Hal Jordan: Green Lantern Appreciation 2020

[Frontier]

i have fond memories of md bright in green lantern and in g.i. joe.

This image makes the white hair actually look kind of cool .

[Johnny]

Ouch... MD Bright has always been one of my favorite Hal artist. At least until Rebirth and Van Sciver got a hold of him. That second one sucks on an atomic level.... but Bright was awesome. He's about the only one who drew the grey temples decently for me.




I think the key here is 'elaborate plan'. CoIE ended in 1986... Hal went Grey in 1990 and then went evil 1994. SOMEWHERE in there, they made a plan to get rid of him... but I don't think it was no 8 year grand scheme to destroy their characters. I think they made BIG bucks in 1993 by killing superman... and then Batman... and then looked around the office and said "Who else do we have?!?"

Honestly I will never understand the reasoning behind Parallax. It wasn't even a case of 'get rid of old guy and bring in new guy.... They canned FOUR books to give Kyle his push. I don't know what the sales were like... but I find it REALLY hard to believe that Kyle's start was better than ALL FOUR books he replaced.

The grey hair I never liked... but it didn't bother me either. With the Grey hair and age came wisdom and experience. They REALLY pushed and promoted that Hal was the best GL that had ever lived and every other Lantern should kiss his ring. Which I personally loved. Guy and John were pushed off and got their own books and all the teams wanted Hal to be THEIR Green Lantern. Since Rebirth he was deaged and kind of flip flops between 'Just another cop' and 'doing the impossible'... but he lost a LOT of status after Rebirth and has been working to regain it.

That just doesn't feel like the empty push you give someone you hate. If I were to GUESS... I'd say that they gave up on him somewhere around # 35-40... That's when I remember the book losing it's steam and getting sucked into crossovers with other books I didn't care about. Legion and Darkstars were big ones... But whatever plan they had didn't start at CoIE... there was a big gap there when GL just kept going and growing... then moving to Action Comics... before the final restart in vol 3.

Nah. Wolfman's plan all along was to leave Hal out of CoIE (because Hal had too much experience saving not only the positive matter universe but also the Anti-matter universe where the Anti-Monitor was from, and why they had a rookie John Stewart who had no experience saving planets let alone the universe take Hal's spot during CoIE) and bring Hal back afterwards. Unfortunately Wolfman had to leave the book so he entrusted the GL Editorial staff to carry out that plan (which they did)

Also, DC decided to give Hal and Katar Hol new origins at the same time about 5 years after CoIE. So Emerald Dawn I and Hawkworld came about but went in 2 completely opposite directions. Both were EXTREMELY successful but while Ostrander wanted to leave Hawkworld in the past like originally planned, DC decided to pick up where Hawkworld had left off in the present with Hawkworld the ongoing series featuring a much younger Katar and Shayera despite the fact Katar and Shayera already had their own book and made numerous appearances in other books before that (which created the whole Hawk mess) whereas Jones wanted to pick up exactly where Emerald Dawn I left off ignoring prior continuity with a young Hal back at Ferris and writing Guy and John in as contemporaries so as not to mess around with their statuses too much (especially Guy's status with the JLI/JLA at the time). Unfortunately, Helfer and DC were too invested in GL's prior continuity (again mainly because of Guy and the JLI) so when they decided to start volume 3, DC aged Hal out of nowhere (which was a bait and switch for me and a lot of longtime GL fans because it came about so unexpectedly) and gave him the Reed Richards look to cement Emerald Dawn I deeply in the past.

Luckily for DC, Emerald Dawn and the first three major arcs of volume 3 (The Road Back, A Guy and his G'Nort, and The Return of Star Sapphire) were so successful that it spawned a sequel to Emerald Dawn and 3 more GL inspired books (Guy Gardner, GL: Mosaic and GLC: Quarterly) making GL a more successful franchise than even the Superman books (which is what eventually led DC to doing something drastic with the Superman books with the Death of Superman)

That's why I consider Hal DC's 4th pillar. Outside of Clark and Bruce, Hal is the only other character in DC's stable that can spark a franchise of multiple books. Hal has done so twice (which is 2 times more than Wonder Woman has ever done)

Fair enough. Doesn't change that they clearly didn't think this character had much value when they decided to go in that direction out of nowhere. Batman and Superman were not turned into deranged villains and changed beyond recognition. Even the Injustice Superman who is a deranged villain is made abundantly clear to the audience to be an alternate take on the character, who even gets defeated by the real Superman in the end of the first game. Hal Jordan was given no such courtesy and treated with no consideration to the point where more than 25 years later people who don't like the character still think he should go back to playing that role in order to stop "hogging the spotlight" from their favorites.

[docmidnite]

Fair enough. Doesn't change that they clearly didn't think this character had much value when they decided to go in that direction out of nowhere. Batman and Superman were not turned into deranged villains and changed beyond recognition. Even the Injustice Superman who is a deranged villain is made abundantly clear to the audience to be an alternate take on the character, who even gets defeated by the real Superman in the end of the first game. Hal Jordan was given no such courtesy and treated with no consideration to the point where more than 25 years later people who don't like the character still think he should go back to playing that role in order to stop "hogging the spotlight" from their favorites.

If Kyle or John ever took over as the #1 GL for a long period of time, fans would turn on those characters claiming "favoritism", too. Emerald Twilight split the fanbase irreparably. Before GL: Rebirth most fans of Hal, John and Guy (with a power ring) didn't like Kyle and when they first brought back John, Kyle fans were pissed and called John every name in the book. So it doesn't matter who is in the so-called lead. Some portions of GL fandom will always be peeved.

Like the saying goes, "you can please some people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time" so there's no point trying and no point worrying about it.

[liwanag]

[j9ac9k]

Does anyone know if they showed Hal at all during Superman's coming out event? They used to be fairly close, and even in recent appearances together, they're certainly more than work friends.

[Johnny]

He was on some of the covers, but I don't think he even made a cameo in any of the issues.

[docmidnite]

Does anyone know if they showed Hal at all during Superman's coming out event? They used to be fairly close, and even in recent appearances together, they're certainly more than work friends.

Like Johnny said, he appeared on the cover but he wasn't in any of the books which is quite surprising honestly.

[HAN9000]

https://twitter.com/TomKingTK/status...10231127543817
Tom King is going to write Hal in Strange Adventure... Looking forword to seeing Doc Shaner's touch on Hal. I hope King won't come up with anything like "I don't know what will is" this time...

[Johnny]

While King hasn't exactly been everyone's favorite writer lately, I really liked how he wrote Hal in the Darkseid War special, so I'm looking forward to it.

[docmidnite]

This image makes the white hair actually look kind of cool .

Mark "Doc" Bright is easily one of the greatest GL artists of all time.

Ah. The old Superman/Aquaman Hour cartoon from the 60's. These were my father's favourite cartoons when he was a kid.

Tom King is going to write Hal in Strange Adventure... Looking forword to seeing Doc Shaner's touch on Hal. I hope King won't come up with anything like "I don't know what will is" this time...

I have a feeling King's Hal will be closer to The Darkseid War Special he wrote especially since Hal and Adam are such close friends.

[Frontier]

If it's a small guest appearance, there's a chance it'll be inoffensive or solid.

[Johnny]

[Vampire Savior]

Fair enough. Doesn't change that they clearly didn't think this character had much value when they decided to go in that direction out of nowhere. Batman and Superman were not turned into deranged villains and changed beyond recognition. Even the Injustice Superman who is a deranged villain is made abundantly clear to the audience to be an alternate take on the character, who even gets defeated by the real Superman in the end of the first game. Hal Jordan was given no such courtesy and treated with no consideration to the point where more than 25 years later people who don't like the character still think he should go back to playing that role in order to stop "hogging the spotlight" from their favorites.

You can legitimately like Parallax without having an ulterior motive. In my view, he has a legitimately cool look, cool name, and is an overall cool concept, which is why the character and his design keep creeping back into usage, like when Sinestro was going around in his armor. And GL is frankly hurting for villains of that caliber. Granted, the storytelling of his origin could have been much better, but the idea has its own merits to me. I don't think it's quite as cut and dry as people who don't like Hal Jordan want him to go back to doing that just to get out the way. Sure, some people are like that, but I think it should be easy to see that people can find that character legitimately cool in his own right just by looking at him.

[Johnny]

I'm fine with the character design or even the name Parallax. The concept itself of turning Hal into bootleg Sinestro just to take him out of the picture and make way for someone else feels lazy and uninspired at best. Not everyone is a fan of the space bug retcon, but in perspective it was less ridiculous than what was previously done to the character.

[j9ac9k]

Parallax's original concept (and certainly design) was a good one (and his name certainly made a lot more sense at the time since it has nothing to do with being a fear bug), and he was genuinely interesting a few times, like in "Final Night." Many have said he could have been a Magneto type character who exists in the grey - where you might appreciate his motivations, but his methods are immoral. The problem is that he was depicted too often as a power-hungry madman driven insane by grief. To have one of the founders of the JLA abandon their code of morality and really approach things from a different perspective and method could have been a great new addition to the DCU. Personally, I'm glad they bungled it, because I'd rather see Hal as the hotshot pilot, ring-slinger but it doesn't mean there weren't some good ideas in there. Now that there's a Halallax actually running around the DCU somewhere, who knows if he'll ever come back ... or he might be hanging out with Malvolio somewhere. (although I almost want to see a story that reveals Malvolio actually was Parallax...)