Wow, the new HBO/Max show Lanterns really has people talking about Green Lantern, and in particular, Hal Jordan. Does he take a beating every time he’s on screen or in the comics!
DEATH, DEFILING, AND DESTRUCTION
Way back in the 1960s, superheroes made a comeback, and one of the guys that was in that original group was indeed Hal Jordan, the new Green Lantern. (Alan Scott, the first Green Lantern, later was deemed to be gay although I never saw any signs of that in decades of comics stories. Oh, well!)
Look, Green Lantern has a “magic” ring that converts will power into energy or physical form. In order to keep him “human,” he was given an odd weakness—the color yellow. Anything even painted yellow was immune to his ring’s power. I never thought that made sense since yellow actually is part of what makes up the color green. I still see that and go, “Huh?”
But, he needed something to make him somewhat relatable and not totally invincible. And so that was made his weakness.
Sadly, even that didn’t seem to work. It wasn’t long before Hal Jordan, who was a test pilot (always considered a very manly job), was released and had to take a job as a toy salesman (ugh). Yes, you read that right—he went around the country trying to sell toys. What a comedown that was!
And then even that wasn’t enough! In what apparently was a serious mistake (at least in my eyes), Hal seemed to go over to the dark side. He apparently turned in to a villain for a while. I still tell anyone to do with Green Lantern that the one word I never want to hear when talking about GL is “Parallax,” the supposed villainous personality that was shown to NOT be Hal Jordan eventually.
We jump years ahead to the new show, and because he has such power, he’s now a pompous ass. Anyone who meets Hal immediately doesn’t like him, including his “sidekick” John Stewart. Hal uses the ring to generate money, something John immediately calls him on.
Of course, he has to get his own punishment so, by the end of the initial episode (this has been all over the Internet), but let’s say that Hal, ringless, is found apparently frozen and killed. A lot of people online have been saying, “Good! He deserved it!” I don’t agree. I think someone using a high-power “magic” ring probably starts to feel invulnerable after a while. Does that give him license to be a galactic jerk? No, but it’s called character development, or in his case, character degeneration. Sigh.
However, in the comics they did redeem everything evil that Hal apparently did as a villain, which I really did appreciate!
HAL ALWAYS HAS HIS SUPPORTERS, THOUGH
Even though many people don’t like Hal Jordan (and many of them seem to work at DC Comics these days), there are also a LOT of people who like the guy. One of those people was my twin brother Randy. He joined groups that supported Hal (one was called HEAT sometimes known as “Hal’s Emerald Action Team” among other things.
Sadly, even in the main Green Lantern title, Hal is not the main focus these days. It’s currently gone back to Kyle Rayner, who was “Spider-Man with a ring” as my brother used to describe him. DC tried to make him more relatable (sometimes I just don’t like that word), so they did terrible things to his girlfriend, among others.
Now, I do give kudos to Jeremy Adams, who writes the GL book, and he’s not completely abandoned Hal even though DC made most of their comics change focus recently after DC K.O. One of my favorite things he did was return Carol Ferris to being a Star Sapphire, which gives the couple more that they have in common. That was really great low-hanging fruit and well done!
I know that the Hal supporters still voice that fondness more online than by taking out full-page ads in comics magazines as they once did, most of which no longer exist. But they are out there!
SEPARATING COMICS FROM TV
A skill I’ve picked up over the years is the ability to be able to separate in my mind the various incarnations of comics characters, and that includes Hal. Yes, he’s very much a jerk in Lanterns, but I still have a great deal of respect for him in the comics because he maintains that ability to function without fear and continue to expand his ring control and his heroism.
So, while I’m watching the show on HBO/Max, it doesn’t affect how I view Hal in the comics. That Hal is the one I’ve always respected, and I realize that the TV people seem to be focusing on John Stewart more, although they may need to change the show’s name to Lantern if indeed their version of Hal “bought the farm” at the end of that premier episode. We’ll see.
I do appreciate a more “adult” (in a good way) version of Green Lantern in the show versus the previous movie or the many times GL has appeared in animated shows and the like. To me, Lanterns is its own alternate universe when it comes to the GL Corps. And that includes Guy Gardner, who James Gunn seems to have quite the affinity for. However, I remember how he recently messed up Krypto, making him more of an unruly Earth dog that an animal from a totally different alien culture. If you don’t like dogs, I can see that being important to you, but I still dislike what the Dog of Steel did in the recent Superman films.
I’m happy to follow Lanterns through to its conclusion, and that may include several seasons since I hear the writing staff if already working on Season Two. I hope that the show will help comics and other GL fans to seek out the monthly comics—Green Lantern and the Green Lantern Corps as well as Absolute Green Lantern, all of which have their own unique places in Hal history.
From my perspective, it’s once again a great time to be a GL fan! And I hope this continues for a long time to come!
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