Hal Jordan: The (unsuccessful) recovery - part 1

[thelazyreader]

When I first read Green Lantern, I was already well into the Kyle Rayner era. Later, reading up on Hal Jordan, I gathered that his character went a slow degradation over the 70s and 80s, starting with quitting his job and getting dumped by Carol Ferris, then wandering from job to job, girlfriend to girlfriend, and ultimately ending up as a middle-aged, unemployed loser.



I've started reading his old series only recently, and I found that towards the end Hal was actually starting to recover and get his life back on track. Sometime after the parts with Katma Tui getting murdered and John Stewart going to jail(posted here and here) Hal finally stops Star Sapphire and returns to Earth after a long abscence. From Green Lantern v.3 #25(38 pages),



First order of business is to get back his position as Green Lantern of Sector 2814. From Guy Gardner.



Hal's been in enough fights recently, so he tries to talk things over calmly. Guy remains Guy, and proceeds to give us a meta-commentary about Hal's screwed-up life.



Well, we all knew how this was gonna turn out from the start.



Guy loses his cool and the fight spills over into the city.

Meanwhile, Guy starts going berserk and Hal gets desperate seeing the collateral damage.



With John's assistance Hal persuades Guy to calm down. But Guy's in no mood to stop fighting and the two continue the match with a fist fight instead.



Uh oh. You touched a sore spot, Hal. Guy just gets angrier than ever.

This is basically Hal's defining moment in this issue. He thinks of all the problems he's been running away from and holds his ground. Guy may be younger and stronger, but he can't match Hal's strength of will.



It's not 'one punch', but everyone is nevertheless happy. I felt bad for Guy here. Sure, he was a jerk in that era, but...






 

And so begins Hal's path to recovery. Too bad at this point most readers had already given up on him. For better or worse though, this is where Hal's life was going before Emerald Twilight.

Comments

[icon_uk]

Oddly, I read this exactly the other way, this is Hal at his pretty much most absolutely dislikeable. Just about everything about his life is seemingly defined from HIS point of view, what HE wants with little thought to their wants and needs.

Guy, of all people, makes a lot of good points, Hal has consistently given up when things went bad for him. The fact he keeps coming back does not entitle him to anything when he has already chosen to give it up.

Guy HAS been serving as the appointed Green Lantern and if Hal has a problem with that, he should go talk to the Guardians, not face down his replacement.

[sailorlibra]

This. Hal pissed me off a lot here.

[lissa_quon]

SERIOUSLY. When is it okay to go to an old job and demand the guy who now has your position give it up? What the hell? I don't care if he WAS getting his life back together, part of getting it back together is moving on.

I mean Guy is a jerk, a rude one at that but I find myself rooting for him on this one.

[stillanerd]

Agreed. It isn't as if the Guardians didn't arbitrarily choose Guy Gardner. Even though he is a reckless ass****, he still has plenty of willpower, refuses to give up, and is still willing to do the right thing regardless. It seems like the various heroes overlooked this because they knew Hal longer and got along with him better. If anything, Guy pretty much had Hal's character nailed here.

Although, in the hindsight of Green Lantern: Rebirth, Hal's attitude in forcing Guy to give back his role as the Green Lantern of Earth via physical force could be seen as a sign of his early possession by Parallax. After all, the first sign is, apparently, the white streaks in Hal's hair.

[mcbangle]

Yes. I'm hating Hal here.

[feyandstrange]

Motto. We only HAVE three or four other GLs of Earth BECAUSE Hal can't or won't hack the job half the time. Being a GL is not about being a persistent whiner, it's about courage. Let's see Hal come back from a devastating life event like being crippled or brain damaged, and do it without the ring. That I might even read. This Hal? Dick. Probably Parallax besides, but honestly I'm not accepting that as an excuse any more.

[eightleggedbeast]

Hal does come off as a dick here. His 'compassion would be easy, continuing to be violent makes me the better person' monologue is a bit silly.

[angelophile]

Can't say I'm a fan either. I think it's less forgivable in my mind because you're clearly meant to sympathize with Hal, take his side and think Guy's out of line. He is and Guy's a relentless jerk, but he's also a relentless jerk who's speaking the truth and it's hard to argue with that. I think the problem is that Guy's an asshole who's also a hero. Hal's a hero who's also an asshole. I find one of those more appealing than the other.

[auggie18]

I honestly kinda hate Hal Jordan. There's never been a victory where he hasn't come off as a smug dick, a lose that he's taken with grace or dignity, never been a relationship he's handled well. There hasn't been a single moment were I've looked at Hal as someone to admired or even liked. Granted, everything I've read with him has been a Showcase book, a Corps book or something he's guest starring in, but still. Guy's the jackass with the heart of gold, Kyle's the sweet one, Alan is the mentor who teaches from his own mistakes, and John's the tough guy who gets the job done. What the hell does Hal do that any one of them can't do better?


This is just my opinion. I'm sure there are tons of people out there who prefer Hal. I have friends that like him better in real life. There's just something about the guy that pisses me off.

[jlbarnett]

generally? Focus on work. As in be a GL. He pretty much seems an eyes on the prize, put everything into your dream sort of guy. So he gets a little distracted.

Of course, part of the reason he might be a jerk is that everyone around him seems quite eager to tell him where he's wrong, what he needs to do better, etc. Unsolicited, extremely opinionated advice can be pretty annoying.

[big_daddy_d]

Guy's the jackass with the heart of gold

Never have I seen someone describe him so perfectly.

[cygna_hime]

Yeah, add me to the list of people who think that Hal comes off really, superlatively poorly here. He doesn't, actually, have any right to demand that Guy give him back the ring. Maybe Guy's not doing as good a job as Hal did. Doesn't matter. Having handed in your badge, it doesn't matter how much worse the rookie's doing with it, you don't get to march into the precinct and order him to fork it over. It does not work that way.

The fact is, I've always felt that Guy was a better character and a better Green Lantern than Hal ever was. Being Green Lantern is about being bloody stubborn enough to overcome fear, to overcome everything, in order to do what's right. And Guy, even before this issue, has given quite literally everything -- his old civilian life, his first love, and oh by the way his mind -- to being a hero. Now, I don't know about you, but if I was put into a coma and suffered massive brain damage due to being a superhero, I wouldn't pick the ol' ring back up again. But Guy did. And now he's lost it all again -- he can't be a hero anymore (but the COLOSSAL BRAIN DAMAGE SUSTAINED IN THE LINE OF DUTY means he can't have his old job either), and the only social circle he has left? Just laughed when he lost it. This would be about the point where I'd go jump in a river. But Guy picks himself up and goes to be a hero still, any way he can. (And is polite enough to take his replacement ring off a corpse who doesn't need it at the time.)

As obnoxious as he is, Guy's right up there. He loses everything and keeps going; Hal loses one thing and caves. In any other hero, that wouldn't matter much, but Green Lantern is explicitly a hero made entirely from willpower, a hero based entirely on the ability to out-stubborn the universe itself. And on that count, Guy's more Green Lantern than Hal ever was or ever would be.

[feyandstrange]

This, exactly. Guy's got a lot of flaws and I wouldn't want to share a building with him, but his cojones and his courage are bigger than just about anyone else's.

[starwolf_oakley]

It's hard to imagine Hal and Guy ever being friends again after this, unless Guy simply decides everything involving Hal with white hair was really Parallax and thus doesn't really "count."

Heck, Guy is worried in "Emerald Warriors" that Hal isn't going to be his friend anymore once he finds out... something. That's quite a jump from this.

[thelazyreader]

I haven't read any comics from this era where Hal regarded Guy as more than an occasional comrade. In these issues he seems to get pretty annoyed around Guy(though in the JLI era most people were). And anyway, it was Guy's challenge to fight it out and have the loser surrender his ring.

[feyandstrange]

"Compassion would be easy for me now. Only a hard man would beat this battered, half-dead fool."

So you decided it was better to be hard? No wonder we got Parallax. Hal Jordan, dick.

If anything, Guy's doing Hal a favor here by pushing him to fight instead of whine - and what does Guy get for it? All his friends ditching him for Hal. Jeez.

[kagome654]

I hate macho posturing, and no, I don't find it any more palatable coming from a mean spirited creep like Guy ('jerk with a heart of gold' my ass, this is the same era Guy who laughed at John after he lost his wife and sucker punched Ted, iirc) than I do a wishy-washy and entitled Hal Jordan. Nobody here looks very good, imho.

[auggie18]

I cut Guy a lot of slack in this era because of the brain-damage thing. Wasn't really aware of the whole "laughing at John about his wife dying" thing, but I'm just gonna file that under brain-damage. (It's like Hal fans filing stuff under the Parallax thing, it covers a lot of stuff.)

I don't actually know Guy from JLI years that well. From that period, I've just really read stuff about his relationship with Tora and stuff where he fanboys over General Glory.

[kd_the_movie]

This tho was always imo the problem with the BWAH-HA-HA era of the Justice League. Writers didn't seem to realize that in order for the JLI to be taken seriously outside their own book, you kind of had to reel in their Giffen/Dematties characterizations and realize they were being played up for laughs. Otherwise you get Guy coming off as an irredeemable jerk who always deserves the worst, Boostle as ineffective morons, and the entire JLI come off as a joke.

Hell even to this day, Dan Jurgens had Booster comment that all the barbs and snide remarks in the JLI were "painful" which imo is missing the point of the BWAHHAHA era.

[icon_uk]

I just never liked the JLI era full stop.

[blackruzsa]

I'd actually have liked Guy to win. As he said, Hal's a whiner. I'm happy for character resolutions and all but the way the scans come off, Hal doesn't deserve the title just yet or at all.

coming at this a day late for the three people reading

[thehefner]

I can't defend Hal here, and I want to, because this is from my very favorite era of the character.

I want to post Emerald Dawn 1 and 2, plus The Road Back, because those are my favorite GL stories of all time, but they're virtually ignored by everyone. The Kyle fans hate it because it's the era that seemingly proved to them that Hal was an old, boring character (wrong), and the Hal fans hate it because, ew, it's Drunk Driver Hal.

The best excuse I can give for Hal's dickery is that Guy is also written at a similar low, as seen in the subsequent Guy Gardner Reborn mini-series. I adore that character too, but dear lord, his Jackassery was ramped up to 11.

At this point in the GL books, everybody was really acting off. My theory is that everything went to shit when a certain editor left another certain editor in charge.

Re: coming at this a day late for the three people reading

[thelazyreader]

"I want to post Emerald Dawn 1 and 2, plus The Road Back, because those are my favorite GL stories of all time, but they're virtually ignored by everyone. "

Actually, I'd love it if you'd post those and I'm sure many others would be interested. As an origin I actually like Emerald Dawn better than Secret Origin.

[recognitions]

I haven't kept up with GL, but have they done anything to retcon the Parallax retcon? I found Hal to be so much more of an interesting character when he was flawed and had to atone for horrible things. The problem with writing a cardboard hero is that when he screws up, we're supposed to ignore his flaws. It made Hal much more human to be someone who was tempted by great power, tested, and fell from grace.

[jlbarnett]

they aren't going to undo the Parallax retcon because he went to far.