Hal Jordan The Greatest Green Lantern Villain

[Noct]

Is anyone else exited classic Hal is coming back after 20 years??

Not the yellow bug but the actual olde Hal Jordan is back in Green Lantern/Parallax for the event Convergence and hopefully more...

For me this will probably be the "Rebirth" that it was for the Geoff Johns fans.

This is what made Green Lantern for me 20 years ago.

Finally classic Hal will be acknowledge again...!

[Mister Ed]

Originally Posted by Noct

Is anyone else exited classic Hal is coming back after 20 years??

Not the yellow bug but the actual olde Hal Jordan is back in Green Lantern/Parallax for the event Convergence and hopefully more...

For me this will probably be the "Rebirth" that it was for the Geoff Johns fans.

This is what made Green Lantern for me 20 years ago.

Finally classic Hal will be acknowledge again...!

You mean Marz' hatchet job on Hal? Maybe. The solicits seem a bit vague to me. It is entirely possible that they will still say Parallax was due to the fear entity.

[TEN_RINGS]

Totally don't understand......

[Noct]

Originally Posted by Mister Ed

You mean Marz' hatchet job on Hal? Maybe. The solicits seem a bit vague to me. It is entirely possible that they will still say Parallax was due to the fear entity.

No. The 'hatchet job' was in Final Night IIRC by Karl Kessel..

In any case Parallax is was made Hal Jordan who he is in my mind. I know many wont understand it --mostly if you are generation Geoff Johns rebirth or have like 40+ yeas old, but thats how i see it.

[Mister Ed]

Originally Posted by Noct

No. The 'hatchet job' was in Final Night IIRC by Karl Kessel..

In any case Parallax is was made Hal Jordan who he is in my mind. I know many wont understand it --mostly if you are generation Geoff Johns rebirth or have like 40+ yeas old, but thats how i see it.

No, Marz himself admits he did not give the descent into madness by Hal Jordan the development it required. Now I don't actually blame him for rushing it, since he was forced to do that, but that doesn't change the fact that Hal was rushed through a major development with no setup and little consideration, one that changed him drastically from what we had seen up to that point.

And I'm no HEAT member. I thoroughly enjoyed Marz's run...after ET was over.

[Noct]

Originally Posted by Mister Ed

No, Marz himself admits he did not give the descent into madness by Hal Jordan the development it required. Now I don't actually blame him for rushing it, since he was forced to do that, but that doesn't change the fact that Hal was rushed through a major development with no setup and little consideration, one that changed him drastically from what we had seen up to that point.

And I'm no HEAT member. I thoroughly enjoyed Marz's run...after ET was over.

Fair enough.

I never wanted him to die btw.

[Noct]

Still, like I said, this will be the first time in decades for me that i would be able to see again the Hal Jordan that I remember when I was a kid, and the only Hal that I ever liked.

[Mister Ed]

Originally Posted by Noct

Still, like I said, this will be the first time in decades for me that i would be able to see again the Hal Jordan that I remember when I was a kid, and the only Hal that I ever liked.

Well, for your sake I hope you aren't disappointed. Like I said, I'm not sure that they won't be keeping the Fear Entity explanation here.

Doesn't much matter to me, since I have no illusions that it will matter at all going forward. Some things might survive from Convergence to join the main universe, but no way is a Hal that is Parallax going to be one of them.

[Noct]

Originally Posted by TEN_RINGS

Totally don't understand......

[CeltiC5-27]

I started reading Green Lantern when Johns started writing it so that is not the Hal I know.

I'll be glad when Convergence is over because I hate seeing my favorite hero as a villain.

[Maverick_GL]

I really hope they do the original Parallax version of Hal for this. Despite the botched set up, he was still an awesome character in my mind. One of, if not the, coolest GL costumes ever as well.

My first ever GL comic was an annual (#3 I think?) where he and Kyle switched bodies. I remember him going to Guys place and stealing his Power Battery, and thought "man this character is awesome!" without knowing any of the context. It was years until I picked up another GL comic (or any comic aside from Death of Superman and Marvel Vs. DC) but that will always cement him in my mind as being a wicked character.

The premise of ET was great, the execution not so much.

[Mister Ed]

Originally Posted by Maverick_GL

The premise of ET was great, the execution not so much.

While I would have preferred them getting Hal out of the way in a fashion that didn't make him a villain, I will admit that I didn't see anything inherently implausible about him snapping and trying to "make things right". I just thought that ET did a crappy, implausible job establishing it. When Hal would show up as Parallax later in Marz's run, I'd just pretend in my mind that we got to this stage via a decent, well planned and executed story.

[Space Cop]

I think it will be the classic Parallax. It just won't stick. A bunch of these convergence 2-shots are from continuities that don't exist anymore. That's the point.

Originally Posted by Noct

In any case Parallax is was made Hal Jordan who he is in my mind. I know many wont understand it --mostly if you are generation Geoff Johns rebirth or have like 40+ yeas old, but thats how i see it.

Hey, I'm 35 and Hal was a hero to me for years before falling. I was 14 when he went bad and already an avid collector and reader.

[Espronceda]

You have to understand those of us who are Hal fans were upset because not only did turn him into a villain but it also destroyed the Corps, Guy became that weird hybrid, and John got probably the worse deal (if memory serves me he lost his ring and ended up with the Darkstars and then in a wheelchair). So that whole nonsensical story not only dragged Hal through the mud but the other two Earth Lanterns got screwed in order to create yet another one in the mold of a 90's Everyman in the style of Peter Parker.

Another thing that upset people is the fact that it didn't make sense story wise. Hal's family and Carol didn't die during the attack of Coast City. I can see him being hurt that he couldn't stopped the destruction but not to the point of snapping (he doesn't have that unhealthy emotional attachment that Batman has with Gotham).

He also was a very matured character by them. The whole Vol. 3 run has shown us a grownup Hal. If you remember he had become a mentor to a new crop of recruits, he had come to terms with a lot of things and he was top dog among the Earth Green Lanterns. He was the game that would have answer that African American old man from Hard Traveling Heroes, I've been doing a lot for all colors every time I've saved Earth, and for beings that are not only humanoids. This more adult Hal wouldn't have bowed his head in shame.

The other thing to remember is that the issues previous to the Emerald Twilight story (i.e. those with Green Arrow) he had come to terms with what happened. There were no signs that he was mentally unstable and that he was going to snapped, there's was no logical motivation for him to do so.

The whole debacle was a poorly constructed story that was editorially mandated to turn Hal into a villain, destroyed the Corps and get Guy and John out of the way for the benefit of another Earth Lantern to happened to be an 90's stereotype.

We can trash Geoff Johns all we want and as a writer he has quite a lot of flaws, but he did what he could with what was given to him. I know people who were upset about Parallax being the "space bug" that possessed Hal, but if you think about it, story wise, there was no logical explanation for Hal to snapped like that.

Anyway, the Corps is back, Guy and John are back, and deservedly so, and Hal is once again in his rightful place as the Greatest Green Lantern of All! At this point all I can ask for is for a better creative team and no crossovers for a while...

[Sylent_Asassin]

Originally Posted by Espronceda

We can trash Geoff Johns all we want and as a writer he has quite a lot of flaws, but he did what he could with what was given to him. I know people who were upset about Parallax being the "space bug" that possessed Hal, but if you think about it, story wise, there was no logical explanation for Hal to snapped like that.

Yeah, there was reason for him to be plenty upset with the destruction of Coast City and the Guardians not letting him use the ring to rebuild it, but to become insensed, battle his own corps bretheren, defeat them, take their rings and leave them floating in space for dead was a head scratcher that made no sense. Then, for the Guardians to employ Sinestro, their worst enemy, to take on Hal... There just wasn't enough of a set-up for this. It could have been great with the proper prelude.

[Mister Ed]

The inclusion of Sinestro was just for the "kewl" factor. It made zero sense, and seemed to me to have been done simply because somebody thought the climactic battle should be between Hal and Sinestro, and logic be damned.

[Sylent_Asassin]

To me, the whole thing screamed, "Green Lantern isn't selling, so we need to shake things up!" ...and shake things up, they did. They wrecked Hal and his legacy (for the time being), and killed the Guardians and Sinestro.

[Mister Ed]

The thing that used to get me (and only stopped bugging me because it stopped getting mentioned so often) was that they had all the Guardians kill themselves, for no readily apparent reason, then afterward kept saying that Hal actually killed them, so many times that I think it became an official retcon. After a while I found myself wishing Hal really HAD killed them, so that at least it was consistent (and even though Hal being able to kill a bunch of Guardians was implausible, it would still have been more logical than them killing themselves).

[mrumsey]

I always felt that a truer representation of how Hal would have reacted to the destruction of Coast City was played out in the "Super Seven" Elseworlds story that took place in the Annuals in 1994. Hal as a grave digger giving the bodies of those who perished a respectful final resting place.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Mister Ed

The thing that used to get me (and only stopped bugging me because it stopped getting mentioned so often) was that they had all the Guardians kill themselves, for no readily apparent reason, then afterward kept saying that Hal actually killed them, so many times that I think it became an official retcon. After a while I found myself wishing Hal really HAD killed them, so that at least it was consistent (and even though Hal being able to kill a bunch of Guardians was implausible, it would still have been more logical than them killing themselves).

Though to be fair... short of Hal going around sending out leaflets, no one is going to know what really happened on Oa at the end of Emerald Twilight beyond "Hal went crazy... and then suddenly there was no more Central Power Battery and no more Guardians." So, of course people would assume that Hal killed them, even if that's not true.

[Mister Ed]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Though to be fair... short of Hal going around sending out leaflets, no one is going to know what really happened on Oa at the end of Emerald Twilight beyond "Hal went crazy... and then suddenly there was no more Central Power Battery and no more Guardians." So, of course people would assume that Hal killed them, even if that's not true.

Yeah, you're right that in universe it would be a logical assumption (though I suppose Ganthet could correct it if he chose, even if nobody trusted Hal's recounting). It seemed like it was being taken as a given that it actually happened that way even by creators in interviews and stuff like that, too, though. That's what led me to the idea, eventually, that it had essentially been retconned in that he really did kill the Guardians. (I have a vague notion that even Hal started talking like he killed them...though your point could apply there, too. Hal just knew that when he went in the battery the Guardians were alive, and when next saw them they were dead, so he could well have assumed that he killed them, too.)

[CaptainFrxz]

I have something for this.

[Rotten2thecorps]

As someone who likes the idea of Parallax and loed seeing him have constructs of the victums of Coast City rip henshaw apart.(seriously like the coolest moment in comics). Parallax was built on week 90's shock stories. Goeff has proven that anyone can be Parallax,that like Ion before it,it is just kinda a tool,not a character.

That said let's not hold the child responsable for the sins of the father. Though Kyle and Parallax where born from bad ideas,that dose not mean they can't be re worked a little to be relevant,now.Given the right creative teams. I can think of a few neat stories I would love to read,way more then what Venditti has been offering us.

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

Well you have Sinestro as the current Parallax so you should be MIGHTY happy.

[Rotten2thecorps]

I like him with it. But he has not done anything amazing with it yet. I doubt he will after Convergence. It would have been cool if Hal Parallax would have shown up to fight Sinestro when Goeff made him Green Lantern again. That could have been a neat story.