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  1. #1
    Astonishing Member Timothy Hunter's Avatar
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    Default All The Ways Hal Jordan and Oliver Queen Differ In Personality

    Hal was framed as the conservative straight man as opposed to the liberal rabble rouser Ollie in Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams' GL/GA. This always struck me as odd, because Jordan is often written to be the rule breaking underdog when solo. Has Hal ever been portrayed as conservative outside of his team ups with Ollie?

    In the comics, Hal has been quite the ladykiller, but he known for his womanizing as much as Oliver Queen is?

  2. #2
    Incredible Member StarSpangledMan's Avatar
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    I haven't read GL/GA yet but from what I've heard of it Hal and Ollie's roles should have been swapped.

    Kurt Busiek's thoughts on O'Neil's characterisation for Hal

  3. #3
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    People in the U.S. have weird definitions for "liberal" and "conservative." And those definitions have changed over the last fifty years. But even in 1971, I didn't think Hal was a conservative. Most of the young writers of the day I assumed to be to the left in their politics--so I imagined O'Neil to be a free-thinking guy who gave his characters that same world view--even if the later O'Neil seems like he had drifted to the right.

    If both Green Lantern and Green Arrow were out on the road looking for the soul of the nation, then surely that makes them easy riders. They were both to the left--if Richard Nixon was middle of the road--but they were supposed to empathize with the rejects of society and look for social justice. And I don't think Oliver was always the one most to the left. He was a hot-head and often used force to impose his will on others, while Hal tended to look for more peaceful solutions.

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    Ultimate Member Gaius's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by StarSpangledMan View Post
    I haven't read GL/GA yet but from what I've heard of it Hal and Ollie's roles should have been swapped.

    Kurt Busiek's thoughts on O'Neil's characterisation for Hal
    …but Green Arrow is standing right there, looking smug and superior,
    and GA has spent the bulk of his career, both before and after that moment, concerning himself with white-on-white crime. GL's heroism is largely impersonal -- he protects against threats to life in general -- while GA acts on a far more personal basis, picking and choosing what to concern himself with on a human scale, and he almost always chooses to save white people from white criminals.
    If anyone needs that lecture, it's GA. And Batman. And all the other
    street-level heroes who make the streets safe for white people, while GL and his ilk make the galaxy safe for all people.
    Damn. Ollie died in a plane explosion but Busiek just buried him right there. Beautiful.

  5. #5
    Obsessed & Compelled Bored at 3:00AM's Avatar
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    O'Neil & Adams GL/GA worked for me because it cast Hal as this incredibly noble decent man who was always wrong to Ollie's pointlessly abrasive self-righteous windbag who was always right. This all culminated in the revelation that Ollie's tunnel-vision had led to his own sidekick becoming a heroin addict, which upended the whole Hal's a nice guy who's wrong to Ollie's ******* who's right dynamic. Without that story, I don't think the Hard Traveling Heroes arc works, for the very reasons Busiek pointed out. However, I think those stories do work because they stick the landing with that Roy Harper story capping it off, in addition to bringing Hal's story full circle back to him being a rebellious hotshot who blows up an entire fleet of jets, and saving Ollie from himself in the final issues.

  6. #6
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    I don't think that conservative is the right framing for Hal in that series.
    I suppose if you want to see it as polar opposites you can.
    But Hal was presented as the mainstream American who was clueless
    as to what life was really like on social issues: civil rights, poverty, the environment.

    It wasn't that Hal was a bad person, it was just he didn't get it. It served as a foil
    for O'Neil to write against, in which Jordan served as a stand in for all of those
    Americans who turned a blind eye to important issues.

  7. #7

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    There are lots of right wing rabble rousers in history, particularly populists like Theodore Roosevelt and Trump, so being conservative doesn't necessarily transfer to being a buttoned up straight man.

    Guy Gardner is someone who I would see in this mold, a loudmouth with redneck views.

    I never really thought as Hal as being Conservative per say, but both he and John Stewart have served in the military (marines & air force) so they probably hold some pre Trump conservative views.

    They are afterall space cops.

    The only one GL that I see as possibly being a true blue liberal is Kyle Rayner, as people in the arts usually lean a little further to the left than the general public.

  8. #8
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    Not on point but Theodore Roosevelt wasn't a conservative.
    Someone who wanted national health insurance, national parks, government
    regulation of the economy isn't on the right.

  9. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by RobinGA View Post
    Not on point but Theodore Roosevelt wasn't a conservative.
    Someone who wanted national health insurance, national parks, government
    regulation of the economy isn't on the right.
    He was a Republican, who was backed by the wealthy manufactures of the North East that wanted a sound anti inflationary money supply, by supporting the newly instituted gold standard Act.
    (As opposed to Democratic progressives like William Jennings Bryan that wanted a silver standard to allow for more spending to ease the burden of the poor)

    In short he was conservative for his time, but he was also a rabble rousing populist, who like Trump enacted progressive polices that appealed to the working class. Again not all right wingers are suit and tie libertarians that attend Koch family functions.

    At any right I don't come on here to debate politics, unless someone wants to speculate on what a superheroes political views might be.

  10. #10
    Ultimate Member SiegePerilous02's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gaius View Post
    Damn. Ollie died in a plane explosion but Busiek just buried him right there. Beautiful.
    It really is.

    The last person I'd want lecturing me that I wasn't progressive enough is a white billionaire who spends his money on Arrow Planes.

  11. #11
    Astonishing Member Timothy Hunter's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Captain Nostalgia View Post
    There are lots of right wing rabble rousers in history, particularly populists like Theodore Roosevelt and Trump, so being conservative doesn't necessarily transfer to being a buttoned up straight man.

    Guy Gardner is someone who I would see in this mold, a loudmouth with redneck views.

    I never really thought as Hal as being Conservative per say, but both he and John Stewart have served in the military (marines & air force) so they probably hold some pre Trump conservative views.

    They are afterall space cops.

    The only one GL that I see as possibly being a true blue liberal is Kyle Rayner, as people in the arts usually lean a little further to the left than the general public.
    I could see Hal Jordan as a libertarian.

  12. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by Timothy Hunter View Post
    I could see Hal Jordan as a libertarian.
    I could see that to, he doesn't seem to like authority, he's punched out a couple of bosses in his time, as well as some high profile superheroes.

    I don't really see Hal as political though. Denny O Neil wrote him more as a conventional white male in the 70's to contrast him with Ollie's raging liberalism....

    but Ollie and Hal were best friends, and I don't recall Hal spouting any right wing rhetoric, in the way say Hawk & Dove contrasted....all in all he would rather be out in the field of battle than in a intergalactic diplomacy meeting.

  13. #13
    Extraordinary Member Lightning Rider's Avatar
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    I can see why Busiek didn't like Hal being mired in self-doubt when he's supposed to be the least self-doubting superhero that ever was. But I don't think there's a contradiction in Hal being free-spirited but also having blindspots to social issues or questions of authority. Plenty of brash people carry themselves with confidence without ever stopping to worry about social problems in their periphery. (Not that that's Hal, just saying.)

    I agree with Bored on the arc's culmination blunting the binary right-wrong dynamic.

  14. #14

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    Not the biggest Hal Jordan fan but I don't think of him as a stodgy conservative nor do I think the series made him lesser than Ollie or tainted him in anyway. This is the same series that had Ollie, after endless issues of self righteous preaching, throw his own side kick out onto the streets after finding out he was doing drugs. Space Cop or Space Sheriff Hal is dealing with **** beyond the normal scope of human perspective, it stands to reason he might miss the finer details of everyday life for ordinary people and may need somebody need to clue him in and give him perspective that he might have otherwise missed.


    Given a choice between the two I would take Hal's 'clueless but still willing to learn and understand' over Ollie's 'self righteous but ultimately hypocritical posturing'.

    That's the key difference between Hal and Ollie to me. Hal isn't a hypocrite, he would never be a Lantern if he was. He's forthcoming and exactly what it says on the tin. Whether you agreed with him or not, his words and actions match. Ollie sets standards that he himself is ultimately unable to live up to.
    Last edited by John Venus; 11-18-2021 at 10:55 PM.

  15. #15
    Extraordinary Member liwanag's Avatar
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    was it denny o'niel who first introduced the idea that hal and oliver become best friends?

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