Hal Jordan: The recovery - part 2(Girl troubles and Guardian dickery)

[thelazyreader]

Earlier I posted scans from Hal Jordan's old Green Lantern run, showing his eventual attempts at recovering from the aimless drifter his character had become over the 70s and 80s before Emerald Twilight put an end to it. Continuing from there...






Sure is happy to be back, isn't he?

Hal's been doing pretty well as Green Lantern of Earth. But on the personal front he's still unemployed and homeless. Tired of working for other people(whether as pilot, toy salesman or insurance adjuster) Hal decides to start his own flight charter service. So he arranges a loan and rents a hotel room.



Geoff Johns may have retconned Hal's graying hair as a side-effect of Parallax, but back then he was written as though he really was that old. Must be the 'mid-life crisis' aspect of his character.

En route to the airstrip Hal deals with another old problem: the matter of his ex-girlfriend and former Green Lantern Arisia, who went missing shortly after she broke up with him.





Hal buys the plane and is all set. Only one thing remains; to find out where things stand with his old flame, Carol Ferris. Speaking of which,




We get a little inner conflict about the various women in Hal's life before he approaches Carol again.

Having only recently been freed from a long spell as the Star Sapphire she's also looking to regain her footing in life. Since Ferris Aerospace is defunct, Hal offers her a job as manager/accountant for his air taxi service. So in an odd reversal of their old relationship, Carol is now working for Hal.




Of course, it turns out to be more girl trouble for Hal.




Sorry, Hal. After everything they've been through, Carol thinks it best if they remain 'just friends'.(Doesn't stop her from getting jealous over his other exes though)

Hal finds Arisia at a police station, a hot alien babe whose mind has regressed to the 13-year old child she really is.



This is another uncomfortable bit of Hal Jordan's past Geoff Johns has tried to retcon away. Arisia was a teenager who artificially aged herself to adulthood so that Hal would find her appealing. So as to erase the controversy of whether Hal was being a pedophile Geoff rewrote her age as being over 200 in Earth years, but from these old stories it's apparent she really was a kid(both physically and mentally) when she met Hal.

Hal calls Kilowog to take her back to her home planet, only to find he's busy preparing for some major mission that Hal was told nothing about.



You can see this is not going to go well.

Hal drops off Arisia at JLI headquarters and saves the New Guardians(a lame spin-off of the 1980s Millenium event) from some trouble which appears to be linked with whatever the Green Lantern Corps are facing. Tired of being lied to, manipulated and left out of the loop, Hal goes to Oa to confront the Guardians of the Universe about their many questionable policies.






And suffers the biggest onslaught of Guardian superdickery ever!


(Though Ganthet may have a point here; the Guardians may have noble motives that are simply beyond mortal understanding... Nah.)



Heh. Poor, poor Hal. I wonder if he could ever bring himself to respect the Guardians ever again. Oh wait...

Hal literally crawls away from his audience with the Guardians, feeling completely shattered. He sees the other Lanterns summoned for battle: the threat they'd been preparing for has finally arrived. And now begins a grand battle for the fate of the Universe!



The Green Lanterns fight a losing battle against Entropy's minions while the Guardians simply stand and watch. Apparently whoever touches Entropy will shorten their lifespan, and while the Guardians are immortal, they'd rather not risk dying when there are disposable Lanterns flying around.

Seeing how appreciative their 'masters' are, the Lanterns start hesitating and bickering among themselves.



To break the deadlock Ganthet finally consents to reveal a few of his secrets(though I barely understood or cared what he was talking about).




Yes, Krona. Those of you who've read JLA/Avengers would remember this is what he looked like at the beginning of that story. I have to say I prefer this incarnation of him to the fat, balding guy with a pornstar moustache.



The Green Lanterns are confused and look to Hal to decide who and what they should be fighting for. And Hal gets a nice bit of character development.



On his word the Lanterns fight and defeat Krona, who is swallowed up by Entropy(presumably this is what leads up to his appearance in JLA/Avengers). Hal has a little heart-to-heart with his comrades before returning to Earth. He's saved the universe again, but what he's learned weighs heavily on his mind.



His faith in the Guardians may be gone, but Hal's still handling things pretty well at this point, especially at the personal level.

 

Comments

[thehefner]

I said it before and I'll say it again: this is my favorite era of GL. But it's one that's been shunned and ignored by everyone, both the old-school Hal fans who hate that it's post-drunk-driver Hal, and the Kyle fans because, well, this is what led to Kyle's introduction in the first place.

I don't know if I'll have the time to post Emerald Dawn and possibly ED 2 (both of which are mostly superior to GL: Secret Origin, but if no one else wants to do it, I'll get on that. If not soon, then in a couple months when things calm down a bit on my end. I miss when Hal was written like a flawed human being and kind of an idiot, rather than the Captain Perfect that Johns wants him to be.

Also: see, this is what Krona looks like. I loved that Kurt Busiek remembered this storyline when Krona showed up looking exactly the same in JLA/Avengers and, subsequently, Trinity. I really hope Johns actually addresses the reasons why Krona looks like a withered Guardian version of Sinestro now.

And even then, I'm STILL pissed that the character didn't turn out to be Appa Ali Aspa...

[thehefner]

Two other things I miss from this era:

1.) Boodika actually being Boodika rather than a bland character who gets transformed into a blander cyborg

2.) Hal's white temples. They made him look distinguished, damn it.

[tacobob]

Yeah, artist started to draw her all too pretty before she got robotnicked. She always looked like a woman who could really mess you up even without a ring.

[icon_uk]

Agreed, losing the greying temples never made sense to me, it's not like anyone had ever drawn attention to them as being premature. They just made him a little more plausible as part of the first vanguard of Silver Age heroes.

[thehefner]

Well, considering that many people thought the temples made Hal look old (thus ushering in Kyle as the hip, young, relatable kid), losing the white temples was sort of a direct reaction against that kind of thing. I have to wonder, were/are comic fans really that shallow, that white temples could turn them off of a character?

[arbre_rieur]

The temples are just the most visible sign of what I expect was the real problem: Hal Jordan as a stodgy, conservative old guy. If they'd written him as the same youthful maverick in personality, just with white temples, I suspect there wouldn't have been an issue.

[thehefner]

I liked that character so long as he had Guy and John to play off of. I've always thought of Hal being like Captain Kirk, but Kirk should never be without Spock and Bones, or he'd be insufferable.

[kagome654]

Well, I wouldn't say they turn me off the character, but I did think the only time they looked right was on Parallax (who I always thought cut a pretty dashing figure). Hal also doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who would allow his grey to show, but that's just my opinion, and one that runs counter to canon.

...Okay, I'm shallow, I think men with grey hair can look distinguished (Magento, for example, is a classic silver fox), but Hal just looks wrong (and when I see him I should be thinking about how handsome he is, not getting distracted by how weird his hair looks!). Maybe I'd like it if were drawn a little differently, I don't know.

[thehefner]

Hal also doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who would allow his grey to show, but that's just my opinion, and one that runs counter to canon.

Not entirely! There was that line in Ostrander's JLA: Incarnations when Hal confided in Ollie than he was actually starting to dye his hair brown to keep the gray from showing!

It only now occurs to me how absurd it is for Hal's white temples to equal "being old," because I actually HAVE silver temples at age 27!

[kd_the_movie]

Yea i was just about to say that "YEAH THIS IS THE KRONA I REMEMBER!!"

And yeah Appa fit the criteria for "robed guy" to a tee.

But (and this is somewhat off subject) y'know what Johns retcon i cannot stand the most? Making New Earth not only the first planet with life on it, but also the damn center of the whole multiverse. First off, Maltus (the OG home of the Guardians) has typically held that position as first planet with life on it in the DC (and would've tied in far better with Blackest Night since its already related to the GL mythos), but by making New Earth the focal point of the whole multiverse, you rob any story that DOESN'T take place on Earth of any importance or impact.

[icon_uk]

I did not know that about New Earth, and you're right, that makes no sense at all.

[thelazyreader]

I hated the "Life began on Earth" BS for different reasons. One, it's inconcievable that the DCU was devoid of life for 10 billion years before the Earth was formed. Two, it contradicts a number of earlier stories that showed lifeforms the predated the Earth, like JLA: Heaven's Ladder(which features a race that came into existence shortly after the Big Bang) and the Neil Gaiman story featuring a Maltusian meeting young Sol when his planets had not yet developed life.

[screamsheet.wordpress.com]

I miss when Hal was written like a flawed human being and kind of an idiot, rather than the Captain Perfect that Johns wants him to be.

If Johns is trying to present him like that, he's going about it all wrong. I've been assuming that we're supposed to be reading Hal as kind of a tool all along.

[starwolf_oakley]

I miss when Hal was written like a flawed human being and kind of an idiot, rather than the Captain Perfect that Johns wants him to be.

Well, if Ryan Reynolds is playing him, presumably he will be a flawed human being. Many of his characters remind me of a more muscular Chandler Bing.

[richardak]

This was my favorite era of GL. In fact, this was pretty much the only time I was ever a fan.

And I suspect it's the only time I ever shall be a fan, because I shall never accept Hal Jordan back as a GL or a good guy. For me, this entire series led very logically and ineluctably to the events of Emerald Twilight. And we see that so clearly in this story.

Just consider that speech the Guardians give Hal about Jesus. On one level, the betrayer they're talking about if Appa Ali Apsa, and they're saying that his madness and betrayal was all a part of their great plan. On the other hand, considering Hal's reaction to it, and their decision to reveal it to him, it seems to me like very strong foreshadowing of what would happen in Emerald Twilight and Zero Hour. And remember, Hal's plan in Zero Hour is to collapse the universe back into a singularity so that he can cause a new Big Bang and recreate the universe to his liking. Sound familiar?

But it's more than that one scene. One of the things I liked about this series was that Hal was getting visibly older. Not wiser, though. Instead, he went through a long character arc of rebuilding his lost youth. Getting back his position of GL of earth (by means of dubious ethics), moving back to California, becoming a pilot again, working with Carol Ferris again, etc. All this smack of a man going through a mid-life crisis trying to recapture his past. Considering his actions leading up to and in Zero Hour....

For me, Emerald Twilight and Zero Hour were the logical, even necessary outcomes to Hal Jordan's story; this entire GL series was leading up to it. It begins with the last few Green Lantern's at war with the last, now-mad, Guardian in the ruins of Oa, and ends with the last Guardian fleeing the ruins of Oa from the last, now-mad Green Lantern. That's a classical tragedy, that is.

Trying to retcon it all away and turn Hal back into a GL and a hero is like trying to write MacBeth 2: Scottish Boogaloo. I just can't ever accept it. And I hold Geoff Johns in contempt for trying it.

[karunya]

Boggled at the well-done theology here. Saving the universe as an absurd task (cf. Origen). I like that. And the Guardians first trying to act like God in the Book of Job and then engaging in the perennial issue of Judas Iscariot and Jesus Christ. Yup, I like this stuff.

Our John knows a whole lot about this, too. Sounds like he came up in an African Methodist Episcopal church to me -- a Wesleyan/Arminian/revivalistic denomination which prizes education and theology for both clergy and laity, and somehow manages to do something that so many mainline churches do not: enabling educated people to remain confident evangelicals. My denomination, the Methodist Evangelical Church, is an offshoot of AME-Zion, which is an offshoot of AME...and so on all the way back to Peter arguing with Paul. Proud to have him in the "family".

[badficwriter]

I kinda wish you didn't post this stuff. It's just fodder for the haters.

More on point..for a guy who's not a deep thinker, Green Lantern has always been written as a book of philosophy masquerading as action, since the beginning when it was written by a pot smoker.

I remember being horrified by that little insinuation of the Guardians, that they'd set up things and betrayed those who'd given up their lives for their faith in the Guardians. Made perfect sense to me if Hal HAD killed the Guardians eventually.

For a long time, the Corps and the Guardians were depicted religiously. The Corps were the faithful, and had all the problems and glories of angels. The Guardians were Jehovah/Elohim, the ones above who knew things but didn't reveal more than hints, and demanded absolute obedience to their arbritrary commandments. Every time a Lantern said his oath, it was a prayer and renewal of his self-sacrifice (those sacrifices being obedience and separation from their people). Notice how they enjoyed saying their oaths together, and how they would request other Lanterns to say their oaths with them. Those feelings of separation from their planet-bound species and kinship to the strange races who shared their sacrifices were so intense that when the Corps was destroyed in the last series, the survivors grouped together on Earth. When Hal fought to retain his secret identity and place among civilians, the other Lanterns chastised him for it, and resented him for it. They felt he should abandon hiding his Lantern identity and be nothing but that--indeed, it was sometimes intimated that living on a planet was too close to non-Lanterns and their mortal concerns. The Guardians encouraged living in the stars, so they punished Hal by exiling him from Earth once, to live on an asteroid. The proper place for a celestial servant.

The message of such stories was sometimes "this is the way it would feel to be a heavenly servant", and sometimes it was "see how these ideas wouldn't work in a real world environment, how petty the godlike masters are". I miss these stories. I'm not too into the space police procedural.

Gerard Jones focused on showing Hal's flaws and magnified every internal struggle. It was the story of a man who'd been transformed into something else and felt always pulled into that world. But humanity and it's earthiness was precious to him. Hal tried to keep in mind his humble origins and deny the vain-glory that always seemed part of the Lanterns. So it was a constant struggle to reconnect (just as JMS would have Superman walking around in an effort to do the same) with regular people and regular feelings. This is why Lanterns are so often possessed. They are trained to be vessels, for the light and for the will of the Guardians. Makes them perfect for anybody else who also wants a physical servant to drive around.

It makes me headdesk when people complain about the focus on Lantern's internal emotions. The point of the story is will. Since there's only so long you can show someone just doing things, the idea is to show overcoming things. It's the whole theme.

[thehefner]

It's just fodder for the haters.

I very much fear the same, particularly when it comes to Hal. Although let's face it: Hal haters don't need more fodder. I've never known any comics fans to hate so loudly and irrationally as the people who hate Hal Jordan.

I've never thought about GL in that context before, which seems so obvious an interpretation in retrospect. I always treated the philosophy as being more akin to that of Star Trek style space opera, which itself danced around religious implications. But this line really nails something which has been lost:

The message of such stories was sometimes "this is the way it would feel to be a heavenly servant", and sometimes it was "see how these ideas wouldn't work in a real world environment, how petty the godlike masters are". I miss these stories. I'm not too into the space police procedural.

Yeah, now that you mention it, I miss those stories too!

[badficwriter]

I am a bit religion-obsessed sometimes, so it leaps out at me, but I'm not the only one who's ever noticed.

Trusting the Guardians feels like trusting Professor Xavier these days.

[richardak]

I very much fear the same, particularly when it comes to Hal. Although let's face it: Hal haters don't need more fodder. I've never known any comics fans to hate so loudly and irrationally as the people who hate Hal Jordan.

I take exception to that. Why is it irrational to dislike a character, or to accept that character only as a villain? Why is it more rational to like that character or accept him as a hero?

[thehefner]

Have you seen the level of hatred some people have for this fictional character? I'm not saying the hate itself is irrational, I'm talking about the LEVEL of hatred.

Also, what does Hal being a villain have to do with what I was talking about?

[richardak]

Have I? I read the comments on your first Hal Jordan, the Recovery Post, and commented myself. Plenty of the comments were negative on Hal, but none of them struck me as irrationally so. Almost all of them seemed measured in tone and had coherent reasons for their negative reactions to Hal.

As for the comments to this post, only one, my own, struck me as being particularly negative toward Hal. Shortly thereafter, badficwriter commented that posts like this were "only fodder for the haters," and you replied that you "fear[ed] the same." I got the impression that you might have had my comment in mind when you talked about the "haters," since, again, mine was the only comment that struck me as particularly negative about Hal. Maybe I was wrong, and perhaps I was being too sensitive. If so, just let me know and I shall apologize.

But even so, the fact is that I didn't see anyone saying anything that struck me as irrationally hateful about either this or your previous Hal Jordan recovery post. Do you see things differently, and if so, why?

[thehefner]

The comments on that post weren't bad (are you under the impression that I'm the OP of these posts?), but I'm speaking as someone who's been reading GL comments on the internet for about fifteen years now. And even though the comments at that post were a good example of why scans_daily is more measured and reasonable than most comics message boards, I remember occasional moments of vehement anti-Hal ranting back on the original LJ comm.

I got the impression that you might have had my comment in mind when you talked about the "haters," since, again, mine was the only comment that struck me as particularly negative about Hal. Maybe I was wrong, and perhaps I was being too sensitive. If so, just let me know and I shall apologize.

I'm afraid you did indeed get the wrong impression, as I did not have you nor anybody else currently present in this community in mind. In fact, I appreciate the fact that you outright mentioned your love for this GL run, as I've already said it's my own favorite run, one which has been ignored by almost everybody.

That said, I'm not sure I agree with you that Hal's characterization supports his turning into Parallax. I think it supports the original (and very different) plans for Emerald Twilight, but not the two-issue jump to crazy murderer of fellow GLs. Killing the Guardians, yes. But other GLs, no. That said, I plan to finally reread this whole run, so I'll keep your comment in mind and reevaluate my thoughts.

[richardak]

I apologize. I didn't mean to be so oversensitive.

I don't know why I characterized the posts as being yours, since I knew you weren't the OP. I need to edit my comments more carefully. I'm sorry about that too.

I didn't know that there were originally different plans for Emerald Twilight. How did you learn about this? What were they, specifically? As I recall, though, Hal only killed two GLs directly himself: Kilowog and Sinestro (whom I don't count). The others he just left to die when their rings stopped functioning.

[thehefner]

How did you learn about this?

http://www.glcorps.org/gl48-50.html. There's a link to the original plotline and everything. Also, check out that ad for the ET that almost was!

Killing Kilowog is enough, as is cutting off Boodika's hand.

[richardak]

Thanks for the link, and for letting me know about this in the first place. It's really interesting.

It's hard to judge the quality of a story when you're only looking at a plot summary though, but it's definitely interesting to see what might have been. That being said, I don't think this idea sounds as good as what they actually did do.

Too much of it just doesn't seem really credible: Would the Green Lanterns really side with a new group of Guardians against the Guardians who have been employing them all along, just on the say-so of the Zamarons, whom most of the GLs in this series have no personal knowledge of?

Would Kilowog ever side with Sinestro, the man directly responsible for exterminating Kilowog's race? Wouldn't all the Lanterns from the old days, or any who knew about the old days, refuse to side with Sinestro?

Wouldn't all the Lanterns whom Hal recruited in this series be inclined to side with him, just as they followed his lead in the story posted here?

And would the Guardians really have murdered an innocent man on the theory that that might someday turn his son into a great Green Lantern? Considering that it was a random accident that led to Hal getting recruited initially instead of John or Guy, that just seems silly.

All that being said, you never really know. A story that seems silly or contrived in a summary like this might be executed so well that it works anyway. It might be easier to tell if DC hadn't asked that the scripts be removed, so we could have a better idea of the execution of the story.

And of course you're right that killing Kilowog and cutting off Boodika's hand were enough. But I think that was the point. Hal's whole plan was to seize the power to remake the universe according to his own design and whim. It's logical for him to decide that it doesn't matter what he does or whom he has to hurt to get to that goal, because he can just fix it all in the end when he destroys and remakes the universe. As I recall, he said as much to Guy later on.