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

[karunya]

Dick Grayson as GL would have been amazing.

You all know that I <3 Hal profoundly and passionately, but I despised the whole testosterone-ridden mess of this issue. This ain't a street gang, it's the most powerful paramilitary organization in the universe. You don't get in by beating up a current member.

[icon_uk]

Dick Grayson as GL would have been amazing.

Something very similar was seen in a Superman/Batman, where on a parallel world Bruce meets a sort of fused JLA Titans team, and Hal Grayson is Night Lantern, air force vet ("Born to fly").

And no, I'm not still narked that out of every major, high profile hero in the DCU, Dick Grayson seems to have been the only one who didn't get ANY ring in "Blackest Night" or "Brightest Day".

[karunya]

I guess they figured that getting to play Batman was good enough. Interesting to think about which ring Dick would wear.

[icon_uk]

Well, Green would work, but as he's the guy who made Batman smile, I'd opt for a Blue Lantern Hope myself but I did find this over here

[karunya]

Yup, that's not at all unpleasant to look at. Because Star Sapphires all seem to dress "retro", Disco Sapphire Nightwing exceeds my expectations. ;)

[icon_uk]

The fact the usual feather stripes make it appears he has an exploding firework on his crotch adds just the whole Star-Sapphirness too.