This is a big part of it for me as well. Hal is a good character on his own but I can see where he can get bland. He's at his best when he's interacting with a solid supporting cast. That's my best version of Hal. When he's paired with Killowag or a well written version of Carol or even Sinestro at times. Even Batman. Why not? Hal plays well with others.
Save Ferris...
Does Hal even have a secret identity anymore? I don’t think he really needs one honestly.
Check out some of Morrison's interviews before the start of his run. He explains it perfectly. Personally, I don't find Chuck Yeager Hal to be *that* appealing but Morrison's nomadic beatnik jobless Hal who crashes on his friends' couches and goes off to medieval fantasy planets for a "vacation" is definitely more my thing. Once you see Hal as not this hotshot pilot archetype but take the character's entire publishing history into consideration, with all the contradictory takes -- and you read it as the journey of this one same guy who *does* start out in that Chuck Yeager vein but then veers off into absolutely weird directions, he's a much more fascinating character.
Here's Morrison on Hal:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/10...-green-lantern"Hal Jordan's been around since the 1950s and he's one of the few characters whose history has gone basically unchanged. But as you can imagine, he's gone through a lot of different writers and his personality has changed quite radically during that time," Morrison explained while speaking with IGN and a small group of reporters at DC's office in Burbank, California. "He's gone through so many iterations and [there's a sense of disconnection] between all of them. But like Batman, he becomes interesting when you combine them all."
Morrison went on to draw comparisons between his vision for Hal and archetypes of the ‘60s and ‘70s -- with a twist.
"We imagine Hal came stumbling in from the sort of The Last Picture Show or East Rider era of cinema. We see him as all New Mexico and Route 66 horizons, but in actual fact, his friends are like these floating jellyfish aliens. He comes back [from space] and he probably can't even tell the difference between humans anymore. He can tell the difference between two crystal creatures, but humans all look the same to him. He's embraced this kind of diversity beyond anything we have on Earth. [People] think he seems closed off and old fashioned but he's actually wide open."
By subverting these expectations, Morrison hopes to sell Hal to a brand new generation of fans, maybe not because he plans to make Hal "relatable," but because he's so unlike anything else the DCU has to offer.
Last edited by Mutatis_Mutandis; 08-28-2019 at 08:52 AM.
Yup, Hal is likely viewed as an unemployable vagrant as far as the regular paper pushers at the IRS are concerned. However, I think the higher ups are aware that a guy with that kind of military background who regularly rubs shoulders with guys like Bruce Wayne is probably a spy or involved something so far above their pay grade, they wouldn't want to dig too deeply into the exact details of his life.
Without knowing Hal's secret identity as a superhero/space cop, his background would set off red flags for anyone working at the IRS or any other regulatory government agency. In the Air Force, he absolutely had some pretty high security clearance (he once flew the Stealth Bomber for cryin' out loud), followed by another job as the top test pilot for Ferris Air, a company with numerous government contracts for extremely classified experimental aircraft. This was followed by a sporadic work history that, to any rational person, would look almost certainly fabricated. I mean, Hal went from test pilot to insurance investigator to toy sales salesman to trucker, back to test pilot again, then went for years with no determinable income, seemingly dropped off the face of planet, only to reappear suddenly to rejoin the Air Force, from which he must have gone AWOL for extended periods of time.
Since the DCU is full of various powerful ultra-secret government and extra-governmental organization that shouldn't be trifled with, any experienced civil servant without a desire to suddenly "disappear" or be transferred to Alaska would know to give a person likely to be involved with one of them a very, very wide berth.