Originally Posted by
Johnny
One of the things I realized during my "hiatus" was that I've never really known what it's like to be a GL fan during a time when Hal Jordan didn't feel like he was a top priority. When I was first introduced to the character(I knew about him before that but I did not take active interest in the franchise until then) was around that 2007/2008 period of the Sinestro Corps War. As you can imagine at the time Hal, deservedly so, was treated like a superstar and that was my first real introduction to him. If I was introduced to him about a decade earlier I'd probably have a very different idea of who Hal Jordan was. So when I first heard they were making a GL movie starring Hal I didn't even think twice about it. I was like "Of course it will star Hal, who else would it star, it won't make any sense to be about anyone else". He was the lead guy, the "spark that started the everlasting fire" or however he was called in that final Johns issue. In my mind, combined with his founding JL status, that's who Hal Jordan always was, the guy you could rarely ever do anything GL-related without.
So naturally when I first started seeing he was being marginalized, promoted less and less or shafted from outside media projects more often, it frustrated me a lot because I couldn't understand it. They were doing something to the character that in my mind didn't make sense. Why would you exclude him from this event, why would you kill him off in a 3 second flashback scene in Apokolips War, why ridicule him in that animated film, why keep him out of the League for nearly a decade, why have the New-52 line-up on Fandome merchandise yet have John instead of Hal on it, etc etc. It got so bad for me to the point where I had to take a step back and see the cyclical nature of the franchise for what it was. I think Bored put it best once when he said that just because Hal has been one of DC's top characters doesn't mean he will always be treated that way. That's the part I couldn't realize or accept, because to me that's not what Green Lantern was.
The point in my usual long rambling, that I know all of you here love so much, don't lie, is that Green Lantern isn't always going to be what I want it to be. Hal will not always be the main priority, for all I know he may not even have another solo title anytime soon or not show up in outside media for years to come. The silver lining is that at this point Hal is so ingrained in GL and DC mythology that I don't think he is the kind of character they can easily get rid of, especially with their history with his character. At this point they'd have to get really creative if they decide they want to get rid of him again, cause lord knows they've done everything from character assassinating him to killing him off to sidelining him many times before. At this point whenever he's absent from anything GL-related, there's going to be a substantial group of people wondering what's going on. Because of his success in the 2000s, there's also many people, including younger professionals', whose first introduction to the franchise was Hal, and he'll always be their guy because of that. Many Star Trek fans for instance were introduced to The New Generation with Picard and Data and all those great characters, but Kirk and Spock eventually came back because they were the OGs and they had value to the series that just couldn't be replaced for good. Hal Jordan will similarly always have value to DC, Green Lantern or the Justice League, the level of his status will just fluctuate depending on which characters, or corporate IPs, WB/DC are best suited for the specific era we happen to live in.