Too Many Earth Lanterns...

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I like the big 4 best baz and Jessica are fine but now possibly having a 7th lantern is a little bit to much if it was up to me ill put them like this:
Hal/John on JLA
Kyle on Titans
Guy baz and Jessica on a corps book

you can give all of them solos or mini books and see who sells I mean just look at the bat books

BINGO!

Although, I'd like Hal/John/Guy/Kyle/Simon & Jess to all rotate in and out regularly from the main JLA book whenever possible. They've each done their time with the main guys, each of them deserves their own big adventure with the JUSTICE LEAGUE. Hal certainly got it in Metal. He was the CROTCH of the JLA Voltron!

[9th.]

I don't care anymore, all I'm looking for is good stories. If don't like the characters I won't read them, thats all I can do really.

[EsotericFailures]

Guy in Red Lanterns was perfect, the book under Charles Soule was splendid. You're right there was no need totake him back on GLC.
Kyle as White Lantern wasn't perfect but it was a direction for him.

Yeah I'm not the biggest Guy fan but Soule's Red Lanterns was great and he was a decent lead in it. I heard almost no complaints about it other than extremely old school Green Lantern fans who hate the entire emotional spectrum (which are a very small minority). There was more criticism of the White Lantern stuff but it at least preserved what made Kyle Kyle (being a lone figure instead of being part of a Corps).

It all comes down to the big problem with mainstream comics is that they're scared of long lasting change. Dick Grayson is allowed to leave the Robin suit but that's it, everyone eventually has to go back to their normal roles.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I personally have no problem with Guy becoming a Red Lantern for a bit, and White Lantern suited Kyle for a couple minutes, but being oh so special is boring and not Kyle's strength.

However, giving Lanterns new IDs doesn't solve the problem of there simply not being enough comics space to feature this many Lantern characters without most of them getting short-changed.

With Far Sector, it won't matter because she's an isolated character. Same deal with the YA GL, who is another separate story.

But either Alan, Hal, John, Guy, Kyle, Simon or Jessica are gonna get the short-shrift.

Currently, Alan is getting the worst of it. He's been MIA for years. And now he's dead

[EsotericFailures]

However, giving Lanterns new IDs doesn't solve the problem of there simply not being enough comics space to feature this many Lantern characters without most of them getting short-changed.

Sure but it does mean that being a human Green Lantern is at least slightly special instead of what it is now. The problem with Green Lantern isn't that it has too many characters, it's that all the important ones are human Green Lanterns, meaning they have similar looks and the same powers.

[Lee Stone]

I personally feel having more than one GL is really too many.
Of course, I'm just tired of how every other cosmic/space character or team has been sidelined since Blackest Night.

REBELS was a step in the right direction, but I didn't know it existed until it was over.

[Agent Z]

I feel that DC does have too many Earth Green Lanterns. The concept just does not feel unique any more.

I'd be game for more villainous Earth Lanterns.

Gimme a story where Luthor, Joker, Grodd, Doctor Sivana, Black Adam, & Ra's al Ghul temporarily get power rings.

That story should be fun.

The concept stopped being unique when it was re-imagined as a space-wide organization instead of an identity for a singular superhero.

[Frontier]

Yeah I'm not the biggest Guy fan but Soule's Red Lanterns was great and he was a decent lead in it. I heard almost no complaints about it other than extremely old school Green Lantern fans who hate the entire emotional spectrum (which are a very small minority). There was more criticism of the White Lantern stuff but it at least preserved what made Kyle Kyle (being a lone figure instead of being part of a Corps).

It all comes down to the big problem with mainstream comics is that they're scared of long lasting change. Dick Grayson is allowed to leave the Robin suit but that's it, everyone eventually has to go back to their normal roles.

I guess if anything the reason the Red Lantern status quo wasn't sustainable was because Guy, at his core, is a GL and that keeps him around better then being a Red Lantern does.

I mean, the Reds haven't even been seen since the start of Rebirth.

[Robanker]

It wouldn't be as troublesome if it was spread out a bit more. Since 2011, we've gotten Simon, Jessica, the Teen Lantern and now Sojourner. In retrospect, from 1940 until 2011, we had Alan, Hal, Guy, John and Kyle. I'll factor Alan in (despite not being a Oan GL) but not the kid in Zoom because I'm going strictly on what's in continuity. So five in 71 years and then four in 8, and all but one are Americans. Six if you count Charlie Vicker, but he's practically a footnote and most forgot he existed. It's a lot all at once and starting to feel a little like "well I want to write Green Lantern, but I don't want to have to read it beforehand."

Ultimately, I'm on board. I'm going to read Far Sector. It sounds cool and I know it'll look beautiful, but I'm definitely fatigued with new human GLs. It's up there with "we have a new Batfamily member!"

Call me when we get a Hawk sidekick. I'll even take Skreel.


For what it's worth, I like Jessica a lot and I have no opinion regarding Teen Lantern or Jo given how little we know about either yet. I think Simon was ultimately mishandled and they haven't really figured him out. If anything, he's got the same problem as Kyle without the history to keep him afloat.

The real solution here is to make Guy Ice's sidekick. I'd read the hell out of a book about those two.

[Bruce Wayne]

I personally feel having more than one GL is really too many.
Of course, I'm just tired of how every other cosmic/space character or team has been sidelined since Blackest Night.

REBELS was a step in the right direction, but I didn't know it existed until it was over.

DC has tried constantly to push their various non-Lantern space characters using writers like Giffen (Annihilation, GOTG) and King and Starlin (Infinity Gauntlet). GL is at the forefront because that's the only cosmic property that has continuously done well. You can just look at the success of SCW or Blackest Night. Meanwhile the various attempts at doing Omega Men, or Giffen's Threshold/Justice League 3000 or Starlin's Mystery in Space/ Rann-Thanagar Holy War, etc have just not done well despite the creative investment DC has put in.

[Lee Stone]

DC has tried constantly to push their various non-Lantern space characters using writers like Giffen (Annihilation, GOTG) and King and Starlin (Infinity Gauntlet). GL is at the forefront because that's the only cosmic property that has continuously done well. You can just look at the success of SCW or Blackest Night. Meanwhile the various attempts at doing Omega Men, or Giffen's Threshold/Justice League 3000 or Starlin's Mystery in Space/ Rann-Thanagar Holy War, etc have just not done well despite the creative investment DC has put in.

Well... Starlin had potential, but DC nipped that in the bud because. It looks like he wasn't given star status at DC.
Meanwhile, Giffen is one of DC's creators that's most taken for granted.

And I really wouldn't say DC invested any in those.
Rann/Thanagar War was the only Infinite Crisis mini that didn't get an ongoing title to support it, despite it doing just as well as Villains United (Secret Six), Omac Project (Checkmate) and Day of Vengeance (Shadowpact).

Instead, we got for the three main characters of Rann/Thanagar War:

Adam Strange - nothing.
Kyle Raynor - a new costume and new name, making him completely unrecognizable to R/TW readers, for a 12-issue mini-series that went nowhere.
Hawkman - lost his title to Hawkgirl, where Chaykin came along and made the book as far from cosmic as possible.

And then they just left it until 52, where everybody and their grandma appeared with no rhyme or reason.
Which, by the time it was over, you're either taking a pair of scissors to it to figure out what happened, or just simply ignoring it (the easiest thing to do, considering the cost).

So, by the time Rann/Thanagar Holy War started most readers had fell off the wagon, including myself.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Sure but it does mean that being a human Green Lantern is at least slightly special instead of what it is now. The problem with Green Lantern isn't that it has too many characters, it's that all the important ones are human Green Lanterns, meaning they have similar looks and the same powers.

I view the title of Green Lantern as no different than being one of the X-Men these days. There are a LOT of different X-Men, but unless your name is Scott, Storm, or Logan, you are probably not going to get as much attention as the rest

[Bored at 3:00AM]

The real solution here is to make Guy Ice's sidekick. I'd read the hell out of a book about those two.

I think a JLI reunion book not done by Giffen, DeMatties & Maguire that focuses on Booster, Ted, Fire & Ice, Guy, Scott & Barda is exactly what DC needs right now.

I love the original stuff, but I'd love to see a new take on this group.

[Frontier]

I view the title of Green Lantern as no different than being one of the X-Men these days. There are a LOT of different X-Men, but unless your name is Scott, Storm, or Logan, you are probably not going to get as much attention as the rest

I dunno. I think it's different for the Green Lanterns since they're not really a "team" but a name that comprises a bunch of generally independent operatives.

There's no real Trinity equivalent like there is with the Justice League or with your X-Men example.

[Vordan]

Look I know writers are terrible at math, science, and understanding scale but less than 10000 GLs to Patrol an entire universe always struck me as stupid. There are more police officers in America than there are for an intergalactic police corps? So I’m all for more GLs, but I need them to give some love to the alien GLs. I don’t like how everything revolves around what the humans are doing. I get that it’s human writers writing for a human audience but it makes the universe feel so small. I’m interested in Far Sector because this GL is in a setting extremely different from what her other GLs are doing. So we’ll see how it goes.

I'm a fan of all the Earth Lanterns but even I think there's too many for the franchise to adequately serve and spotlight.

We're a long ways away from the Johns era or post-Johns where each of the four main Lanterns had their own book. Now we can't even get a GLC book out.

Hal, John, and Jessica have books right now, but where's Simon and Guy? And now we've got a Teen Lantern and a Far Sector Lantern in different imprints.

I just never really get Hal being stuck in space.

I know Morrison believes him to be this listless wanderer on Earth but I just feel like he has too much of a life on Earth to be away from it for that long.

Once upon a time maybe but Hal has not had much of a life on Earth in a long time. It was even a plot point in Johns run that he spent so much time away from Earth that he didn’t even have an apartment, car, or job.