Green Lantern - Hal Jordan & Carol Ferris Over

[informationgeek]

"Yeah, our first arc will add something that I hope will be fairly significant to the Green Lantern mythology. We aren’t going off on some wild tangent, though. We’re very much building on what Geoff has done during his run." - Robert Venditti



If you recall the ending to Geoff Johns' run on Green Lantern, Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris had reunited with one another after he's been... sort of dead for a while. They were both happy and in love and eventually, as a flash forward showed, the two got married and had a kid. The thing to take note was that the run ended on a happy note for the two, even if you don't consider the flash forward to be what will eventually happens.

The next month, Robert Venditti steps in and takes over Green Lantern with #21 and this how they immediately follow that up.







This also continues into Green Lantern: New Guardians #21 a week or two later...





Yep. It's over folks. Just like that. In a single month, this whole romance is over and is still over as of this post. The guy comes back from the dead and it's over.


So... what exactly is going on with Carol now that she has broken up with Hal apparently? Well... I'll get to that in another post.

Comments

[aperturedreams]

Comic book romances go in and out of style, she'll be back with Hal eventually.

[locuatico]

they usually take longer than two issues.

[aperturedreams]

I don't understand that. If you mean Carol and Hal, then surely they were together long before this, even if it wasn't continuous. I suppose many were expecting them to stay together after he came back from the dead again, but it'll happen again. Especially since (SPOILERS!) it certainly doesn't look like she'll be dating Kyle after Convergence.

[informationgeek]

Yeah... the two of them are still an item though. The last issue of NG ended with them still together and in the preview for Omega Men, it is still implied they are together.

[aperturedreams]

(SPOILERS) Well yeah but, also in the preview for Omega Men, Kyle gets murdered, so...

[darkknightjrk]

Yeah, but betting money's on that being faked, and either Kyle is alive and doing something else, or is actually part of the Omega Men in disguise.

Which, granted, still means that he wouldn't be seeing Carol, but...

[locuatico]

the point is, this run IMMEDIATLY jumped to this and (SPOILERS!) the reason why she won't be dating Kyle is not an improvement.

[aperturedreams]

Oh I don't disagree with that, but nonetheless, it'll be hard for her to date him now.

[locuatico]

and as far as we know, she is going to take a vow to never see any man again and focus exclusively in being a star sapphire.

[jlbarnett]

Star Sapphire's aren't supposed to work like that.

[locuatico]

then she has a romance with Guy Gardner or comes out of the closet. point is, jus tbecause Kyle is dead, that doesn't mean she is going back with Hal, it only means she is not dating Kyle.

[lamashtar]

I really hated that Carol rebounded to Kyle, but Convergence tie-in reminded me that Hal dated Guy Gardner's ex-fiance once. And John Stewart picked up Hal's girlfriend while Hal was away in Mosaic.

Basically, Lanterns suffer a bad case of "your buddy looks after your girl ends up dating your girl".

[jaybee3]

They've broken up in the past for years at a time. No big deal. She's even gotten married to another guy before. I know Geoff Johns tried to make Carol Hal's Lois Lane or Barry's Iris West (aka the one true pairing) but with Hal it just doesn't work. These two characters don't necessarily bring out the past in each other like the others do. Even the Johns creation "Cowgirl" seemed like like a better fit as a love interest than Carol does at this point.

[mrstatham]

"The guy comes back from the dead and it's over."

And? That rather reeks of entitlement, frankly.

[informationgeek]

My apologizes. I phrased that poorly. Didn't mean for that to sound bad.

I was just disappointed that this whole relationship was dropped so suddenly and abruptly the moment the book switched writers. I was honestly interested at the time in seeing how things would progress for two after everything that had happened and it was disappointing how the writer just dropped it (it's similar to how disappointing it was for me with how Emiko and Namoi were immediately dropped when Lemire left Green Arrow).

[karunya]

I have always wondered why "love" is understood to only mean "romantic love". Carol's reason for wanting to keep the ring -- because with a ring, she can help others more effectively -- sounds like ideal and pure love to me. Agape is generally understood to be the highest and purest form of love, so why does the ring apparently only respond to eros?

[dr_archeville]

The Star Sapphires have frequently had... problematic interpretations of what "love" is. Under some writers, it was the "love" of a stalker for their object of affection.

[jlbarnett]

because it can be hard to distinguish that version of love from like. Or even feeling like a moral duty.

I'm not the friendliest person in the world, I have a hard time dealing with people, but if I had superpowers I'd feel I'd have to help people not hurt them or do nothing

[lamashtar]

The writer has noted that this is what *Carol* thinks, not necessarily what has to happen.

[silverhammerman]

It always sucks when a new creative team comes in and undoes the "happy ending" that a previous one left. It's kinda understandable in that it's harder to tell stories if everything's sunshine and roses, but more often than not it just looks lazy and cheap, resetting things because they don't want to bother doing something new.

[jlbarnett]

I agree completely. Frankly it turns me off from a book more often than not

[locuatico]

I HATE Azzarello and the Finch's WW run, but at least they are building ON TOP of what Azzarello¿s run, instead of putting it all under the rug.

[icon_uk]

Phil Jimenez Wonder Woman run where Themiscriya had been destroyed in (in that crossover thingie "World at War") and been rebuilt as a beautiful and exotic looking place, a series of linked floating islands, a centre of learning and diplomacy and the monarchy had been abolished to make way for self-rule.

All interesting springboards for a variety of stories, and then the whole island was wiped out pretty much as soon as he left because (IIRC) Zeus was pissed at Hera (or vice versa) and wanted to make a point. UGH!