the book actually is. I think the book is creatively running in circles, rather than moving the characters forward. It's fun, but unessential, and I'd love a new creative team to come on board and shake things up.

That said, I think Robert Vendetti has done some good with the each of the GLs, and he shouldn't be regularly insulted here for trying his best to do right by a bunch of different fanbases, nor do I think Geoff Johns deserves as much grief as he gets for failing to do enough with John Stewart during his run or for wanting to give Simon & Jess a spotlight to grow away from the more established GLs, because they've both proven to be interesting characters in their own right.

[Sodam Yat]

Sorry for the late response.

I didn't say that editorial didn't like John. I said that there is editorial interference with characters that are detrimental to the characters. Killing John Stewart is not a benefit to him.

Yeah other heroes have died. But the majority of the characters you mentioned are white, A-list(or almost) and male with their own titles. We know their deaths are temporary and these characters will be back quickly.

That has not been the case for a lot of Black characters, particularly Black male.

When Black male characters die, they stay dead for a long time, especially if they are tied to another hero identity(GL, Superman). Writers aren't rushing to bring these characters back from limbo. They want to be the one to bring back Steve Rogers, Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark etc.

John and many other Black characters don't have the luxury of a writer rushing to bring them back.

I definitely agree. This was what I've been saying.

The problem lies in that fans aren't always going to wait forever for the Big 2 to get their act together when other creators and companies are putting out diverse comics(See: Lion's Forge). There are a minimum of 2-3 GL titles at any given time so there is opportunity to give face time to multiple characters. Everyone has their own ideas/opinions on what can or can't be done and how patient they are willing to be.

In regards to John's planned death and whatever speculation here was or wasn't, I'll just say this: Whether or not anyone gets upset, it was the idea to kill him in the first place no matter if the story was good or not.

I agree with this too.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

John, to me, is *my* Green Lantern, as far as that goes anyway. I've never really been into the whole GL/GL Corps mythos, but John was there during my first biggest exposure to DC Superheroes (the JL and JLU cartoons) as a larger property (ie. not counting pre-2000 Batman/Superman movies).

Are there any "definitive" runs of the character (preferably collected in a trade) that one would suggest reading?

I am greatly enjoying Van Vensen & Cliff Chang's recent run on GLCorps. I don't know if it is collected in any trades, but I was able to track down all the single issues without too much difficulty. Issues #21 to 40 of the New 52 era Green Lantern Corps if I am remembering it right. I'm in the middle of reading it now and it's been great so far, except for being derailed by some lackluster crossovers.

Although there's I would absolutely worth reading is Gerard Jones Mosaic series. It's a bit too pretentious for it's own good at the start, but, by the second or third issue, it really finds it's groove and absolutely nails it. It's probably responsible for the modern interpretation of John Stewart as the thinking man's GL, as opposed to the more angry impulsive characterization he had prior to that. It's also got some beautiful Cully Hamner art for most of the issues.

If an angrier John is more to your liking, Christopher Priest, then known as Jim/James Owlsey did some really interesting stuff with him back during the late 1980s. He had John Stewart, still raw from the recent murder of his wife, go to South Africa during Apartheid and, well, bad stuff happens. If you like Priest's more deconstructionist, realistic take on superheroes as being very fallible people who make mistakes with good intentions, it's worth checking out.

Len Wein & Steve Englehart did some great stuff with John Stewart when he first replaced Hal Jordan full-time back in the mid-1980s. It may feel a bit dated now, but it's got great art by Watchmen's Dave Gibbons and some of Joe Staton's best stuff.

Dwayne McDuffie, the writer most responsible for John Stewart's development in the Justice League cartoon, also had a short-run on the Justice League of America comic that featured John Stewart fairly prominently. It also featured the integration of the Milestone characters into the DCU proper. It's collected in Justice League of America: Injustice League and Justice League of America: Worlds Collide

Hope that helps.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I definitely agree. This was what I've been saying.

I agree with this too.

And I don't disagree either. I don't think John Stewart fans should be sitting around patiently waiting for DC to give them some good John Stewart comics to spend their money on. Spend your money on what you want, criticize the lack of forward momentum respectfully and reasonably, and when DC finally does give you something worth paying for featuring John Stewart, buy it, and make sure everyone else you know you might like it picks it up, too.

I know I am certainly looking forward to "The Other History of the DC Universe"

However, when the thread for appreciating the character devolves into a repeated cycle of baseless accusations and resentment, it only drives away potential readers, rather than bring them into our shared love of John Stewart.