And I shall Shed My Light over the Dark Evil: GL Alan Scott Respect/Appreciation

[jsainfinity]

Me, too! The original and best Green Lantern. I remembering reading my first Golden Age Green Lantern story in the 1970s. It was a reprint, published as a backup story in a Detective Comics "100 pages for 60 Cents" edition. In the story, GL kicked Sportsmaster's butt even without the use of his power ring. Attachment 36481

That was my first time reading about the original and best Green Lantern, too. It made me a fan for life.

[andersonh1]

I wasn't happy with DC making Alan Scott gay in the New 52 version, but since he wasn't the same character as the original Golden Age Green Lantern, it was a different story.
Now, if DC decides to return the original Golden Age Green Lantern and then retroactively decide to make him a closeted homosexual, and if they try to rewrite his past stories and include this "new" development, then I'll be royally pissed. If they want a new gay character, they should create a NEW character, not change an already existing one with decades worth of existing stories.

Agree 100%.

It's a bad fit anyway. Alan dated a number of women, had children with one, and was married for decades. You'd really have to employ some tortured logic to say, in a massive retcon, "that was all pretense". It only makes sense to just accept that the character was never anything but heterosexual and leave it at that.

[MajorHoy]

. . . Alan dated a number of women, had children with one, and was married for decades. You'd really have to employ some tortured logic to say, in a massive retcon, "that was all pretense".

Unless, of course, you also made him Governor of New Jersey.

https://www.theonion.com/homosexual-...-je-1819587630

And the REAL story:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/12/mcgreevey.nj/

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If it's the same Alan Scott as the Post Crisis era, complete with Grandkids, I wouldn't want it. But If it were an entirely new Alan Scott, that I could get behind

My personal version of Alan is a man in his 90s with a long history of being a Gay Rights activist in his Post-Lantern career

You mean after he learned his son was gay and came to terms with it? Yeah, that could work, but retroactively turning him into a gay rights activist when he has previously been portrayed as a conservative who was uncomfortable with his son's sexuality feels like a much bigger retcon than the idea that he's been a closeted gay man.

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Agree 100%.

It's a bad fit anyway. Alan dated a number of women, had children with one, and was married for decades. You'd really have to employ some tortured logic to say, in a massive retcon, "that was all pretense". It only makes sense to just accept that the character was never anything but heterosexual and leave it at that.

Would you like me to list off the very long list of closeted gay men from the 20th Century who've dated a number of women, had children with them and been married for decades before realizing they were gay? If this kind of thing regularly happened in the real world, why would would we need to employ tortured logic to say it happened in fictional one?

[CaptCleghorn]

You mean after he learned his son was gay and came to terms with it? Yeah, that could work, but retroactively turning him into a gay rights activist when he has previously been portrayed as a conservative who was uncomfortable with his son's sexuality feels like a much bigger retcon than the idea that he's been a closeted gay man.

This is the point that bothers me. I can certainly accept Harlequin chasing after Alan knowing he was gay and making a game of it. I can even accept Alan having a platonic marriage with women he cares for but not in that way because of the time. But it gets weird for him to be uncomfortable with Todd's sexuality consider his own. However, is it really fair to make him uncomfortable given the current time? American acceptance about other sexualities has expanded over the last couple of decades and uncomfortable in the eighties doesn't mean uncomfortable in the 2010s.

My take, which I've mentioned many times, is Alan's love life was a soap opera mess. Roy Thomas did what he could to give Alan kids and to make it fit into canonical history. I think even if DC takes everything about Alan, Todd, and Jenny and uses it exactly as it was meant to, the discomfort Alan felt about Todd probably shouldn't be there anymore. As much as we want characters to remain true to their histories we also need to let them grow into current-day societal mores.

The parental discomfort turning into acceptance dates him.

[Jcogginsa]

You mean after he learned his son was gay and came to terms with it? Yeah, that could work, but retroactively turning him into a gay rights activist when he has previously been portrayed as a conservative who was uncomfortable with his son's sexuality feels like a much bigger retcon than the idea that he's been a closeted gay man.

I think it would work better than revealing Alan to be closeted. Green Lanterns are defined by overcoming fear, so if Alan were a gay lantern, he'd be open about it, and he certainly wouldn't be afraid to fight. I don't think it would make sense for Alan to have a beard or to hide his orientation. I see this as the most logical way to incorporate both his Older Superhero and Gay character traits.

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The parental discomfort turning into acceptance dates him.

You're misunderstanding me, I don't think he should be uncomfortable with Todd's sexuality now, but I think his initial discomfort was a nice wrinkle that should remain part of his backstory. Part of what works for me with classic Alan Scott is his contradictions. I like that he's this traditional paragon of virtue and righteousness, but I think that's best contrasted with his flaws. I like that he wore a toupe. I like that he's a bit of a stodgy old conservative at times.

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I think it would work better than revealing Alan to be closeted. Green Lanterns are defined by overcoming fear, so if Alan were a gay lantern, he'd be open about it, and he certainly wouldn't be afraid to fight. I don't think it would make sense for Alan to have a beard or to hide his orientation. I see this as the most logical way to incorporate both his Older Superhero and Gay character traits.

Members of the Green Lantern Corps are defined by overcoming fear, not Alan Scott, who was chosen by the mysterious magical Green Flame because he was worthy of its power. I don't want Alan Scott to be just another Green Lantern, like the other members of the GLCorps, but with a magic ring. He's supposed to be unique.

I don't think Alan Scott being a closeted gay man diminishes him as a hero in the slightest, but rather a reflection of the time period he was from, his conservative upbringing, and the public profile he held. It also gives lots of story potential for future writers to explore. It's one thing for creators to explore gay characters in the present, but the idea of a prominent closeted gay superhero during the Golden Age is ripe with possibilities.

Yes, they could certainly introduce a new closeted gay Golden Age character, or use some third-stringer most people have never heard of, but doing it with the JSA's biggest members would be very interesting and, in my opinion, only benefit the character.

[CaptCleghorn]

You're misunderstanding me, I don't think he should be uncomfortable with Todd's sexuality now, but I think his initial discomfort was a nice wrinkle that should remain part of his backstory. Part of what works for me with classic Alan Scott is his contradictions. I like that he's this traditional paragon of virtue and righteousness, but I think that's best contrasted with his flaws. I like that he wore a toupe. I like that he's a bit of a stodgy old conservative at times.

I very well might be. I've enjoyed seeing conservative fathers learning to appreciate their gay sons. It, to me, is a sign of the love a man has for his child. And having qualities which don't always break right or left adds much to any character. Sliding timescales can be awkward and for the JSA even more so. What the heck, at least we have stuff to talk about.

I'm not a big Alan Scott fan. I like him, but I'm more enamored with Robinson's work on him as the "big gun" as opposed to earlier JSA work where he's one of many. I get the desire for some to have Alan become a symbol of the LGBTQ community (I'm in this court), but I can also appreciate the desire of many to see him remain as he was.

[Jcogginsa]

Members of the Green Lantern Corps are defined by overcoming fear, not Alan Scott, who was chosen by the mysterious magical Green Flame because he was worthy of its power. I don't want Alan Scott to be just another Green Lantern, like the other members of the GLCorps, but with a magic ring. He's supposed to be unique.

I don't think Alan Scott being a closeted gay man diminishes him as a hero in the slightest, but rather a reflection of the time period he was from, his conservative upbringing, and the public profile he held. It also gives lots of story potential for future writers to explore. It's one thing for creators to explore gay characters in the present, but the idea of a prominent closeted gay superhero during the Golden Age is ripe with possibilities.

Yes, they could certainly introduce a new closeted gay Golden Age character, or use some third-stringer most people have never heard of, but doing it with the JSA's biggest members would be very interesting and, in my opinion, only benefit the character.

Since I'm talking about a reinvention of the character rather than a change to the existing one, I'd jst tie him more closely to the Corps

[andersonh1]

I think it's a shame that for a character that's been around for almost eight decades, all that we can seemingly find to talk about is sexuality that belongs to an alternate version created a few years ago, not the original. I think there's a lot more to Alan Scott than that.

[MajorHoy]

Since I'm talking about a reinvention of the character rather than a change to the existing one, . . .

They already reinvented the character for the New52 series Earth 2.

Let's not bring back those failed attempts to "reinvent" the classic Golden Age characters.
(Especially since those "reinventions" did oh so well . . . NOT!)

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I think it's a shame that for a character that's been around for almost eight decades, all that we can seemingly find to talk about is sexuality that belongs to an alternate version created a few years ago, not the original. I think there's a lot more to Alan Scott than that.

I am talking about the character that's been around for almost 80 years. I had, and continue to have, no interest in the alternate version. What I am talking about is the potential for the character moving forward.

I don't want Alan Scott to just be another Green Lantern, but he's older with a magic ring. I like the character a lot, and I think incorporating the gay backstory of the alternate version would be a potentially exciting idea for creators to explore.

I know, I know, comics fans hate change. We want these characters to be preserved in amber and never, ever, change from the way they were when we first encountered them, but if you guys seriously want Alan Scott to have a shelf-life that continues on for decades to come, new wrinkles and facets of the character have to be explored. Otherwise, Alan Scott will be nothing more than an increasingly irrelevant piece of nostalgia appreciated by an ever dwindling fanbase.

If anyone has any better ideas on how to keep Alan Scott alive in the public consciousness, I am all ears. This idea seems like the best option to me, because it not only respects his established history, but expands on it in interesting ways while also opening up new stories moving forward.

[andersonh1]

One of the things that the Earth 2 reimagining made very clear to me is that the appeal of characters like Alan Scott is that the originals are special precisely because they come from a different era. When you attempt to "modernize" those characters, it just doesn't work. They become nothing more than an AU version of the Flash, Green Lantern, etc., and the elements that make then unique are lost. We have six human Green Lanterns already, so what does Alan bring to the table if not the fact that he was the first and that he has adventures and concepts in the 1940s that are very different from every Green Lantern since? Like the other JSA related characters, keeping Alan much as he was in the past, costume, attitudes and all, is the only way to preserve what makes him unique. So I have to completely disagree with you on this one. Nostalgia is the whole point of the JSA. They're a reminder of a different era and a different kind of superhero. To modernize Alan in any significant way is to lose what makes the character appealing.