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scans_dailyKind of a day late, but I'm kinda rusty in terms of posting. Anyways, my Favorite Green Lantern isn't Hal Jordan. It's Kyle Rayner.
I know he's still considered "The New Green Lantern" by most, with Hal Jordan still seen as "The Real Green Lantern", and to be honest I never really followed his main title. But I did follow Grant Morrison's "Big Seven" JLA title, where Kyle was the resident Green Lantern, and he really impressed me on that title.
Can't find that many scans, though, but here's one that impressed me: Kyle "Growing up" and telling Guy Gardner who he is.
I know he's still considered "The New Green Lantern" by most, with Hal Jordan still seen as "The Real Green Lantern", and to be honest I never really followed his main title. But I did follow Grant Morrison's "Big Seven" JLA title, where Kyle was the resident Green Lantern, and he really impressed me on that title.
Can't find that many scans, though, but here's one that impressed me: Kyle "Growing up" and telling Guy Gardner who he is.
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Date: 2010-09-03 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-03 03:37 am (UTC)Maybe Kyle's origin wasn't the best (the way they treated Hal to do it, and the legendary Women in Refrigerators). But the guy managed to be awesome.
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Date: 2010-09-03 04:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-03 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-03 06:52 am (UTC)Kyle always struck me as more of a petulant, sarcastic, defensive, impetuous Peter Parker for Generation X with an inferiority complex, whereas Hal felt like an actual hero. Rare exceptions for Kyle: scenes like the one above. If Kyle had been like this more often, I would have taken to him more quickly.
As it was, I ended up rereading the Hal of Gerard Jones' run (a run that no one seems to have read or remembers), and went, yeah, that's the character I'd like to read more of, and they dicked him over and got rid of him for being "old" to make way for the kid who I'm supposed to relate to. Feh.
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Date: 2010-09-03 07:03 am (UTC)I liked him because he was heroic but still fun, and he just struck me as a lot more interesting than Hal. His interactions with the league, and all that.
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Date: 2010-09-03 07:12 am (UTC)I found him less fun and more annoying. I liked Hal not as a sole character, but as a foil to the entire GLC. The fun in Hal wasn't in Hal himself, but in how he played off Guy Gardner, Kilowog, Katma, Sinestro, etc. Hal was the perfect straight man to that grand cosmic awesomeness, and as anyone who understands comedy can tell you, the straight man only looks boring, but is the key to making it work. For example, see what happened when they tried to give Guy (that version of Guy) his solo series, outside of Hal. Faaaaaiiiiil.
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Date: 2010-09-03 07:53 am (UTC)I could go on but what's the point. Kyle was a hero, the self doubt was shaken out of the character wthin the first two years, he was never cocky (Guy) or stone cold confident (Hal), but he wasn't a spineless simpering self doubter that many detractors make him out to be. He was sure... till Zero Hour, about a year after he debuted.
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Date: 2010-09-03 08:12 am (UTC)However, pally, in Kyle's own title, Dooley and company actually steadfastly fought against any such character development for years, fighting to maintain their status quo for Kyle and the characters around him (going so far as to cripple John Stewart, uncripple him, then REcripple him), because the formula of the insecure, self-doubting, "Gosh, I'm just trying to do my best" Kyle worked so well, they were loathe to change it.
And while Kyle was often better outside his own book, it was the Kyle that appeared in GL that I judged most often. Under Marz, it took him much longer than the Zero Hour issue to really shake that.
Or have you forgotten the "Hal returns" storyline, where Kyle there a major fucking hissy-fit at the mere sight to JLA members reacting positively to Hal, and thereby making him all, "Well I don't NEED you guys anyway, wah!"?? That was GL issue 103 or something, wasn't it? A good four or so years into Kyle's tenure as GL?
Again, I put the main blame on Marz and Dooley, not Kyle himself. And Morrison, Winnick, and Kelly all did their best to make me appreciate him. But it wasn't until Tomasi's GLC that I actually, finally started to really like Kyle, and even finally see myself in him (in this character who was created to be a contrived young hip giant-robot-loving dude for comic readers to relate to). The best part is that Tomasi himself outright admitted that he didn't like Kyle when he started writing him, but the more he wrote, the more he dug him, and I think that liking proved infectious for people like me.
Then again, it also helped to have Kyle play off Guy in that "straight man" dynamic I was talking about with Hal. In fact, he proved an even better "straight man" when it comes to Guy, because unlike his adversarial relationship with Hal/Guy, Kyle/Guy actually felt like a partnership and buddy cop dynamic, which was awesome.
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Date: 2010-09-03 05:49 pm (UTC)Not like Winnick's run didn't have it's flaws, but it was cool.
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Date: 2010-09-03 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 05:28 pm (UTC)Morrison's took longer, for me. When I think of Morrison's Kyle before issues like the above scene, I think of the defensive kid saying, "Pshh, no, I don't do that, that was the other guy, wah." Which made the stuff above not just refreshing, but relieving. Hey, look, an actual Green Lantern rather than a kid with a ring! Yay!
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Date: 2010-09-05 03:14 pm (UTC):(
I can name like, 1000 instances of when I loved kyle in marz's run/writing, but I think they'd all be instances where you might have hated him. Many of the reasons you don't like him are why I like him. I don't think a hero needs to be anything but someone who does good things for good reasons. They can be the most depressed person on earth, the whiniest person, the most arrogant person or whatever, as long as they have a lot of empathy, bravery and pull through in the end it's a hero to me. I don't need heroes to fit this model of confidence and badassery. I like it when they do! And I like it when they don't.
Morrison most definitely wrote the most endearing Kyle. He took the traits Marz gave him and dealt with them in a swift manner, putting him around a lot of people that wouldn't DEAL with his flaws or indulge them in any manner, so Kyle had to get over himself. When he wasn't getting over himself in his own title, it became a bit jarring. But I just... am crying so many confused tears over people including Winick up with Morrison in ranking. Wat...the guy who made Kyle constantly complain about frat boys?
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Date: 2010-09-05 06:51 pm (UTC)I've actually been meaning to reread Winick's run. I dug out the "Terry coming out" issue for my girlfriend, and was surprised by how much I enjoyed the banter between Kyle and Jade. Maybe that's just because I'm more attuned to enjoying relationship banter today.
As for the rest, I'm thinking that we actually understand our own points well enough to see that this all amounts to little more than "to each their own," and all that. Really, it's kind of amazing how we're pretty well polar opposites in taste when it comes to Kyle, right down to how we feel about Marz and Tomasi. Really, if I'd heard your feeling on Tomasi in person, my reaction might have been something akin to "WHAT?! NOOO!" *arms flappity*
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Date: 2010-09-05 08:16 pm (UTC)Winick's run had some good stuff. I like Marz's run on average more, but Winick's Ion storyline beat out any storyline Marz did -- my problem is before and after that, Winick's run is not on par. But Morrison, of course, blew them both out of the water in his portrayal of Kyle. He pretty much defined him. I really like how Marz wrote Kyle/Donna and Kyle/Jade, and then when Winick got a hold of Jade and Kyle, I felt it was cute when he was riding on the after effects of Marz hoooking them up, but then it slowly just... turned into me getting irritated with "Kyle I feel RAPED because my powers are gone" "Here you go Jade, they are back" "Let's run off to space, earth sucks" "Kyle I want to go back home" "Kyle I'm pregnant" "Whoops never mind I'm not" "Okay you go back I'll stay in space" "I'm lonely now that Kyle is in space"
It's like Kyle's whining rubbed off on Jade ;)
I admit, though, that Jade flourished a lot more when she went on the Outsiders, even if she was a bit OOC in moments. I love when she ousted Dick as the leader. But that went to crap when she died.
I usually love Tomasi as a writer! I actually am super excited to read his B&R run, and I am picking up Emerald Warriors for his portrayal on Guy! I just think he wrote Kyle terribly, and I think he soured me on Soranik Natu, so I'm waiting for Bedard to write her in a more intriguing way for me.
With Marz, I actually just went skimming through all of his run and honestly? Most of it was just building up and establishing his rogues gallery, then establishing Kyle's relationship with other heroes (Donna, Jade, Alan Scott, Wally West, Connor Hawke, guest stars like Wonder Woman and Superman and Batman and Booster Gold and Plastic Man and Guy gardner and Hal and John etc). You totally picked a moment that I can't defend in Kyle (how pissy he got about the Hal/JLA thing), and there are a couple of more moments where all you can do is roll your eyes at his petulance. I will say, although I love Kyle, I have a "hate" relationship with most of his fans -- I was introduced to them in the blogsphere just talking about how great he is and how boring Hal is and what useless bitches Donna and Jade are (who are both more interesting than Kyle, imo) lol :| so it feels refreshing when people don't think he's THE BEST EVAR.
Around right after 103, the issue you mentioned, it's about ten full issues of Jade taking the mantle of GL while Kyle is in space and her being the center of the issues. Then Kyle comes back, makes out with Donna behind Jade's back when Donna returns (in GL 118, which I think is Banks' best work -- I agree, at times the emotion in his work can be a bit off), and then gets dumped by Jade, shot, hallucinates an entire world where he rebuilds the Corps, and then Marz's run ends! So ... I think a lot of it was world-building for Marz, since he basically had to tear down the previously-established world-building of the Green Lantern franchise, and that's why his Kyle wasn't always fully fleshed out. It was mostly him reacting to big heroes and his relationships, rather than him building his own epic adventures. Winick followed into this with the cringe-inducing story of Terry, but built up Kyle's actual development greatly with the Ion arc. He delivered it awesomely. Then after Kyle was done with ion, it was all mostly whininess for me, and weird authoral projection on to Kyle's character, so I lost interest pretty fast.
BASICALLY I encourage you reading some more of Kyle's banter with Donna and Jade, to this day it's really the only reason I enjoy looking back on his run. And the five issues he was with Alex, too. He was pretty damn cute with all of his girlfriends in the past.
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Date: 2010-09-05 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 03:04 pm (UTC)Winick had an entire run to make people like Kyle. 30+ issues or whatever. Marz did a great job of establishing Kyle and his rogue galleries, then left the book as soon as 120 hit and he was done with his timey-wimey story. Then Winick and Raab carried the book until the late 170s, and Marz came back to close it off for the final six issues, since the sales had gotten a bit poor. Winick wrote Kyle like crap. His Ion arc, which was very short, was the only interesting aspect of his run, but we got ridiculous, forced, and unbelievably "very special episode" moments with Kyle under his pen, Jade's character was irrevocably changed (since he had his hands on her in the Outsiders afterward), and we got the lovely "Even though I am a green lantern, because a gay kid was beaten up for being gay I am going to LEAVE EARTH AND FIND MYSELF, THIS IS ALL ABOUT ME" moment of grossness from Winick. I could name more and more moments, but I feel because he wrote the Ion arc, it's quite even.
Marz writes females much better than Winick does, for me, which is why it's hilarious that he's so well known for killing Alex DeWitt. But he also wrote Kyle as more multi-faceted and less dangerously self-centered, while being more believably inexperienced and emotionally immature in some sense.
Tomasi's Kyle is, without a doubt, the worst Kyle to me. YMMV. He is the most boring creature in the universe, and Tomasi is definitely responsible for me losing most of my interest in Kyle. And Tomasi admitted that he didn't "get" Kyle because he hadn't read most of his run, and then slowly started getting him. Not "liking" him.
You mentioning issue 103 is hilarious... that is like, I agree, one of the worst issues for Kyle, though. I was just laughing and rolling my eyes at his behavior the entire time, and also the way him and Jennie got together. Luckily I think they were written pretty cute/tolerably up to the end of Winick's run and until Raab beat them with an OOC stick.
But anyway:
However, pally, in Kyle's own title, Dooley and company actually steadfastly fought against any such character development for years, fighting to maintain their status quo for Kyle and the characters around him (going so far as to cripple John Stewart, uncripple him, then REcripple him), because the formula of the insecure, self-doubting, "Gosh, I'm just trying to do my best" Kyle worked so well, they were loathe to change it.
The John Stewart stuff was crap. In fact, decimating the Corps, putting Guy through a huge retcon machine and crippling John, ON TOP of what was done to Hal just sucked. By the end of Marz's run for Kyle, Kyle had become considerably more mature and certain of himself as a hero. Kyle had an incredibly rough start as a hero, and Marz's run had been focused mostly on building his Rogues gallery, which he did a very good job on (it all got killed off /made irrelevant later on, though, so lol). He had to deal with Fatality, Effigy, a ton of stuff, and slowly integrated his place into Morrison's JLA by having guest stars of it in his book, along with having him form romances with already well-established female members of the hero community (donna and jade). It could be over-wrought at times, but to me, it wasn't the self-loathing or doubting that I cared about having in a hero (we have plenty of heroes who DON'T do that and plenty that do, and I am fine with it that way -- the only thing that sucks is that Kyle was the only choice GL fans were given and they had lost their variety in the 90s). I liked that he was so mismatched, that he was never a "chosen one" and that he had to grow into his role and become worthy of it. It was a good coming-of-age story for me to read about where the progression was basically "unimportant guy becomes important, then super important, then less important, and now he's just average again."
Kyle was eaten up by fangirls, and I remember in the blogsphere being BAFFLED that girls thought he was the perfect boyfriend and would bash his girlfriends instead, lololol. He was seen as the best when in reality, Kyle has always been snappy, easily butthurt, moody, impatient, full of excuses and prone to easily spurred bouts of depression and self-loathing. That's what I always liked about him, to be honest, just like I love pre-Geoff Hal and all of his asshole flaws.
Kyle was put in his place numerous amounts of times, and they did a great job of showing other more experienced characters often losing their patience with him, being rightfully impressed or accepting of him, or being justifiably annoyed at him. He never had impunity within canon, but the circumstances molded specifically around his canon (editorial killing off everything GL but him) was ridiculous.
I was excited for Winick to take over, and ... well, then he did. And suddenly Kyle was proposing to Jen immediately, and there was drama with Terry, Kyle's gay assistant, being jealous of them, making petty remarks, and then Kyle suggesting he "get therapy" when he came out to him. LOLOL, oh boy, I knew I was in for a treat :') Slowly but surely I saw that Kyle, though he was awesome as Ion, was just very self-involved still, and the narrative used the pain of others to turn it into about Kyle (I specify that Kyle didn't always make it about him, this is just the storytelling that usually happens with ... well, male characters), and then it got soap operatic and worse and worse when Kyle left earth. And then Raab gave the series a mercy killing.
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Date: 2010-09-05 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-03 11:52 am (UTC)He did have other smaller moments before this in JLA (and a good share in his own series), and he did do a whole lot of stuff after this.
-Hal was the perfect straight man to that grand cosmic awesomeness, and as anyone who understands comedy can tell you, the straight man only looks boring, but is the key to making it work.-
The rest of the Corps is great and Hal playing well with them is nice and all, but it's not Hal being interesting, it's them being interesting via Hal.
And I think GL Corps shows they can work separate from him too.
Maybe back in the old days they really needed him... but honestly the current corps bounce off each other (and Kyle and Guy) pretty darn well.
John Stewart can fill the strait-man role too.
So while Hal may be nice and all, gotta stick with the Rayner for the top GL slot.
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Date: 2010-09-03 05:27 pm (UTC)John needs to be given better stories and placement, that much is damn sure.
Hal has been interesting, so long as he's not being written by people like Johns. When Hal's written well, he's the James T. Kirk of comics. When people like Johns write him, he's Riker.
Out of curiosity, did you ever read any of the Gerard Jones GL stuff? EMERALD DAWN I and II, and THE ROAD BACK?
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Date: 2010-09-03 09:03 pm (UTC)-
Lesse, I read The Road Back years back and remember enjoying it.
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Date: 2010-09-04 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-03 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-03 05:35 pm (UTC)The cartoonier stuff like that was better, but then, that was Morrison doing the neat stuff, not Ron Marz, who was actually writing Kyle's core titles. Everybody here has been praising Kyle using examples of him NOT from his core book, which is the basis I'm going by, as I think is only fair. Read my comment to falseaesop for more of what I mean.
Your assessment of how people write Hal today is sadly true. When I started reading Kyle as GL, I went back earlier in the run, discovering the work of Gerard Jones from EMERALD DAWN I and II and THE ROAD BACK onward (have you read those, by chance?), and that was the Hal I wanted to see more of, the Hal I couldn't imagine going nuts and murderous in three issues, the great character who was tossed aside (along with every trace of the GLC mythos, AND merchandise) to make room for a new hip counterpart.
But unfortunately, while Johns writes an excellent most-everything-else in GL (the Star Sapphires are still... ugh), he cannot write Hal to save his life. He writes the Hal Jordan that people who hate Hal Jordan think Hal Jordan is.
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Date: 2010-09-03 08:47 pm (UTC)I've read Emerald Dawn and The Road Back, and yeah, they're good stuff (although I think I would have gotten more out of the latter one if I'd read some of the previous 'road trip' stories that it references). I'm also fond of the portrayal of Hal in stories like JLA: Year One, and others that hearken back to his test pilot days. I like him better as the cocky young daredevil with an eye for the ladies than as the elder statesman of superheroes that he often seems to be portrayed as. Not that I don't think he should have gotten older or anything, but I don't see much trace of the never-say-die test pilot in his later portrayals, and that saddens me. Like I said, I have nothing against Hal himself - he can be a great character - I just think that Kyle is a strong enough character that he could have continued as Earth's main GL, and that tying everything in knots to bring Hal back ('Nononono, he didn't REALLY go insane and kill everyone, it was... an alien! Yes! An alien that took him over and used him as a puppet!') was unnecessary, for the same reason that bringing back Barry Allen was unnecessary (although I'll gladly confess that I haven't been following that arc). Generally speaking, I think when these older characters go out with a bang, the best thing to do is RESPECT that bang, and not dredge them up again purely for the sake of nostalgia. Both Hal and Barry got great send-offs that profoundly affected the DCU, and bringing them back, for me, is like tacking on an extra grand climax to a stirring piece of music - one is fine, two makes the audience shift restlessly in their seats.
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Date: 2010-09-04 05:25 pm (UTC)Yeah, perfect call on JLA:YO. See, that was the Hal that I wanted to see more of when I got into GL during the Kyle era. That was the Hal I wanted to be exonerated and returned. I'm still waiting. I think I'm gonna be waiting for a long time.
Honestly, JLA:YO also made me see the potential for Barry in the modern age--a character of unflappable hope and optimism, but rooted in dorky humanity, able to inspire others on a more hands-on ground level than even Superman can--but again, we have the same problem as we have with Hal. Still waiting.
Thing is, I could never accept Hal's death as a worthy ending, because it was quite literally intended as a "mercy killing" on the part of Kessel, who used those very words in a WIZARD interview some time ago. As I understood it, he wanted to have it be a mercy killing to a character who was misused and abused, and save him from more. That's hardly a death worthy of an iconic, important character.
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Date: 2010-09-05 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-03 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-03 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 06:30 pm (UTC)That said, I have read very, very little truly great Alan Scott appearances, and zero actual starring stories. But I still love the character and want him to be done justice.
I've always maintained that long after Hal, Kyle, Guy, John, and the rest of the Corps is wiped away, somehow or other, Alan Scott will still be standing.
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Date: 2010-09-03 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-03 09:28 pm (UTC)It's a testament to how well the creators succeeded in turning his character around that I was actually sorry when they did what I was clamoring for years ago and brought Hal back, retconning the Parallax arc. Personally, I think, for as big a crapfest as Emerald Twilight was, Hal is much more interesting as a flawed hero trying to make amends than a straight man.