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Old 10-06-2019, 12:01 PM   #121
MikeandRaph87
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The Green Lantern#12 was confusing. So Qwa-Man is Hal Jordan of the Anti-Matter Universe? Aside from the same hair color what makes them the same? This Qwa-Man character is basically Cyborg Superman? Qwa as in Qward? Also, I thought Hal defeated Controller Mu and the mission was over? Suddenly, he is pulled back in by Mu who is not dead and they do not know that he is under deep cover following Mu's defeat?

Also, when did The Darkstars get renamed The Black Stars?
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Old 11-12-2019, 03:37 AM   #122
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The Green Lantern#12 was confusing. So Qwa-Man is Hal Jordan of the Anti-Matter Universe? Aside from the same hair color what makes them the same? This Qwa-Man character is basically Cyborg Superman? Qwa as in Qward? Also, I thought Hal defeated Controller Mu and the mission was over? Suddenly, he is pulled back in by Mu who is not dead and they do not know that he is under deep cover following Mu's defeat?

Also, when did The Darkstars get renamed The Black Stars?
I've always find it weird when Grant Morrison takes an Silver Age concept and turns it on it's head when modernizing it (Batman's "Club of Heroes" is a good example of that).

Don't get me wrong, I love Morrison (he got me into JLA), but every so often he makes something that takes me YEARS to understand (Seven Soldiers/ Final Crisis/ Multiversity are prime examples).
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Old 10-17-2021, 04:30 PM   #123
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I decided to look into signs of Hal Jordan's downfall. Hal Jordan had some trouble carrying a book throughout his first run as Green Lantern which caused him to lose Carol and drift from job to job. The title could not be saved with Green Arrow being brought in to share the headline. It is a solid example of a classic run only in the rearview mirror and did not get the attention the time of the publication as it would later. Green Lantern then becomes the backup feature to Flash for four years. Upon his title being dusted off including O'Neil as writer and Ollie as a featured character it would go on a couple of direction changes the next 12 years. One of which saw Hal removed as Green Lantern for 16 issues.

Hal gets streaks of gray hair it seems debuting in 1990's Green Lantern#1. Though it appears for the first 20 issues that spotlight ws shared with both John and Guy before both John and Guy both get their own minis which write them out. I noticed an odd foreshadowing of a place Hal spent only a brief time in, Evergreen City and the cover suggest what might happen to Coast City. Though there seems to be no indication in Gerad Jones's run to suggest Hal's going mad with grief. Coast City is destroyed in issue #46 and the story just seems to start out of the blue and in another larger story tied with another character at that. Would John have not been a better candidate to be Parallax or if a hero had to break bad?

Between Green Lantern volume two and three Katama Tui is killed and John accidently implodes Xashi as an indirect response. So its not without precedence, but why would John not have been vulnerable to snap? The star sapphire gem was the cause of Katma's death and a personal conflict with Hal. Then there is the destory planet. John would want to rewrite tragedies it would seem a few years before Hal's sudden fall. It's also interesting that Hal shared spotlight with John and alien Lanterns and then initially with John and Guy before Hal becomes the focus once more. Also, Guy nor John truly replaced Hal. If a new direction for the sake of sales is going to be mandated then why not John or Guy take the title?

It is also interesting to note that none of anyone that is important to Hal Jordan actually died when Coast City was wiped off the map. Hal's parents were already dead and his younger brother's family had relocated while Carol and Tom were outside the city. There is no one in particular that Hal actually lost. Also, while John had the personal loss a half dozen years prior Kilowag is the last of his race, like Superman his planet gone. Before Dick Grayson, Wally West, and others were screwed by DC editorial Hal Jordan was. I understand that Ron Marz, the new writer was given a mandate to create a new green lantern to fully replace Hal Jordan, but who actually came up with the idea of Coast City being blown up with no personal loss making a needless bloodbath? There is also Hal killing Kilowag and random green lanterns and weakening the Guardians.

I am sorry for the long post, I just did research and it seems it was an out of no where editorial mandate to dump Hal Jordan and replace him in the title. Also, it seems to be one of the earliest fan movements against creative decisions.
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Old 10-17-2021, 04:39 PM   #124
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Originally Posted by MikeandRaph87 View Post
I decided to look into signs of Hal Jordan's downfall. Hal Jordan had some trouble carrying a book throughout his first run as Green Lantern which caused him to lose Carol and drift from job to job. The title could not be saved with Green Arrow being brought in to share the headline. It is a solid example of a classic run only in the rearview mirror and did not get the attention the time of the publication as it would later. Green Lantern then becomes the backup feature to Flash for four years. Upon his title being dusted off including O'Neil as writer and Ollie as a featured character it would go on a couple of direction changes the next 12 years. One of which saw Hal removed as Green Lantern for 16 issues.

Hal gets streaks of gray hair it seems debuting in 1990's Green Lantern#1. Though it appears for the first 20 issues that spotlight ws shared with both John and Guy before both John and Guy both get their own minis which write them out. I noticed an odd foreshadowing of a place Hal spent only a brief time in, Evergreen City and the cover suggest what might happen to Coast City. Though there seems to be no indication in Gerad Jones's run to suggest Hal's going mad with grief. Coast City is destroyed in issue #46 and the story just seems to start out of the blue and in another larger story tied with another character at that. Would John have not been a better candidate to be Parallax or if a hero had to break bad?

Between Green Lantern volume two and three Katama Tui is killed and John accidently implodes Xashi as an indirect response. So its not without precedence, but why would John not have been vulnerable to snap? The star sapphire gem was the cause of Katma's death and a personal conflict with Hal. Then there is the destory planet. John would want to rewrite tragedies it would seem a few years before Hal's sudden fall. It's also interesting that Hal shared spotlight with John and alien Lanterns and then initially with John and Guy before Hal becomes the focus once more. Also, Guy nor John truly replaced Hal. If a new direction for the sake of sales is going to be mandated then why not John or Guy take the title?

It is also interesting to note that none of anyone that is important to Hal Jordan actually died when Coast City was wiped off the map. Hal's parents were already dead and his younger brother's family had relocated while Carol and Tom were outside the city. There is no one in particular that Hal actually lost. Also, while John had the personal loss a half dozen years prior Kilowag is the last of his race, like Superman his planet gone. Before Dick Grayson, Wally West, and others were screwed by DC editorial Hal Jordan was. I understand that Ron Marz, the new writer was given a mandate to create a new green lantern to fully replace Hal Jordan, but who actually came up with the idea of Coast City being blown up with no personal loss making a needless bloodbath? There is also Hal killing Kilowag and random green lanterns and weakening the Guardians.

I am sorry for the long post, I just did research and it seems it was an out of no where editorial mandate to dump Hal Jordan and replace him in the title. Also, it seems to be one of the earliest fan movements against creative decisions.
I haven't read as many GL books from those eras, but I also thought it was bizzare for Jordan to just snag like that betweens issues 40-50.
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Old 10-17-2021, 06:49 PM   #125
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If you buy into the Geoff Johns retcon that Hal had been "influenced" by Parallax for years before that, it makes a bit more sense. Even without that, you could argue that the time he'd gone into the Central Power Battery messed with his mind.

The two Emerald Dawn mini-series had also established Hal as sort of a maverick who clashed with the Guardians and struggled with putting his personal needs aside. I know, Hal's personality post-Crisis was a bit of a retcon in itself, but the fact is Hal was generally a pretty boring white-bread character before they decided to give him a personality in the late-1980s. Not everyone was a fan of him suddenly having deep personality flaws, but it did serve to make him more interesting.

I'll be honest, I was always more of a casual GL fan... UNTIL Emerald Twilight. At the time, whenever I skimmed the GL books, Gardner was always the most dynamic and "real" of the various characters to bear the mantle, while Hal always came off as a smug prick. The whole bit with "Emerald Twilight" did sort of come off as rushed, but at the same time, that was the very first time I'd ever had any serious empathy for the character whatsoever. Even years before any retcons about "Parallax was inside of him all along, pushing him to act this way," I was a big fan of the whole "Doing the wrong things for the right reasons" angle they took with him. He wasn't a straight-up one-dimensional villain, and the fact that he'd always been so close to so many of the heroes made every single appearance of him as Parallax a big deal, at a time when creating compelling new villains was something DC was struggling with.

Hal fans don't generally like to hear this, but at that period of time Hal was simply more interesting - and useful - as an anti-hero than as Green Lantern. Kyle, Guy, and even John at that time all had more depth, personality, and were just all-around more dynamic. I mean, read the first dozen issues of Guy's solo book, and read the issues of Green Lantern starring Hal that were published around the same time; Guy's book was tons of fun and highly unconventional, whereas the GL books at that time were "fine" but nothing spectacular. Even the "Mosaic" book starring John Stewart had a lot more "heat", very briefly, than Hal's book did.

Brief side note, there was a BIT of connective tissue in an issue of Superman, where Superman held a vigil at Coast City with all the heroes in attendance, and Hal was in a notably foul mood. Granted, it wasn't much, but it was one of those things where if you were following the larger DCU at that time you'd see little seeds like that being planted that would pay off later in other books.

I understand that the heel turn may have hurt a lot of people's feelings, but put simply, Hal Jordan as a character had NEVER been more interesting. And furthermore, I think it did a lot to help set up the character's later "Rebirth" period. Everyone loves a good redemption story, but the "problem" is that you can't have a redemption arc unless the character is a real dick for a while, first. I was always "fine" with Hal Jordan, but the Rebirth series was where I finally became a "fan" of Hal Jordan. I'd developed a lot of empathy for the character across Emerald Twilight, Zero Hour, Final Night, etc., to the point where by the end of Rebirth I went from not caring if he came back to being GLAD he was back. He'd earned it, I felt. Before that, he was just the "Third-Most Interesting Green Lantern", to me. But he'd definitely gone on a very unique and personal journey from 1993 onward, and all of that made the character a ton more fun to read.

I've even turned a few people who hate super-hero comics on with the whole Parallax arc, point of fact. This one girl never even heard of Green Lantern, thought super-hero comics were kinda dumb, and I was like "There's one thing I think might be up your alley," so I floated her a stack of my books including Emerald Twilight, the first few Kyle issues, Zero Hour, Final Night, and finally Rebirth, and absent any prior knowledge or investment into the character she thought it was altogether an incredible Fall/Rise/Redemption storyline. I sincerely think the entire thing plays really well if a person doesn't have a strong nostalgic affection for Hal Jordan; then they can read the whole thing as what it's intended to be, rather than "my favorite character is being mishandled."

As for why it couldn't have been John Stewart instead, well... I do concede there's a way it COULD have worked. Mosaic even sort of teased it, a little bit, with Sinestro messing with him and whatnot. The thing is - and this might sound messed up on its face, but is in fact a very real factor into things such as this - they weren't going to take a reasonably popular black character and make them into a villain. That's the long and the short of it. Think about how a few years earlier, the TMNT cartoon turned Baxter into a white guy, because they were openly skittish about having a black character behave in a villainous manner as well as being subservient to and berated by a not-black character. Put simply, within the realm of fiction, "black people can't be villains" because it makes people uncomfortable. So there was never any real chance that they were going to make John Stewart into Parallax, even if it would have made sense.

Plus, Stewart's solo book was cancelled due to low sales AND he just wasn't anywhere near as popular back then. It's very easy to forget this now, but John Stewart's popularity only exploded after the JL cartoon show. Before that, DC had essentially written him out of their entire line for several years simply because they didn't know what to do with him. Turning him into Parallax wouldn't have had anywhere near the same emotional impact on the readers. It could've worked for one short-term storyline but I doubt they would have been able to get a decade of strong stories out of it, the way they did with Hal as Parallax. They probably just would have killed him off in short order and that would be that.

I'unno, for my money it all worked out for the best. It kind of strikes me funny that Emerald Twilight still rubs so many people wrong, considering Hal's been Green Lantern again for almost 20 years, now. That decade he was an anti-hero is like a blip on the radar now, anyway. AND it served to make the character a lot more interesting. One would think that by now people wouldn't still be so affected by it.
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Old 10-17-2021, 07:16 PM   #126
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The reason I went looking through the first 50 issues of Green Lantern(1990) and even Action Comics weekly was because I recently read the five issue Final Night series and The Last Will and Testament of Hal Jordan prestige format. I realized that John Stewart had reason to lash out and want to rewrite wrongs. There was also the blaming Hal Jordan for the loss of Katma Tui that could have been factored in.


In Hal's final goodbyes he healed John's paralysis. I would have thought that it would have lead to something but it appears John sat on the bench for six more years until the Justice League cartoon aired.


Yes, I also considered the black man going rogue not going over well with non-readers and know that is reason enough it could not happen. I just realized it was more reasonable for John to go rogue and not Hal.


When I went through the JLA volume there was one character that stood out to me as unlikable. Yes, Plastic Man is annoying as intended humor in the book, but that is not what I mean. I just plain out don't like Kyle. It is hard to explain but his personality and liberal mindset that turns me off. I also found it interesting that Kyle disappeared from the JLA book completely after The Obsidian Age after whining about people not being worthy of being protected. Everyone else found their way back into the book.
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Old 10-17-2021, 09:32 PM   #127
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Actually, I don't think the JLA series was ever a good showcase for Kyle Rayner. Right from the very first Morrison arc, both Kyle and Wally came off as really different from how they were portrayed in their solo books, and not in a good way.

What you come to find out years after the fact, is that Grant Morrison has this way of being sort of passive-aggressive when he's "forced" to write characters he doesn't care about or like very much. And he's one of those people who's in romantic love with the Silver Age, which means that if it had been up to him in 1995 he would have had Hal as Green Lantern and Barry as Flash during his JLA run. But both of those characters were off the table, so he was "stuck" with Kyle and Wally, and whether consciously or subconsciously he wrote both of them pretty out-of-character and almost unlikeable at times. It got a little better after Morrison left the book, but later writers still felt somewhat beholden to writing the characters as Grant had, for the sake of consistency, so you still had some of that stuff.

Now, keep in mind I'm generally a big fan of most of Morrison's JLA. It's probably the most conventional and easy-to-digest super-hero fare he's ever done, and each arc plays like its own little action movie, which is great. But when you know his quirks, it jumps out at you when he doesn't like a character, and it's clear in hindsight that he had no great love for either Kyle OR Wally. So while I love both of those characters, I don't especially love the way they were presented in that book. Those weren't the characters as they were portrayed in their own books, and much of their behavior in JLA rang false to anyone who paid attention. Much of their character development in the solo books was flat-out ignored by Morrison in favor of just twisting them into whatever archetype he wanted them to represent for the team dynamic. He wanted Kyle to be the "bratty kid brother" of the team and so that's what he wrote. That's not actually who that character WAS, but even back then DC had a way of just letting Grant do whatever he felt like.

But no, I agree that Kyle as presented in JLA was not portrayed in an especially great light. And I put much of that on the fact that Grant just plain didn't like the character. In the hands of other writers, though, he had a ton of shine.

I can't remember specifically what happened with Kyle after the fallout from The Obsidian Age, or why he was written out of JLA for a while. I imagine it had something to do with the goings-on in his solo book, whatever that may have been. He had a habit of getting flung backwards in time or going off into space for long stretches of time, for a while there. So it was probably something like that.
---------------------------

Back to John Stewart, again even if it would have made a modicum of sense to turn him heel instead of Hal, the emotional investment on the part of the audience simply wouldn't have been there. John Stewart, in 1993, was not a very well-known or popular character, and as mentioned his solo book had been cancelled in very short order after only a year or so. Him turning bad would have been a colossal "Who Cares?"

To understand why there was even a "need" to turn ANY of their big heroes into bad guys, and why the list of characters they could have used for that was limited to a select few who would have had major impact, we have to go back a few years to the "Armageddon 2001" cross-over, and DC's botched handling of its reveal. DC put a TON of promotion into that event, with promises that a major DC hero would turn bad and that things would change forever (back when promises like that actually had a bit of truth to them, even if "forever" would truthfully turn out to be "about 10 years", but I digress). And it was actually a great event with a lot of intrigue, until the ending. But you can pretty much pick any single one of the DC 1991 Annuals, and you'll find a great read. UNTIL the final issue, I maintain that Armageddon was one of the best cross-over events they ever did. 99% of it was fantastic.

Except, of course, the Big Reveal. The thing the whole event rested on.

The "major hero" who turned bad was F*cking Hawk, and the "life-changing fallout" was that his new Monarch character was written out of everything immediately and ignored for the next two-plus years as if Armageddon never happened. Talk about a bait-and-switch.

Now, most of us by now know the story, but for those who don't: The reveal was never supposed to be Hawk, it was supposed to be Captain Atom who turned bad, which is VERY obvious if you go back and look at the entire event from the beginning. That would've been a slightly bigger deal, as although Captain Atom wasn't one of the more popular DC character he WAS one of the most powerful by a mile, so the idea of him turning bad was very intriguing. A bad guy who can literally rewrite the laws of physics and bend space/time to his whims would be a really huge deal, especially if it was someone who'd been close to the heroes.

Problem was, the ending leaked out, and DC was SO upset that the spoilers would hurt the book's sales, they rewrote the entire ending so that Monarch was now Hawk. Who wasn't especially notable... or powerful... or particularly ingrained into the DCU... and also, the Hawk & Dove book had just recently been cancelled for lousy sales... and so on. They were admittedly in a bit of a spot, and in hindsight they should have just bit the bullet and made Monarch be Captain Atom as-planned. People would've gotten over having the ending spoiled, so long as the ending made sense. This ending, though, did not make sense, AND as far as alternate choices for the big bad went, you arguably couldn't do much worse than F*cking Hawk. They pretty much went with Hawk BECAUSE it was such an inconsequential character that they could sweep the whole thing under the rug in short order... but it left a bad taste in every single reader's mouth.

So, we look ahead a couple of years at Emerald Twilight and Zero Hour, and with Armageddon in the rearview mirror a LOT of things about what DC did with Hal Jordan suddenly made more sense. There's things we know, and things we can assume. Things We Know include....

- DC was building towards the Zero Hour event, which required a super-powerful villain with the power to reshape time and space. That leaves a short list.

- It was strongly preferable that the Zero Hour villain be a former hero, for maximum emotional response. Bonus Points if it's someone truly iconic.

Things we're left to assume include...
- The originally-planned villain of Zero Hour was probably never supposed to be "Parallax", but Monarch. Evidence to this is how Hawk/Monarch (now changed into "Extant" offscreen, with no explanation whatsoever) is still IN Zero Hour, but mostly as a red herring before the Parallax reveal. Technically, there's almost no reason for the Extant character to even be in play, in that story... unless there had already been chunks of the story written with him in mind. But once Jordan shows up, Extant becomes completely extraneous for the rest of it. Weird, right?

- Furthermore, it's become my belief over the years that Hal was only ever forced to turn because DC had botched the Armageddon reveal so badly. They needed a big, super-powerful former hero for the upcoming Zero Hour event, and they screwed the pooch on Monarch. They had very little time to course-correct, and so they rolled the dice and went with Hal. Which honestly was probably a better choice anyway. Hal turning bad definitely got a ton more ink than an evil Captain Atom would have.

I can't PROVE that that's the How and Why of it all, but if you start with Armageddon and factor in Zero Hour, then it all makes a lot of sense if you add it up. "Emerald Twilight" was essentially DC's attempt to fix the mess they'd made of one event while prepping for the next one. That's my theory. Can't prove it, but I don't think you can disprove it, either.

Either way, swap Hal for John and... it just doesn't work as well. Again, no matter what seeds were or weren't planted, or what logic was or wasn't there, not enough people cared about John Stewart at that particular point in time for it to have any real impact.

Point of fact, I honestly can't think of ANY character they could have pulled it off with, to the same success, as they did with Hal. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single other DC hero they could have turned heel that would have 1. Felt as organic, and 2. Had such a monumental impact. Anyone else, it would have felt incredibly forced AND I'd be willing to bet that after Zero Hour they'd never have been seen again. I'm not even sure that the original plan of Captain Atom as Monarch would have been as big a deal as Hal as Parallax turned out to be. So maybe the universe was just correcting itself all along.

As attempts to wipe up spilled milk go, they certainly could've done worse. As the previous attempt to turn Hawk proved, these things kind of only work if the fans already care about the character. Hal might've been "vanilla", but he was a Big Seven member of the JLA. If you want to shake things up and flip someone's switch to evil, and have it really mean something, that's pretty much your guy.
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Old 10-18-2021, 06:10 PM   #128
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Is the three issue mini-series from 1981 Tales of the Green Lantern Corps worth a buy if I am a Hal Jordan fan?
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Old 10-18-2021, 06:55 PM   #129
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Is the three issue mini-series from 1981 Tales of the Green Lantern Corps worth a buy if I am a Hal Jordan fan?
That is a must. The Tales annuals too.
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Old 10-18-2021, 08:18 PM   #130
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That is a must. The Tales annuals too.
I found a near minutes set on Ebay for $18. I know most of the Hal Jordan publication history, but was not aware of this. I have The Untold Legend of The Batman and know about The World of Krypton before it in the early days of mini-series, but this one had escaped my knowledge until last weekend. Well, I got it in a Buy It Now. Hopefully it will be a solid read.
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Old 10-18-2021, 08:24 PM   #131
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Y'know what I always liked, was those Green Lantern Corps Quarterly books.

Most of the stories were rather inconsequential, but given that the Corps had thousands of Green Lanterns it was really cool to see some stories about some of the really minor and "unknown" ones. I remember it being a real gut punch when the final issue came out, right after Hal went nuts and destroyed the Corps.

The weirdest thing to me as a kid wasn't having Hal turn bad. It was wiping out the entire GL Corps at the exact moment when they were getting more attention than they ever had. Seriously, like one minute there's multiple books focused on the exploits of various GL-related characters - GL, GL Corps Quarterly, Mosaic, Guy Gardner, various mini-series like the "Emerald Dawns" or "Ganthet's Tale" - and then just like that, snap your fingers, all of it's gone. Guy's book kept going, somehow, after a full revamp to eliminate any traces of GL from it - I never much cared for the "Warrior" run, myself, but it was one of the longest-running DC titles of that specific era while lots of other books were getting axed left and right, so I guess the Warrior run must have been doing okay with SOME people - but otherwise there wasn't any GL presence in the DCU outside of Kyle's book. Which was a consistently good book. It was just weird, how overnight the entire DCU went from full-on GL saturation to almost nothing.

"Justice League Quarterly" wasn't bad, either. I miss stuff like that.

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I found a near minutes set on Ebay for $18. I know most of the Hal Jordan publication history, but was not aware of this. I have The Untold Legend of The Batman and know about The World of Krypton before it in the early days of mini-series, but this one had escaped my knowledge until last weekend. Well, I got it in a Buy It Now. Hopefully it will be a solid read.
Y'know what's a great read from back then, too, is the "The Phantom Zone" mini-series. A rare Pre-Crisis Superman story that isn't junk. Pick that one up if you haven't. I saw it bundled recently for a song, so it's probably not hard to come by.

I almost never, ever recommend any Pre-Crisis Superman stuff - outside of "For The Man Who has Everything", "Must There Be A Superman?", and "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?", most of the pre-1986 Superman stuff is crap; hard to admit about my all-time favorite character, but the truth is the truth - so if I'm telling you it's good, then you can take it to the bank, pally.
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Old 10-19-2021, 10:05 AM   #132
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Anytime Mark Bright worked on a Green Lantern book, it was top notch.
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Old 10-19-2021, 06:44 PM   #133
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Originally Posted by Leo656 View Post
Y'know what I always liked, was those Green Lantern Corps Quarterly books.

Most of the stories were rather inconsequential, but given that the Corps had thousands of Green Lanterns it was really cool to see some stories about some of the really minor and "unknown" ones. I remember it being a real gut punch when the final issue came out, right after Hal went nuts and destroyed the Corps.

The weirdest thing to me as a kid wasn't having Hal turn bad. It was wiping out the entire GL Corps at the exact moment when they were getting more attention than they ever had. Seriously, like one minute there's multiple books focused on the exploits of various GL-related characters - GL, GL Corps Quarterly, Mosaic, Guy Gardner, various mini-series like the "Emerald Dawns" or "Ganthet's Tale" - and then just like that, snap your fingers, all of it's gone. Guy's book kept going, somehow, after a full revamp to eliminate any traces of GL from it - I never much cared for the "Warrior" run, myself, but it was one of the longest-running DC titles of that specific era while lots of other books were getting axed left and right, so I guess the Warrior run must have been doing okay with SOME people - but otherwise there wasn't any GL presence in the DCU outside of Kyle's book. Which was a consistently good book. It was just weird, how overnight the entire DCU went from full-on GL saturation to almost nothing.

"Justice League Quarterly" wasn't bad, either. I miss stuff like that.



Y'know what's a great read from back then, too, is the "The Phantom Zone" mini-series. A rare Pre-Crisis Superman story that isn't junk. Pick that one up if you haven't. I saw it bundled recently for a song, so it's probably not hard to come by.

I almost never, ever recommend any Pre-Crisis Superman stuff - outside of "For The Man Who has Everything", "Must There Be A Superman?", and "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?", most of the pre-1986 Superman stuff is crap; hard to admit about my all-time favorite character, but the truth is the truth - so if I'm telling you it's good, then you can take it to the bank, pally.
Hard to believe! I mean earth one as in Silver/Bronze Batman is my favorite Batman iteration by far.

Why is Kenny Loggins 'Danger Zone' playing in my mind substituting the word Phantom in the place of Danger?

I don't read Superman solo honestly. Aside from the Wedding Album special everything Superman I have is because of another character, like the 3 part Action Comics arc I got for Luthor, Brainiac, and the JLA Titans and a pair of earlier Action Comics I got for the Justice League appearance with a subsequent issue featuring Hal and Sinestro. There is also the 3 Batgirl appearances. I have all the DC Comics Presents that include a Batman related character. I do like reading Hal Jordan and Wally West individual stories though. There is not much Hal/ Wally out there.

Green Lantern as a brand was at a high with Hal, John, and Guy all getting their own titles and the alien Green lanterns were getting more focus than ever. What happened? Was it overexposure and dumpster fire sales? Best off if Hal held the main book and had other lanterns reoccurring? To go from three featured lanterns to creating a new one from scratch alone seems likeba drastic shift of direction creatively.


I don't like Hal Jordan committing a DUI and serving a 90 day jail sentence. Sure layered and flawed heroes, but not that particular flaw. I do prefer the 7 part Secret Origin, though I admit Emerald Dawn is a much cooler title for a story.

My next search will be for 'Gorilla Warfare' that weaved through Wally's Flash volume and Green Lantern volume 3.
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Old 10-19-2021, 07:33 PM   #134
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The "Phantom Zone" mini-series isn't exactly a Superman solo, despite it obviously featuring him predominantly.

The plotline is, Stuff Happens and then ALL of the Phantom Zone villains get released onto Earth while Superman and his friend Charlie Kweskill (secretly a de-powered Kryptonian named Quex-Ul who'd been de-powered, mind-wiped, and living a normal life on Earth) get sent to the Zone in their place. At which point, the Phantom Zone villains pretty much take over the world to rape, murder and pillage at their leisure while the JLA and the rest of the world tries to fight back and survive, all while Superman and Quex-Ul try to find a backdoor out of the Phantom Zone.

So it's definitely "a Superman story" but pretty much every other prominent DC character at the time has a role in it. Even if much of the time, said "role" is to get their asses kicked by a bunch of Kryptonians. But I mean, naturally. It's one of the few "The Bad Guys Win!" stories that actually does something interesting with the premise before the Good Guys inevitably save the day at the end.

It's good stuff, one of the most highly-acclaimed mini-series of its era. Pretty dark and gritty for its time, too. Again, it comes highly-acclaimed so I definitely recommend checking it out.
---------------

I wasn't in the room at DC Editorial at the time, so I can only speculate as to what caused the abrupt shift in focus from Lots of Green Lantern to Very Little.

Mosaic, I know, was cancelled for low sales. I think the entire concept was a bit too highbrow and cerebral for conventional tastes at that time, frankly. A patchwork of cities plucked from across the universe all coexisting on Oa in a fragile forced ecosystem was an intriguing premise, but the book didn't always have a lot of action in it. John, also, at that time was considered the "#3 Green Lantern" by most people, and there wasn't a ton of interest in a solo book starring him. Most people who read it, liked it, but not a lot of people read it.

We know Guy's book wasn't cancelled for low sales, as it was the only book even tangentially-related to GL to survive the "purge", albeit with Guy completely retooled into his new "Warrior" character. All of his GL trappings being stripped was more a side effect of DC's editorial mandate that nobody but Kyle was allowed to have any GL connections. So we know what happened there. It was a shame, as Yellow Ring Guy Gardner is BEST Guy Gardner.

GL Corps Quarterly, again, had to go because of the "No More GLs Besides Kyle" edict. I doubt that book ever had great sales, seeing as it was a Quarterly book full of filler stories, and those never do especially well. But I also don't think sales were anything to do with it being cancelled. DC simply wanted Kyle to be the only GL and for his book to be the only GL-focused book. No room for GLCQ.

With regard to Hal's solo book... again, I do like Hal and I try hard not to slander him, but at that particular point in time his character and his book were both treading water. Sales were not especially great, and after the first dozen or so issues of that GL volume were done with - the "Mad Guardian" arc, in particular, which was great - there just wasn't a lot going on that was noteworthy.

Superman, Batman, JLA and Flash books were all really moving the needle at that point in time. Their books were selling well and people were really into the stories in those books. GL, regrettably, was not in as strong a place. At one point, Guy's book was reportedly outselling Hal's. Again, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I can definitely believe that. GL, after issue #25 - the big "Hal and Guy Fight, Guy Quits the Corps" issue - it sort of seemed like the GL book was in a holding pattern. It's not that the stories in those post-25 issues were BAD... they were fine. But they weren't especially memorable or impactful, at a time when characters like Superman, Batman, and even Flash were "Must-Read" books.

So that probably had a lot to do with making Hal easy pickings for a Big Shake-Up, as much as all the other stuff I mentioned about Zero Hour. People can argue For or Against the Emerald Twilight arc all day, all month, and all year... what's indisputable is, overnight the Green Lantern comic went from "Eh, it's okay" to "Must-Read", and it STAYED a "must-read" book for a good long while afterwards. Sales reflect that, as do the letter column chatter from that time. There simply hadn't been so much "heat" around GL since the relaunch five years or so earlier.

So it's kinda funny, looking back on it. DC cut the entire GL line down to one book, wiped out the entire Corps, and put the entire focus on One Guy, a brand-new character rather than one that was decades-established... and in so doing, the entire GL "brand" had never been more popular. Pretty wild.

I've long held a theory that a lot of writers at the time were simply "bored" with writing Hal. If you look at the DCU from like, 1991-1993, he had a severely-diminished presence compared to Guy Gardner, who was suddenly everywhere. Who got to be the Lantern in the JLA? Guy, while Hal got shuffled off to the "Justice League Europe" book, which wasn't as popular. Who saved Superman from Eclipso? Guy Gardner... whereas I can't even remember if Hal had any big role in that event. You pull any cross-over from that time, or just pluck a stack of random DC books in general... Guy was everywhere. At one point, I wasn't sure if Hal even WAS still Green Lantern, since it seemed like he barely showed up anywhere for a while.

In hindsight, it seems like everyone wanted to write Guy at that specific point in time, because he was more "fun" to write for and a more dynamic character, whereas they were all just sort of "eh" with Hal by then. Again, this is just a gut theory, but if you go back and look, it does sort of fit with what was happening across the entire line. People weren't throwing Hal into their books to spike sales for a month... they were using Gardner.

As for Hal's 90-day drunk driving sentence... I know that's a controversial storyline, but is that REALLY any better or worse than the whole "He's An Ephebophile" storyline where he was banging Arisia? Let's be honest, here... Hal never had good luck whenever any writer tried to put some "depth" onto his otherwise-vanilla character.

Hal and Barry were possibly two of the biggest examples of characters who struggled to find a place of relevance once the 1980s hit, and "Comics Weren't Just For Kids Anymore". I mean, it's not exactly the fault of those characters; it's just that for 50 years, "They're Just A Good Guy, And They Do Good Guy Things" was all the "character" that a super-hero needed. Hal and Barry were strongly of that era, and when all of a sudden, super-heroes were being written more "realistically", it was hard to find a place for them because neither of them ever HAD any notable personality or depth of character. So you had writers scramble to come up with "flaws" and "conflict" to project onto two characters who had up to that point been the whitest of White Bread, and it didn't always play well. On Barry's side, you had him suddenly killing Zoom and then the never-ending "murder trial" storyline, all of which was a bit ridiculous, especially its resolution. And with Hal, you suddenly had things like "He's banging teenagers" and "He got a DWI that one time". Because it's like... what do you DO with these characters, to try and make them more "realistic" and give them "depth" despite never having had any?

Superman and Batman had a much easier time with that whole transition period because they'd always been portrayed with some depth and pathos long before that. Hal and Barry, not so much. Which is why they basically got the heave in favor of replacement characters who could be written with more depth, and carried less baggage. It was ultimately easier for writers to develop Wally and Kyle from the ground-up, than try and graft personalities onto Barry and Hal. They TRIED, but it didn't work.

Hal, eventually, managed to find a personality, years upon years later. Barry... eh. I can't speak to much as to recent years. I know that when I stopped reading around 2011, Barry had been back for a couple of years but still hadn't done anything to make me glad he was Flash again instead of Wally. Barry, to me, was honestly more impactful when he was "dead".
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Last edited by Leo656; 10-19-2021 at 07:57 PM.
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Old 10-20-2021, 04:57 PM   #135
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The "Phantom Zone" mini-series isn't exactly a Superman solo, despite it obviously featuring him predominantly.

The plotline is, Stuff Happens and then ALL of the Phantom Zone villains get released onto Earth while Superman and his friend Charlie Kweskill (secretly a de-powered Kryptonian named Quex-Ul who'd been de-powered, mind-wiped, and living a normal life on Earth) get sent to the Zone in their place. At which point, the Phantom Zone villains pretty much take over the world to rape, murder and pillage at their leisure while the JLA and the rest of the world tries to fight back and survive, all while Superman and Quex-Ul try to find a backdoor out of the Phantom Zone.

So it's definitely "a Superman story" but pretty much every other prominent DC character at the time has a role in it. Even if much of the time, said "role" is to get their asses kicked by a bunch of Kryptonians. But I mean, naturally. It's one of the few "The Bad Guys Win!" stories that actually does something interesting with the premise before the Good Guys inevitably save the day at the end.

It's good stuff, one of the most highly-acclaimed mini-series of its era. Pretty dark and gritty for its time, too. Again, it comes highly-acclaimed so I definitely recommend checking it out.
I will follow up on the other half later,but I will say, I know there was the annual Crisis summer team ups of the JLA and JSA and own a majority of them. It's just I would have liked a so called event with the Satellite Era Justice League active and Dick Grayson operating as Robin. Like Grant or Geoff I lean Silver Age, but Barry bores me so much that I call him 'Barry the Bland'. He and Jason Todd NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN RESURRECTED. Forcing Flashpoint to go beyond fans of The Flash was a huge mistake especially pinning the blame of the reboot on him attempting retroactive sympathy, if you want his return accepted. I feel like Hal's return was much more desired and was handled a lot better. It also has the ability to have a shared role as a Green Lantern while it cannot be done necessarily in the long-term for Flash. It's the blessing and curse of a legacy. I want to read Hal Jordan, but I also want to read Wally West. I don't want anyone else in the costume if its a solo book. I won't read Barry and I won't read Kyle( yes to John in team books or Hal's back up).

As for The Phantom Zone, itself it maybe the classic era event I wanted to read. While I took Andrew at his word about Tales of The Green Lantern mini-series I do have around 250 Hal Jordan centered Green Lantern comics and not Superman. I think I will give it a read this weekend on readcomicsonline.to and see if its any good. I would rather read it first to see if I like enough to add to my DC mini-series long box. Might be the closest thing I will get aside from the Justice maxi-series or the post-crisis version of it, Silver Age (2000).

Also, another note. Comics are notorious for bringing back any character from the dead not involved in an origin. However, while that is the case Katma Tui, Tomar Re, who outside of Kilowag I thought would have been prominent enough as well as other like Arkkis Chummuck, Galius Zed, Boodika, Laira, Ch'p are all taking a dirt nap still. Heck, as little as G'Nort has been used I thought he was dead.
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Old 10-20-2021, 11:58 PM   #136
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I wasn't aware they killed Boodika again. Last I saw her was when she was an Alpha Lantern during the "Final Crisis" era.

I'll be honest, I was a hardcore DC fan/reader for decades, but after Flashpoint I just jumped off and I don't think I've bought a dozen DC books since 2011. Not JUST because I didn't like the New 52, I mean more than anything it was the price hike. I pretty much stopped buying ALL my comics when everything jumped to $3 and $4 per issue. The fact that I didn't like the content very much didn't help, but I might've gotten used to it over time, I admit. But I literally couldn't afford to keep up with it. Now DC's retconned their whole line multiple times since that and I can't even begin to figure out what's going on anymore. I'm honestly having serious doubts about whether or not I'll ever get back into collecting present-day stuff.

For me, "My" DCU was the one that began with Crisis on Infinite Earths and ended with Flashpoint. I was 5 in 1987, and that's when I was old enough to actually read comics and not just look at the pictures, so it felt like I was getting in on the ground floor of this "new" DCU right from the very beginning, it was just a perfect scenario. I didn't have to look backwards or try to catch up on storylines... everything was "brand new" again, Pre-Crisis canon didn't count, and all I had to concern myself with was what was right in front of me at that moment. It was all very simple, easy, and clean.

Things weren't always great - between 2000 and 2004-ish, the whole DC line was in a pretty weak place - but things generally had a way of evening themselves out. The whole "Brightest Day" angle seemed like it was doing a lot to get things in the DCU back to a really excellent place, and it kinda felt like '86/'87 again... and then, all of a sudden, Big Reboot, "Flashpoint", etc. etc. I'm aware that since then they've sort of tried to bring back certain elements of the '86-2010 DCU, but there's still so many retcons and patchwork to try and make it "fit" with the newer stuff, it just doesn't even feel the same to me no matter how hard they try to make it so. So for me, "my" DCU ended with Flashpoint.

But I mean, that version of the DCU had about a 25-year run, so I guess I can't complain too much. I miss what it was, but I could still be perfectly content to ONLY read books from that era, if I wanted, for the rest of my life and I wouldn't especially feel like I was missing much.
---------

I 100% agree that Hal's resurrection was much, much better-handled than Barry Allen's. As I've mentioned, I was never a huge fan of Hal UNTIL "Rebirth", and I actually preferred him as Parallax by then. I had zero interest in seeing Hal as GL again, but the Rebirth mini completely won me over. They actually made Hal seem IMPORTANT, and bringing him back didn't feel like, "Well, we're bringing him back because this writer had a Super-Friends poster on their wall when they were 5."

That IS, however, what Barry Allen's return felt like to me. "The writer just likes this guy better, so he's back". DC had gone to SUCH great lengths, for 20+ years, to really hammer home, "Barry's gone, and now Wally is the Flash, legit, for real, no take-backs." And then they took it back! I mean, they technically let him keep being Flash, but more or less he was just Barry's sidekick again. And I didn't like that. And I didn't think any of the stories I'd read, up through 2010, had up to then truly justified bringing Barry back and pushing Wally aside. It just felt like Geoff Johns flexing because he could.

I mean it's not like I dislike Barry. As a kid, when he was "dead", he'd always been portrayed in such a reverent light that even though he wasn't actively in the books I was reading, I had a lot of respect for him and his sacrifice in Crisis. To the point where that sacrifice ultimately defined his entire character, for me and lots of other readers who were maybe too young to have read Flash when Barry was the guy in the suit.

I mean, Barry was the guy who gave his life to stop the Anti-Monitor and save the whole universe. That was a Big Deal. Then both Barry AND the Anti-Monitor came back, as did the Multiverse, and so it was like, "Well, what exactly makes Crisis so meaningful NOW? You literally undid ALL of it." And thus, the single most important "event" book in DC's entire history was now just One More Big Cross-Over.

I agree about Jason Todd, too. Again, Tim was my Robin, and Jason's death was one of my favorite Batman stories of all time, still is. I never hated Jason, but like Barry it felt to me like his impact was greater as a ghost, as "Bruce's One Big Failure" And like Barry, none of the stories I read with Jason up through 2010 made it seem like it was ever NECESSARY to bring him back.
----------------

I really want to go digging in my longboxes and read The Phantom Zone again, myself. Problem is the spare room's a bit of a mess. I don't like reading comics online.

But man, I remember having so many feelings when I read that book as a kid of maybe 9 or 10. There's this one scene, I won't spoil too much, but Faora is skinny-dipping in a lake, or something, and obviously you don't see anything, maybe just her back, or part of it... and I'm just like "...Man." That was the most "risque" thing I'd ever seen in a comic up to that point, even though it was literally nothing. And of course there's the rest of the book, which isn't exactly graphic in any sense but several characters do die. And that, too, was something I wasn't used to back then as a kid. Keep in mind, I read it in like 1992-ish and it came out way before then in 1982. So I can only imagine how it went over back when it first came out. DC had gradually been moving towards more "grown-up" fare even then, but it was still firmly the "Super-Friends Era" and so a book where a bunch of evil Kryptonians take over the world and start killing people for fun was pretty heavy stuff for its time.

FYI, there's a "sequel" of sorts to the mini-series in DC Comics Presents #97, the final issue of that series. It pretty much concludes and wraps up a bunch of things which the mini-series introduced, such as the final fate of the Zone itself and all the criminals that had been trapped within it. It's not absolutely essential reading, but it does provide a definitive ending to the entire Phantom Zone plotline and works as a nice coda for the mini-series. It's basically presented as the "final" Superman story of the pre-Crisis canon before the Crisis reboot and Byrne's Man of Steel.

That issue's mostly been forgotten about, even though the Phantom Zone mini-series got a lot of praise, simply because of the timing. The whole point of DC Comics Presents being cancelled was because DC was doing Crisis and getting ready for the big 1986 reboot, so all the loose ends in the DCU were being tied up, but since just a few weeks later the whole thing "didn't count" anymore not a lot of people read or remember that story, as they pushed it out of their minds to make room for the new canon which was being presented. Furthermore, at almost the exact same time that issue came out, "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" came out in the Superman books, which was ALSO presented as "the last Pre-Crisis Superman story" of sorts. And the two stories completely contradict each other - which isn't altogether a "sin", because the DC Comics Presents issue was presented as "canon" and "...Man of Tomorrow" was explicitly presented as An Imaginary Story.

So technically, "...Man of Tomorrow" isn't canon with anything, and DC Comics Presents #97 is the "real" ending of Pre-Crisis Superman. BUT, more people feel like "...Man of Tomorrow" is a better story, and altogether a more satisfying conclusion to the Superman saga. So that story got all the attention, Then and Now, while DC Comics Presents #97 was pretty much forgotten about, despite being the "real" ending of Pre-Crisis Superman.

Just a bit of Trivia, there. So if you like the Phantom Zone mini-series, there's one more issue of that story, technically, if you're inclined to seek it out.
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Old 10-21-2021, 11:20 AM   #137
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I will continue discussion on The Phantom Zone after I read it online this Saturday in the DC thread.

Quote:
I wasn't in the room at DC Editorial at the time, so I can only speculate as to what caused the abrupt shift in focus from Lots of Green Lantern to Very Little.

Mosaic, I know, was cancelled for low sales. I think the entire concept was a bit too highbrow and cerebral for conventional tastes at that time, frankly. A patchwork of cities plucked from across the universe all coexisting on Oa in a fragile forced ecosystem was an intriguing premise, but the book didn't always have a lot of action in it. John, also, at that time was considered the "#3 Green Lantern" by most people, and there wasn't a ton of interest in a solo book starring him. Most people who read it, liked it, but not a lot of people read it.

We know Guy's book wasn't cancelled for low sales, as it was the only book even tangentially-related to GL to survive the "purge", albeit with Guy completely retooled into his new "Warrior" character. All of his GL trappings being stripped was more a side effect of DC's editorial mandate that nobody but Kyle was allowed to have any GL connections. So we know what happened there. It was a shame, as Yellow Ring Guy Gardner is BEST Guy Gardner.

GL Corps Quarterly, again, had to go because of the "No More GLs Besides Kyle" edict. I doubt that book ever had great sales, seeing as it was a Quarterly book full of filler stories, and those never do especially well. But I also don't think sales were anything to do with it being cancelled. DC simply wanted Kyle to be the only GL and for his book to be the only GL-focused book. No room for GLCQ.

With regard to Hal's solo book... again, I do like Hal and I try hard not to slander him, but at that particular point in time his character and his book were both treading water. Sales were not especially great, and after the first dozen or so issues of that GL volume were done with - the "Mad Guardian" arc, in particular, which was great - there just wasn't a lot going on that was noteworthy.

Superman, Batman, JLA and Flash books were all really moving the needle at that point in time. Their books were selling well and people were really into the stories in those books. GL, regrettably, was not in as strong a place. At one point, Guy's book was reportedly outselling Hal's. Again, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I can definitely believe that. GL, after issue #25 - the big "Hal and Guy Fight, Guy Quits the Corps" issue - it sort of seemed like the GL book was in a holding pattern. It's not that the stories in those post-25 issues were BAD... they were fine. But they weren't especially memorable or impactful, at a time when characters like Superman, Batman, and even Flash were "Must-Read" books.

So that probably had a lot to do with making Hal easy pickings for a Big Shake-Up, as much as all the other stuff I mentioned about Zero Hour. People can argue For or Against the Emerald Twilight arc all day, all month, and all year... what's indisputable is, overnight the Green Lantern comic went from "Eh, it's okay" to "Must-Read", and it STAYED a "must-read" book for a good long while afterwards. Sales reflect that, as do the letter column chatter from that time. There simply hadn't been so much "heat" around GL since the relaunch five years or so earlier.

So it's kinda funny, looking back on it. DC cut the entire GL line down to one book, wiped out the entire Corps, and put the entire focus on One Guy, a brand-new character rather than one that was decades-established... and in so doing, the entire GL "brand" had never been more popular. Pretty wild.

I've long held a theory that a lot of writers at the time were simply "bored" with writing Hal. If you look at the DCU from like, 1991-1993, he had a severely-diminished presence compared to Guy Gardner, who was suddenly everywhere. Who got to be the Lantern in the JLA? Guy, while Hal got shuffled off to the "Justice League Europe" book, which wasn't as popular. Who saved Superman from Eclipso? Guy Gardner... whereas I can't even remember if Hal had any big role in that event. You pull any cross-over from that time, or just pluck a stack of random DC books in general... Guy was everywhere. At one point, I wasn't sure if Hal even WAS still Green Lantern, since it seemed like he barely showed up anywhere for a while.

In hindsight, it seems like everyone wanted to write Guy at that specific point in time, because he was more "fun" to write for and a more dynamic character, whereas they were all just sort of "eh" with Hal by then. Again, this is just a gut theory, but if you go back and look, it does sort of fit with what was happening across the entire line. People weren't throwing Hal into their books to spike sales for a month... they were using Gardner.

As for Hal's 90-day drunk driving sentence... I know that's a controversial storyline, but is that REALLY any better or worse than the whole "He's An Ephebophile" storyline where he was banging Arisia? Let's be honest, here... Hal never had good luck whenever any writer tried to put some "depth" onto his otherwise-vanilla character.

Hal and Barry were possibly two of the biggest examples of characters who struggled to find a place of relevance once the 1980s hit, and "Comics Weren't Just For Kids Anymore". I mean, it's not exactly the fault of those characters; it's just that for 50 years, "They're Just A Good Guy, And They Do Good Guy Things" was all the "character" that a super-hero needed. Hal and Barry were strongly of that era, and when all of a sudden, super-heroes were being written more "realistically", it was hard to find a place for them because neither of them ever HAD any notable personality or depth of character. So you had writers scramble to come up with "flaws" and "conflict" to project onto two characters who had up to that point been the whitest of White Bread, and it didn't always play well. On Barry's side, you had him suddenly killing Zoom and then the never-ending "murder trial" storyline, all of which was a bit ridiculous, especially its resolution. And with Hal, you suddenly had things like "He's banging teenagers" and "He got a DWI that one time". Because it's like... what do you DO with these characters, to try and make them more "realistic" and give them "depth" despite never having had any?

Superman and Batman had a much easier time with that whole transition period because they'd always been portrayed with some depth and pathos long before that. Hal and Barry, not so much. Which is why they basically got the heave in favor of replacement characters who could be written with more depth, and carried less baggage. It was ultimately easier for writers to develop Wally and Kyle from the ground-up, than try and graft personalities onto Barry and Hal. They TRIED, but it didn't work.

Hal, eventually, managed to find a personality, years upon years later. Barry... eh. I can't speak to much as to recent years. I know that when I stopped reading around 2011, Barry had been back for a couple of years but still hadn't done anything to make me glad he was Flash again instead of Wally. Barry, to me, was honestly more impactful when he was "dead".
Until I researched where signs of Hal's downfall started as well as the streaks of gray started I did not know that Green Lantern Mosaic was actually an ongoing because it was so short-lived. I thought it was a mini-series. Perhaps it should have been.

Killing off Iris back in 1978 I assume was meant to show it was not rosy sci-fi with Barry. It looks like from an outsider perspective to have only gotten bizarre with the sudden interest in Zatanna and then Fiona so quickly afterwards and the soap opera trial that was longer than a DBZ fight. Then surprise Iris never died, but is in another body a millennium in the future! Even for comics that comes off as strange. Wally even as Kid Flash despite what Marv Wolfman may claim did have a personality and a direction. Sure he was wishy-washy about college taking priority over super heroics, but so was Peter Parker at that same timeframe. Wally was able to do what Dick will likely never do and that is blossom in the direction intended by design as the heir. Having a hero be removed from the board who has no personality and held on a pedestal is needed. I only read Barry in Justice League of America volume one and now the current volume, but even with the edgy 'my mom died' he comes across as better off the table instead of in play to increase importance. If a notable hero needs to die why not a bland one?

While my exposure to Hal is Superfriends before Green Lantern: Rebirth on beyond Justice League of America volume one he does lack the headstrong mr. cool rebel streak that he has now. I assume that it did not manifest until Emerald Twilight(1989)? Despite that I would not call him bland like I would Barry in the 60s' to the mid 80s'.
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Old 10-21-2021, 11:48 AM   #138
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I started collecting around "Emerald Twilight" with Hal going crazy and becoming the lead villain in "Zero Hour." That was exciting sh** and I came to really like Kyle Rayner. At the same time as I was buying tons of back issues and learning about GL and the GLC, Kyle was simultaneously learning how to be a Green Lantern. This was around 1993, I guess.

So Kyle continued solo for 11 years. That's a long time. People try to make it seem now like it was just this tiny blip in history... but that's 11 years. He honestly should have remained a prominent character if not the flagship one. Also, turning Hal "evil" was the best thing they ever did to the character. I would have loved to have read a "Parallax" comic where he's like this Dr. Doom figure going around trying to "fix" things.
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Old 10-21-2021, 03:40 PM   #139
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I can forget that there were a few who grew up with comics between early 1994 to late 2002 as both Leo and Andrew did with Kyle flying solo. Kyle is a hard one to like and I prefer to have options on which character I read and it would not be him. Forcing Hal out like that and us onto Kyle was hard to swallow. Also, its the Green Lantern Corps and Hal just happens to be the best of them opposed to a costumed vigilante with a sidekick yet the corps is not present just an occasional Ganthet popping up.

Edit:
https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Gre...sue-46?id=4202
I had to read it after the commentary. Guys look at the letter column at a letter from Simon DelMonte. It was pretty insightful on what is to come. Its almost like a shakeup with Hal was expected at least by the letter writer. wonder what the letter columns will look like by #55? Then the second woman in the refrigerator not long after too. Also, I noticed that creep Berganza was the editor of the time of Hal's fall.

Also, I have read and own the War World story in DCCP#27&28. Justice League made me think it was an inter-galactic gladiatorial arena. However, its actually the Death Star. What I don't understand is what Mongul and Cyborg Superman were planning. An engine the size of the city was supposed to do what? There were meant to be two one on each coast of the United States, one in Metropolis was averted and the one in Coast City was not.
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Old 10-22-2021, 11:08 AM   #140
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Additionally, I found it interesting that Carol referred to Tom as Pie Face all the way to 1994!

So Barry or Ollie, who is Hal's best friend?
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