Confusion regarding Guy Gardner and Hal Jordan

[Indigo Lantern Kyle's Nude Model Find all posts View Profile Close Indigo Lantern]

I'm quite new to reading GL comics, and I've stumbled upon some confusion.

After reading Emerald Dawn, they suggested I should read the Death and Return of superman.

I noticed two things which don't make sense to me.

1. I skipped ahead a little by accident, noticing a patch of gray in Hal Jordans' hair.

2. Last thing I read Guy Gardner was an attorney or something, in the superman storyarc he's a really different looking ex-green lantern with a yellow(???) ring. (So one of fear or did I just see the color wrong?).

Is this just a flaw in the plot or are there some REALLY important things I need to read to understand this?

Regards!

[Evergreen City Corps Den Mother Find all posts View Profile Close Evergreen City]

Much of it depends on who's doing the writing. There are some older story twists which have been retconned away. You gotta be flexible. My best advice is to start afresh with Green Lantern: Rebirth and work backwards and forwards from there. Much of what went before Rebirth has been tweaked by the plot wizards numerous times. Examples, addressing your confusion points:

(1) Following "first contact" with "Parallax" in the power battery in Green Lantern Corps Vol 1 #224 (circa May 1988, a continuation of the 1960s GL series), the book was cancelled and Hal Jordan subsisted for awhile in Action Comics. When he came back in his own title in 1990, the grey streaks had appeared. This was explained as how you see it in GL: Rebirth by Johns, possession by a sentient entity out to devour souls, but at the time we were just led to believe Jordan had gotten older. Time compression in a long-running series is always a problem.

(2) Much of the writing for Emerald Dawn and Emerald Dawn II was about the time of the 1990 title restart, and several things to make the past exciting again were tried by the writers (and were later abandoned). One of these was the encounter of a youthful Guy Gardner, parole officer counseling a youthful Hal Jordan, drunk driving convict. It didn't work and the alternate career was gone, but not forgotten. Gardner was back to being a PE teacher in Baltimore.

(3) The Death of Superman arc fast-forwards a bit even in comic book time, maybe forty issues down the pike, from Emerald Dawn (mid-1993). The funeral of Superman occurred about the same time as GL Vol 3 #39. The powers that be had replaced Gardner with Jordan as Earth's GL again in issue #25, and Jordan took Gardner's ring. Thereafter, Gardner had a yellow one for awhile, but not as a member of what later became the Sinestro Corps--rather, it was the one of a kind ring of Sinestro himself, which was in custody of the Guardians after his apparent "death" in Emerald Twilight. He lost that during the course of his own series of books about 1994-1995, in another effort to remake the character (book was mercifully cancelled in 1996, and Gardner was also reborn as as GL during GL: Rebirth).

Important stuff you haven't gotten to yet: Emerald Twilight (Jordan turned to the dark side, seized power, destroyed the Corps, became Parallax, and Kyle Rayner became the only GL for awhile), Zero Hour (Jordan as Parallax tried to remake time itself), Final Night (Jordan died saving the solar system); Day of Judgment (Jordan rescued from the afterlife, became The Spectre). All in good time, if you're a Jordan fan.

For Rayner's history, you'll need to delve into GL Vol 3 #51-end, and some of the stories since then, also the Ion 12-issue miniseries.

Gardner's history is as convoluted as the person he is. John Stewart's follows a more tragic set of story lines; he is, however, an interesting GL character in his own right, but never as center stage as the others (sadly).

Still confused? PM me.

[Indigo Lantern Kyle's Nude Model Find all posts View Profile Close Indigo Lantern]

Oh, okay. So if I understand correctly, the timelines are just a little mixed up? The destruction of coast city and the guy gardner thing seem a little mixed up to me.

[Michael Heide Heide Finition Find all posts View Profile Close Michael Heide]

Guy Gardner was the sole Green Lantern of Earth for a while in the early-to-mid nineties.

Hal returned (with grey streaks, back then intended to be a show of his age, not of any parasitic influence) and battled him without rings. The winner would get the sector for himself. The winner turned out to be Hal.

Guy then looked for an alternate power source. He found Sinestro's yellow ring and kept it. This was long before Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver had invented the "emotional spectrum", so all it was was a yellow ring that created yellow constructs.

A while after that, Superman died, had a funeral, was replaced by four other guys, one of which turned out to be a villain. More about that here. Anyway, Coast City was destroyed. Hal tried to undo that destruction. At any cost. You have to understand that he didn't see himself as a villain then. And most importantly, he was never about spreading fear. Yes, he killed his way through the Green Lantern Corps, but if your plan is to get to the Central Power Battery in order to undo history, it's not like they'd stay dead for long.

Anyway, he also destroyed Guy's yellow ring. Guy then went on to have adventures without any superpowers, only to discover that he was the last surviving Vuldarian, a race of aliens that could turn their bodies into living weapons.

This was undone in Green Lantern Rebirth. A later throwaway line stated that he was never a Vuldarian to begin with and just happend to catch a virus.

[Dr. Naysay Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Dr. Naysay]

As it stands now....

Guy Gardener and John Stewart have no origins and we know nothing about how/when/why they become Green Lanterns and have been stripped down to little more than archetypal pastiche.

EDIT : They're dangerously close to joining Hawkman in the Legion of Characters With Origins So Convoluted It's Not Even Worth It Anymore

[Michael Heide Heide Finition Find all posts View Profile Close Michael Heide]

But didn't they say that the Green Lantern franchise retained its former continuity? Wouldn't that keep John's and Guy's origins intact?

[Indigo Lantern Kyle's Nude Model Find all posts View Profile Close Indigo Lantern]

But didn't they say that the Green Lantern franchise retained its former continuity? Wouldn't that keep John's and Guy's origins intact?

This confuses me, as it's pretty much cherrypicking things from the previous volumes as to which are and aren't part of the current continuity.

[Michael Heide Heide Finition Find all posts View Profile Close Michael Heide]

What part of the previous GL continuity isn't part of the current continuity?

[Indigo Lantern Kyle's Nude Model Find all posts View Profile Close Indigo Lantern]

What part of the previous GL continuity isn't part of the current continuity?

A simple example from this thread would be the Guy Gardner as a Parole Officer.

[Michael Heide Heide Finition Find all posts View Profile Close Michael Heide]

I'm pretty sure that that was already out of the window by the time Zero Hour rewrote reality. I'm talking about examples from the post Infinite Crisis parts of Volume four.

[Dr. Naysay Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Dr. Naysay]

I'm pretty sure that that was already out of the window by the time Zero Hour rewrote reality. I'm talking about examples from the post Infinite Crisis parts of Volume four.

John and Guy were NEVER given new origins through all the continuity shake ups because Green Lantern has always retained SOME of it's continuity.... for a variety of reasons, presumably one being that fully resetting it would mean erasing one of their very very few minority characters.


John Stewart has been dragged along with no real origin for 30 some years now. Every time there's a continuity reboot.... they never address him or Guy Gardener because their origins are too closely tied to the Hal Jordan of the 70s/80s.

It's one of the serious flaws in serial story telling set over decades with no anchoring in any kind of stable time frame. Fortunately for DC there will always be enough meathead fanboys who will say "who cares... Guy kicks ass and Johns a marine so OOH RAH!!!!" and the stories will continue to get further and further away from who the characters were meant to be when they were created and we'll all be left with a bunch of bullshit.

HAPPY SUNDAY EVERYBODY!!!

[Indigo Lantern Kyle's Nude Model Find all posts View Profile Close Indigo Lantern]

John and Guy were NEVER given new origins through all the continuity shake ups because Green Lantern has always retained SOME of it's continuity.... for a variety of reasons, presumably one being that fully resetting it would mean erasing one of their very very few minority characters.


John Stewart has been dragged along with no real origin for 30 some years now. Every time there's a continuity reboot.... they never address him or Guy Gardener because their origins are too closely tied to the Hal Jordan of the 70s/80s.

It's one of the serious flaws in serial story telling set over decades with no anchoring in any kind of stable time frame. Fortunately for DC there will always be enough meathead fanboys who will say "who cares... Guy kicks ass and Johns a marine so OOH RAH!!!!" and the stories will continue to get further and further away from who the characters were meant to be when they were created and we'll all be left with a bunch of bullshit.

HAPPY SUNDAY EVERYBODY!!!

John Stewart Got a little Background-story in Justice League unlimited, it's what brought me to GL in the first place.(Getting trained by Katma, being a new lantern, etc)

[Dr. Naysay Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Dr. Naysay]

John Stewart Got a little Background-story in Justice League unlimited, it's what brought me to GL in the first place.(Getting trained by Katma, being a new lantern, etc)

That's not "cannon".

[The British Lantern Not A Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close The British Lantern]

here is a tip when it comes to continuity all you have to remember is:

COMIC BOOKS ARE WEIRD

[Lantern2814.20850 Green Lantern Find all posts View Profile Close Lantern2814.20850]

(3) The Death of Superman arc fast-forwards a bit even in comic book time, maybe forty issues down the pike, from Emerald Dawn (mid-1993). The funeral of Superman occurred about the same time as GL Vol 3 #39. The powers that be had replaced Gardner with Jordan as Earth's GL again in issue #25, and Jordan took Gardner's ring. Thereafter, Gardner had a yellow one for awhile, but not as a member of what later became the Sinestro Corps--rather, it was the one of a kind ring of Sinestro himself, which was in custody of the Guardians after his apparent "death" in Emerald Twilight. He lost that during the course of his own series of books about 1994-1995, in another effort to remake the character (book was mercifully cancelled in 1996, and Gardner was also reborn as as GL during GL: Rebirth).

slight correction here....
Sinestro's death in ET (via Hal breaking his neck) occurred long after Guy had gone to Oa to get Sinestro's ring

in GL 25 Hal and Guy had a loser leaves town street-fight. Hal won, Guy Lost and was without power. Guy's story is continued in a two part prestige format series called Guy Gardner Reborn. during all this time from Green Lantern corps 222 through all of volume 3 Sinestro is already listed as dead. He was executed by the entire Green Lantern Corps for crimes against the Universe.
(it was later retconned that his body was put in stasis and his consciousness was imprisoned in the central battery where later retcons reveal is where he first encountered Parralax corrupted Hal Jordan etc etc..)

While Sinestro's consciousness was imprisoned in the Great Battery, his body was kept in the Oan crypts along with all the other Lanterns that had fallen. It was here that Guy had found Sinestro's ring and stole it off the body. This ring would later be destroyed by Hal (parallax) Jordan when Hal fought Guy following Emerald Twilight