Originally Posted by
docmidnite
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)