Originally Posted by
NathanS
If there is one thing people talk about when it comes to Hal in GL volume 3, its the gray temples and the age that went along with that. Again you have fans that liked it, but others that, REALLY dislike it, and saw it as the symptom of everything going wrong with Hal that lead to his downfall. And of course Geoff was clearly in the latter camp and retconed it to hell and back. So how did Hal end up for a bit being the most experienced of the heavy hitters from the Silver Ag? Yes for like four years Hal had been doing the Superhero thing longer than even Batman and Superman, though that bit got retconed away in the wake of Zero Hour. A few theories have been proposed but as far as I know we don’t have a concrete explication. Busiek links it to the reverence for the HTH stuff and wanting to keep it in its time of the seventies. Which adds up to a degree, Hal at the Start of Volume three says he’s been GL for 15 years, which in 1991 puts him getting the ring in 1976. Just enough time for it to believable that he spent a few years doing the GL thing in Coast City, leave it and then run into GA before the 70s are out. As also noted it seems the head editor of DC at the time was willing to experiment with older characters, having already done so with GA, so keeping Hal and Ollie in spitting distance of each other age wise makes sense.
But based on interviews with Gerard, who wanted to either have a clean slate reset with Hal one of the deciding factors seemed to be Guy and the League in general, and likely to a lesser extent John. Well Gerard had plans to get Guy and John back in as GLs as quickly as possible it does seem likely that Andy Helfer, the editor, who was also the editor of JLI didn’t want to throw a wrench into that book. The JL had not had a clean start, the original Silver Age league existed and that its current set up wasn’t that iconic bunch was something the comic leaned into. If Hal was a brand new hero, then he would need to join Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman in the line up of founders who no longer could be founders. And at that point the league’s original line up is starting to look a little thin. Also Guy’s existing history was played with a bit, namely the brain damage thing, in JLI, so it was likely seen to be for the best if Hal had been GL for a bit so they could fit in at least some of Guy’s existing backstory (the phantom zone stuff would need to go though…) and Hal as a founder of the JL. I suppose at that point there might have been a feeling of, why not just commit to him being an older hero?
And it kind of seems to have worked, Hal as uniquely a hanger on form the silver age in the wake of the Crisis does seem to hang to him more than again the Hawks or Ray who are just as much of the Silver Age. (Well okay the Hawks are a little hard to talk about, but really a LOT of stuff for the modern Hawks still come form their silver age stories just pasted onto the golden age origin… look its complicated and we all know that.)
In some ways Gerard did himself no favors, the first arc of Volume 3 starts with Hal at his most contemplative, reaching back to the era he favored, Broome’s later stuff when Hal was on the road, yeah same stuff Morrison loves, and he made the same connection Morrison did, to the works of Kerouac. To the beatnick vibe. But he started with Hal still in the doldrums he wanted to drag him out of. So he’s a moody Hal caught in thought and philosophizing. For some this is a period of pure gold and some of the best character work ever done with Hal.
But its also an opening arc in which Hal spends the first four issues running from being GL, from doing Superhero stuff. As you can imagine for others a man caught up in his thoughts, actively avoiding doing classic heroics well committing the cardinal sin of the 90s, being older than 20? Oh well The Road Back seems to have done well enough to push GL back onto its feet in the short run, for some, and I have to imagine a lot of younger readers in particular, it may have helped cement Hal as the old fuddy duddy. Gerard’s Hal may have also end up make declarations about being over self-doubt, and been the first to try and make Hal’s behavior in HTH was an outside force effecting, it came to little too late for anyone who looked back at his stuff in the wake of ET. I have to imagine anyone looking at the back-issues, reached issue two where Guy forces the Tattoo Man to have a fight with him and Hal coming in and breaking it up, and making it clear how little internist he has in the classic “fight the bad guy” set up at the moment and wrote it off as a run all about moody self-doubting Hal.
Amusingly the run is the one that starts to point to some of modern Hal, his issue with authority is… kind of odd due to Gerard and the his editor seeming to have completely different ideas of what it should be, but it does mean we get Hal having trouble with authority. Gerard really pushed for Hal as okay with the Guardians, taking them on faith. But And we get Hal learning a hidden secret of the Guardians leading to him questioning how much he can trust them and a big shouting confrontation. A few of those had happened before, and like those earlier ones Hal comes away fine with the Guardians, but it was a lot bigger and lasted a lot longer than the earlier ones. This run is also the first place were “Hal has lots of lady friends” really first shows up. So amusingly I’ve seen at least one person unhappy with it for being the first version of Geoff Johnes Hal.
There was one other element that is worth noting in the 90s conversation around Hal. One that didn’t get a ton of attention at the time, but Hal did have some more appearances as a GL. By going back in time. There was of course the in-universe time traveling of Kyle that saw him team up with a young Hal. Which played him as a fish out of water, a man dealing with his future actions, but also as again that heroic ideal. Someone who always took things seriously, but some of the sly charm and sly humor that some takes have was present. Still when the main complaint was “Hal is a perfect hero” it wasn’t going to do a ton to change minds. Though of course also at the time some people like the “Hal as a perfect hero” bit. So, always some tension there.
But we also had Waid take a whack at him. Partly in JLA, year one, but more notably in his Barry, Hal Flash/Green Lantern The Brave and the Bold. And there he really honed in on just how much change there was in Hal’s life, contrasting it with Barry who’s time as the Flash was, very stable, well till towards the 80s.
At a time when the focus was often on Hal’s ‘iconic’ status quo when talking about his time as GL, reinforcing that image of him as unchanging relic form the 60s, or a baston of a simpler time, take your pick, he reminded us how little Hall spent in that set up. And added the idea of Hal having money problems. Again its to contrast him with Barry, but it did somewhat overstate it a little I think. Hal would spend most of the first half of the 70s scrapping by on unemployment checks, living in his car and out of motels, but his time as a Toy Salesman is not shown to be one of hardship. Well no longer living a cushy upper middle class/lower upper class income of a test pilot a salesman would at least be a lower middle class job. (really none of Hal’s time unemployed play him as having trouble living that way pre-rebirth. He’s more shown to just roll with the punches and live simply enough that he’s fine scrapping by.)
You can see how his Hal and with it the modern idea of Hal starts to emerge form this maelstrom. On hand Hal is boring for being too much of a by-the-book type? Let’s take that questioning side and the image of the pilot as highly independent who doesn't play by the rules but damn they get results type and use it to treat him as more of the forever rebel. But not too much of one. He is still the firm solider. And then put that ladies-man thing to the forefront to really end idea of him as old fashioned. Being old is bad, so let’s just swipe that under the rug. Mix liberally with the GL being not just the idea of police but set up like them… and very militarized, oh boy, so that “rouge cop” that steps out of line only because its the only way to uphold the system of authority that is right thing. Then take that reminder of Hal’s time dealing with job issues and throw it all in the blender and hit frappe.