DCU Blog has another Red Lantern image

[sherkahn.insanejournal.com]

Team Scarlet Centurio... wait, no no .... the Blood Stryke Forc- no no, that's not it.... the Crimson Commando's?

From Red Lantern Corps 101

"Red - the blood of angry men!
Black - the dark of ages past!
Red - a world about to dawn!
Black - the night that ends at last!"

From Les Miserables, "Red and Black"

Comments

[kitty_tc_69.insanejournal.com]

*reads the wiki on Laira, as "hot raging girl" is always an intriguing concept worthy of further research*

Wow. The Guardians are real prickholes, aren't they? Just about everything in her backstory is one fuckover after another, and they then have the raw arrogance and sheer audacity to condemn her posthumously for the "crime" of being pissed off. Who the hell wouldn't be?

My question is, as an outsider to the whole mythos, is this deliberate or is it bad writing? Because this isn't the first thing I've read that paints the Guardians and the GLC in a far less than flattering light, and it really makes me wonder if we're supposed to sympathize with them or not.

[statham1986.insanejournal.com]

From what I can tell, it's usually the idea that the Guardians have noble intentions that get them into the most trouble, and this usually leads to them being pricks. The Corps, by and large, are all good people, but they have to follow the orders of a bunch of idiots, usually.

For instance, all the laws they've initiated in the Corps since the Sinestro Corps War have been with the best intentions in mind, but have ended up for the worse. The authorisation to kill led to Laira's dismissal, the rule forbidding relationships between Lanterns saw the retirement of hundreds of Lanterns, and so on. It seems to be in their nature to screw up.

[jlbarnett.insanejournal.com]

I thought they were always idiots. Even when they were right they were portrayed as being jerks about being right. COurse that was in the Silver Age during the era of Superdickery

[pyrotwilight.insanejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure its purposeful especially now. A lot of people love seeing the ups and downs of the new corps' but the GL's have big ones too. Willpower itself can be looked at negatively as stubbornness like the Guardians right now.

So we can sympathize with them but remember no one is perfect. Everything has a downside or flip side.

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

The Guardians used to be a bunch of basically good, generally fair, very powerful and occasionally shortsighted and arrogant bunch... kind of like Hal himself actually.

Over the years they've gotten more and more incompetent and evil, a graph the slope of which has skyrocketed since Johns took over the mythos - unsurprising, he seems to have a very hard time with the basic "hero bows to more powerful superiors who gave him his mission" dynamic that the Guardian-Lantern relationship always used to be.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

To be fair, the Guardians were treated as jerks as way back as the Green Arrow/Lantern days. Though that was largely to make Ollie look better than Hal, who was weighed down by 'The (blue) Man'.

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

Well, they were kinda jerky, but O'Neil and Adams also use them to beat on Hal for being privileged/douchey in a couple of places, so their essential virtue and the legitimacy of their authority is still maintained there.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

It was just Hal who got torn down, so no complaints there, ;)

...and people wonder why Johns ditched that characterization.

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

Heh. Actually the one thing about that arc that does really impress me is how much Hal did come across, in the end, better than Ollie. Ollie's a sanctimonious prat, basically, and while he's often (even usually) right, he's not very nice about it. Hal, on the other hand, realizes when he's wrong and makes an effort to change - which I always thought was a really powerful and important message, because with social justice stuff, that's exactly what you want to model. That yes, you can be a good person and still be an utter douche, and the important thing is to be willing to hear that you're a douche, and understand it, and try to change. That you're not going to be perfect, and trying to protect your self-image as perfect is the opposite of the heroic response.

Now, though, Hal's all perfect-never-harm-a-soul-not-a-shred-of-racism-or-sexism shiny-man, which makes him way less interesting IMO and loses a really good place to make that kind of really needed commentary.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

I dunno, I prefer 'Take Charge Space sheriff' Hal to 'Whiney, ignorant goose stepping' Hal.

As Kurt said, writers defaulted to that and tried to keep Hal in that era regardless of sliding time scale, which meant he was a whiney, insecure middle aged man. How is that not lame?

Hal's pretty much the action hero now that he should be, strong, witty and confident in action while flawed, unsteady in his private life.

[ashtoreth.insanejournal.com]

Piffle I say! His grey streaks were dashing!

[kingrockwell]

Motto!

[filbypott.insanejournal.com]

Well, in fairness, this is the second generation of Guardians (though I realize Johns tried to retcon their current jerkiness onto the old ones in "Secret Origins"). Ganthet could be seen as representing the old Guardians' nobility, with Sayd his disciple-turned-partner.

[box_in_the_box.insanejournal.com]

The Guardians are real prickholes, aren't they?

I've been saying this for the past decade, yes.

And much like the Time Lords on Gallifrey, or the Pro-Reg side of Civil War, there are plenty of times each when their prickishness is either a) intentional, b) the result of shitty writing, or c) both.