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]

Neither did Hal though, he didn't try to take the fight out into space either.

[thelazyreader]

He did tell Guy to do that multiple times, Guy just went on with the 'You're scared!' and kept fighting.

[wizardru]

So.....how does that exonerate Hal, exactly? I realize the reason for it is that the story requires Guy to go down with everyone watching, but that's not an explanation for Hal not solving the problem.

This segment opens with Hal talking about how Guy couldn't beat Goldface as an illustration of how Hal is smarter and better at the job. So what if this wasn't Guy he was fighting, but Goldface? Or Star Sapphire? Would Hal do the same thing? If he's supposed to be so much smarter than Guy, why doesn't he come up with a solution? This is New York City...he should be able to at least lure Guy out over the rivers (East, Harlem, Bronx)...and since most stories assume Manhattan is really the only part of NYC that matters, he should only be seconds away from one.

That Hal's big play here, after starting the fight and then escalating it, is to simply turtle up and outlast Guy...not really the work of a deep thinker.