Why Does DC Hate Alan Scott?

[ComixMaven]

It's not just that they have had a hate on for all the Golden Age characters including the JSA -- it's that they seem to hate Alan in particular. Maybe it's because he was the original Green Lantern and they can't forgive him for placing Hal Jordan in a permanent Number Two position.

It wasn't so obvious in the JLA/JSA crossovers, because there were so many characters and they were usually in competition, not with each other, but with assorted super-villains. But whenever Alan and Hal went head to head in Hal's own book, Alan was usually made out to be a poor second-best, requiring Hal to bail him out. (The only exception was #45, "Prince Peril's Power Play", where they started out with separate storylines and weren't aware they were rivals for Princess Ramia's hand - and she chose neither of them, preferring Alan's comic sidekick Doiby Dickles, because he loved her so much and he was so amusing. But even so, the misleading cover shows Alan at Prince Peril's mercy and Hal zooming to the rescue.)

The beatdowns continued through the All-Star continuations (1976-1978) and into the Infinity Inc. era, during which Alan lost control of his broadcasting company and had to start over from scratch, working in Keystone City under Jay Garrick (the Golden Age Flash - it's interesting that Jay never gets the same sort of beatdowns and disrespect).

Partway through Infinity Inc., Crisis on Infinite Earths hit, reducing the former Multiverse to just one Earth. Alan made out better than some, as he could be retrofitted into the unified timeline without any major problems (don't ask about the Hawks, and especially don't ask about Wonder Woman...). But that just intensified the conflict vs. Hal Jordan, until the JSA were whisked off to "permanent" imprisonment in a pocket universe where they remained constantly fighting and re-fighting the battle of Ragnarok.

Another terrible injustice was dealt the character about this time: the Green Lantern "Special 50th Anniversary" issue, which Alan was hardly even in because he was stuck in Ragnarok - even though this was his 50th anniversary, not Hal Jordan's.

About this time it was explained in "Sandman: Season of Mists" that the JSA's pocket universe was contained in a crystal ball created by the Norse God Odin, which he was using to study ways of avoiding Ragnarok. This gave DC an idea to return the JSA to continuity, which they proceeded to do in "Armageddon: Inferno". But their next real-time appearance, as a team of aged but indomitable superheroes ("Justice Society of America", 10 issues, 1992) sealed their doom. The magazine was summarily canceled before the first issue was on the stands, and the JSA was marked for destruction in the upcoming event, "Zero Hour".

Alan survived the event (half of his teammates did not), but stripped of his power, or so he thought, and forced into retirement - which at least meant he could spend more time with his family: daughter Jade, son Obsidian, and second wife Molly "Harlequin" Maynne. (What was going on behind the scenes was that DC had decided to get rid of ALL its Green Lanterns and start over with just one, a nebbish Everyman named Kyle Rayner. Hal became an omnicidal maniac, John was crippled, Guy Gardner became a barbarian warrior, and the rest just...died.)

DC eventually relented enough to allow Alan to regain his power, but for years afterward he had to go under the absurd monicker of "Sentinel" for reasons never explained. This meant that he was available to join the reconstituted JSA along with fellow survivors Jay (Flash) Ted Grant (Wildcat) and, eventually, a disambiguated Carter Hall Hawkman. But since he was so much more powerful than the rest of the team, he was frequently Worfed so that they could step forward and show their stuff. (It was after one such Worfing that he finally regained his proper title.)

Probably the nastiest thing DC ever did to Alan occurred during the later phase of this era: the Elseworlds, "Green Lantern: Evil's Might". What they did, and never admitted to doing, was to Evil up Guy Gardner and hang Alan's name on him. Why they did it, I have no idea - but whoever came up with that excrescence should spend the rest of his (or her) life on the breadline.

By this time DC was stumbling and bumbling from Crisis to Crisis to Crisis, making coherent storytelling nearly impossible. The JSA ongoing was canceled, restarted, restarted again, and Alan got Worfed for the last time in that continuity, worse than ever (broken neck, confined to a metal exoskeleton, finally perishing in green flame, or so we were told).

Then poof, the New 52 happened, and there never was a 1940s JSA, never was an Alan Scott Green Lantern, none of those stories - or any older stories - had ever happened, and everything was All-New, All-Now, All For The First Time. DC teased a "new ongoing" JSA book, and gave us -- "Earth-2", where some people had the same names but everything was different and it was All-New All-Now. Well, that stumbled from Crisis to Crisis to Crisis and was finally mercy-killed, with a "JSA" of sorts finally cohering only in the last pages of the last issue.

DC is still stumbling, bumbling, and fumbling from Crisis to Crisis to Crisis, but some of the history has begun to creep back in. So far the signals are very, very mixed and we are being whacked over the head with "This Is Not Your Grampaw's JSA" - if, that is, they are ever allowed to return as a superhero team.

[Prime]

Is it true DC made him gay in the main universe too? Or is he still married and have kids?

[Lee Stone]

"Why does DC hate __________?"

It reminds me of when Didio said to Wolfman, regarding the Titans in his Convergence issues..."You really like them, don't you?"

It's like some people just don't get why others like characters that they don't.
So, when they get in a position where they can ruin those characters, they do.
Because they never 'got' them, or thought they were 'crappy' or 'silly'.

Batman seems to be immune to this because almost everyone likes Batman.

[scary harpy]

Maybe TPTB don't know what to do with him.

I can only tell you I am far more interested in a guy with a magic ring fighting crime in city on Earth than in a space cop.

I think Alan had a great rogue's gallery and I wish it had been developed more.

[The no face guy]

I'm a huge Alan Scott fan, but I don't think DC has been cruel to the character, for one, they have never killed him or had him go insane, (and I have a long list of favourite heroes that met that fate)

Alan is consigned to JSA, which his home to many of the golden age heroes. Outside of the trinity and Captain Marvel & Aquaman, I can't think of any golden age heroes that have their own title.

As Green Lantern, Alan has long been replaced by Hal, and if they replace Hal they will most likely choose someone else both for continuity reasons (Alan is the only magical GL) & expanding racial diversity (Changing racial demographics in the US)

Personally, I would love to see Alan in his own book, because I'm more of a fan of magical heroes than sci fi ones, but as explained above that is unlikely to happen, so I'd really like to see him as a rotating member of Justice League Dark.

The whole idea of a magical Green Lantern taking on DC's evil mystics & demons in his own series intrigues me.

[ComixMaven]

Is it true DC made him gay in the main universe too? Or is he still married and have kids?

We don't know yet. Tynion warped his origin story in the Green Lantern 80th Anniversary Special, but not all the stories in it are in current continuity (past, present, future, alternate universes).

It may depend on how much of "5G" DC is still prepared to commit to. If they really really want to shatter their base even worse than it already is....

The really stupid thing is that there is a Golden Age JSA member they could use who would be far better fitted to stories of a closeted gay hero in the 1940s: the original Dr. Mid-Nite. He's not as well known as any Green Lantern, true, but his personal life is almost a complete blank. He could be whatever DC wants him to be. (Len Straziewski teased the possibility that Doc was other-than-straight in "Justice Society of America", but never made it evident.)

[j9ac9k]

I think it's silly to think that "DC" as a singular mindset hates any character enough to choose to publish stories about them just to dump on them. All the stuff you're talking about is really due to the fact that he's not the headliner of his own title. A character that can sustain a title will generally not get screwed with too much. If a character has enough name recognition that some people care about that character, but they don't headline a title, they are fodder for getting screwed with. Alan Scott is not unique in that sense. If DC really hated a character, there wouldn't even be a list of bad things done to them - there'd be one thing, then nothing.

[Doctor Bifrost]

Is it true DC made him gay in the main universe too? Or is he still married and have kids?

During The New 52, they created new, young versions of the JSA (not legacy characters, but the first ones in their own world) in an entirely new world they called Earth-2. The characters were similar in some ways to the original JSAers (certainly they kept the civilian names and superhero IDs), but different in others.

Since The New 52 erased the original JSA and their kids, and one of Original Alan's kids, Todd Rice/Obsidian, was one of DC's best-known (and few) gay male characters, the writers decided that one of the changes they would make to this new Alan Scott on this new Earth-2 was that he was a gay man. He was supposed to marry his boyfriend, but that got... derailed.

The current DC continuity ("continuity") is, of course, a total mess, but it looks likely that we're getting back the original JSA, which probably means that Alan Scott will not be gay, and his kids Jade and Obsidian will be back, and Obsidian will be gay. But who knows?

I hope that answers your question. By the way, I know a lot of gay men who married women when they were young and had kids. Very often they were in denial, and still hadn't admitted even to themselves that they were gay. (Societal, familial, and religious pressure are immensely powerful.) Later they realized they were gay and came out of the closet. (In some cases they always knew, but thought that marrying would "change" them - I have friends who were told this by their ministers or other clergy. Sometimes they knew and just decided they would never tell anybody as long as they lived - but they couldn't manage it.) This was more common a generation ago (I have gay friends who are happy and loving grandfathers), but it still goes on today, in some places.

And, of course, there are many gay couples today who are having and raising kids - by adoption, surrogacy, or whatever.

[Doctor Bifrost]

I'm a fan of Alan Scott, and I wish he were handled better in the comics. But he was not selling well, and his comic was cancelled in 1949. Hal Jordan was created 12 years later, and continued to headline a successful comic for many, many years. The Green Lantern Corps was built around him, and has become one of the mainstays of the DCU.

So it is, sadly, just natural that Alan Scott - along with the rest of the JSA - isn't considered as important (from a publication/marketing/IP point of view) as the JLA-era characters. That's different than hating him.

And since that's the case - and since his precise place and role in the extended DCU shifted, sometimes more than once, after Crisis on Infinite Earths took him away from the narrative setting most people knew him from in the Silver Age (the Silver Age Earth-2, similar but not identical to the Golden Age comics setting) - he got tossed around a lot. A new writer would come along with a new pitch - and put Alan through the wringer. DC actually loves putting its characters through the wringer, and it's easier to do with characters that are considered less important. Actually, I think Alan got a lot of play, both because of his mystical/cosmic aspects, and because the kids they gave him were pretty popular characters in their own right.

I don't think anybody was "out to get him." I think he just proceeded the way a lot of characters do when they are not regular monthly characters, and new writers come along with heir own "unique" ideas on how to give him another shot, often making a hash of his ongoing tale.

(Now, on the other hand, the Original 5 Teen Titans - I think somebody was out to get them.)

I hope in the next phase of DC, whatever it may be, we see more of Alan and his kids, and they try to give him a more cohesive narrative.

(I was looking him up, and here's something I didn't know, and kind of love: "In 1948, Alan also got a canine sidekick named Streak. The dog proved so popular that he starred in his own solo side-stories." ).

[The Darknight Detective]

Why does DC hate Alan Scott? Because Alan used to bully DC and take his lunch money when they were kids!

[CaptCleghorn]

I don't know if DC hates Alan Scott (and the JSA). I think the company has doubts about the JSA's ability to sell a book as older heroes. Certainly there are creators who are big fans of the JSA and I'd be surprised if many of them weren't making proposals for the team. But evnen going back to the reinstatement of All-Star Comics in the seventies when they were superseded by the "Super Squad" name showed a reticence on DC's part to trust the JSA to sell a book. And Infinity, Inc was a book about the JSA's kids and next generation. All-Star Squadron was a book set during WW2 had had the heroes in their prime. But the JSA eventually got that billing in later issues of All-Star. A JSA book or two was a good seller during the late nineties and twentyaughts. The team can sell books as long as the stories are good.

Alan Scott being gay is a development I like. The presence of an LGTBQ character in the Golden Age is one that is markedly different than one in the present day. Marriages and kids happened to gay people for any number of reasons. If Alan Scott is gay in this latest DC continuity that's not a bad thing. Personally I think his homosexuality is something that adds a lot to his relationship with Molly Mayne (Harlequin). Her pursuit of him could be teasing if she knew his true sexuality and a resulting marriage could have been one of convenience and image for a public figure like Alan in those days.

[Johnrevenge]

I think that the only time that DC could have hated Alan Scott was when Guggenheim was in charge of the JSA lmao (although it also meant that in that moment they hated all the JSA). I don't know what the heck were they thinking when they let him write JSA, or comics in general.

[Flash Gordon]

DC doesn't hate the character, they just might not any ideas what to do with him.

Alan Scott should be THE SENTINEL and keep that red/green outfit he had in STARMAN.

[Will Evans]

Hate him?

He came out better than most characters.

He was the only JSAer still fully alive in Kingdom Come, as well as the main Green Lantern, and he survived.

He’s the only JSAer to not be aged by Extant and wounded/killed by him. Also he was made younger at one point, even younger than Hal.

Both the Elseworlds Golden Age miniseries and the in continuity Starman 1994 series depict him as the golden age hero given the most respect by his peers as well as one of the most powerful not named Spectre or Dr Fate.

After the merging of Earths during the 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths. Alan’s new hometown was Gotham. And in the Denny O’Neil era from the late 80s to all of the 90s, where Batman didn’t respect any superpowered hero coming to Gotham. There was one exception, the Golden Age Green Lantern. Whom even Bruce gave respect to.

He was consistently used in both the 1992 JSA series and the famous 1999 JSA series as a main character that everyone looked up to.

[EmeraldGladiator]

I just want a combo of the Roy Thomas All Star Squadron (father of Jade and Obsidian JSA powerhouse) and the Geoff Johns' (father figure JSA powerhouse). No other versions need apply.