If there were a team comic with four Lanterns...

[Trey Strain]

And three of them were Guy, Alan and Jenny, who should the fourth Lantern be?

[Trey Strain]

I should have made Boodikka one of the choices. Not the later, hot one, but the earlier version.

[Mister Ed]

That's an odd choice for the first three. How often has Guy even appeared in the same comic with Alan before? (I'm sure it has happened, but nothing is leaping to mind.) I haven't a clue who the fourth should be without a better idea of what situation put those three together in the first place.

[Trey Strain]

Originally Posted by Mister Ed

That's an odd choice for the first three. How often has Guy even appeared in the same comic with Alan before? (I'm sure it has happened, but nothing is leaping to mind.) I haven't a clue who the fourth should be without a better idea of what situation put those three together in the first place.

You don't assemble a four-character team whose members think the same things. Nobody will want to read that. You need to use four members who have contrasting characteristics. Think about the Fantastic Four when Stan Lee was writing it. That's what works.

And you don't really think it would be hard to put those three together, do you? That's a piece of cake.

Example: Alan and Jenny pop up here from 1951, and Ganthet comes to Earth and establishes a bridge between the different kinds of Lanterns.

Or Guy and Alan could encounter each other and just decide to do it on their own. Alan and Jenny need someone to show them around the 21st century.

That Alan and Guy have never met has nothing to do with it, unless you're going to limit yourself to what's already happened. And why would you do that?

Putting the team together is the easiest thing in the world. But it needs a competent writer for the first couple of years to get it up and running. That's where it could go off the rails.

[Mister Ed]

I still think what GL would make most sense for the fourth is influenced by what the actual situation is.

If this is a situation where Alan and Jenny are being incorporated into the GLC out in the wider universe, the fourth could be almost any alien GL.

If it is a situation where they are just on Earth, and run into Guy as part of some situation they are all dealing with, it might make more sense for the fourth to specifically be somebody Guy would call in to help, somebody he trusts and has a good relationship with.

That said, Kilowog might fit the bill for either situation, come to think of it. He and Guy seem to have a decent relationship, so Guy might go to him for assistance, but he also has been cast as a GL Trainer, so he might logically be assigned to try to integrate strange new GLs into the Corps.

[Michael Heide]

Obsidian without a ring. Why would he need one?

[Mister Ed]

The only problem I see with making Obsidian the fourth is that then it feels like you have a Scott family title with Guy just tacked on. If Guy's going to be in there, it seems like the fourth should tie more closely to him than the other two. At least that's how it feels to me.

[Michael Heide]

Shit, that's right. Unless Guy starts dating Jade. But that would be weird.

[Space Cop]

Originally Posted by Michael Heide

Shit, that's right. Unless Guy starts dating Jade. But that would be weird.

He could date Obsidian if it'd make you feel better.

[Trey Strain]

That's why I voted for Arisia. Guy could date her. Then you'd have two natural pairs on the team.

[Michael Heide]

Originally Posted by Space Cop

He could date Obsidian if it'd make you feel better.

I considered that for a hot second, but it really doesn't feel in character with Guy.

[Trey Strain]

With two pairs on the team, nobody is just tacked on.

[Space Cop]

Originally Posted by Trey Strain

That's why I voted for Arisia. Guy could date her. Then you'd have two natural pairs on the team.

I'm still rooting for Hal to get back with Arisia. My favorite Hal pairing.

[Trey Strain]

Originally Posted by Space Cop

I'm still rooting for Hal to get back with Arisia. My favorite Hal pairing.

They need to put Hal back on Earth with Carol. The team comic I'm talking about should take place mainly in space.

[Trey Strain]

Something else -- if they kept the stories reasonably short, they wouldn't have to use all four characters in every story. Two or three characters could appear in some stories. And they could even have a few solo stories of Guy and Alan.

They could also use more than one writer, to keep things fresh.

[JohnMc]

Originally Posted by Trey Strain

That's why I voted for Arisia. Guy could date her. Then you'd have two natural pairs on the team.

If you read the GG:W series you would know why that would be wrong. [Guy thought of her as a little sister]

[Trey Strain]

Originally Posted by JohnMc

If you read the GG:W series you would know why that would be wrong. [Guy thought of her as a little sister]

That was a LONG time ago, and it wasn't set in cement.

[JohnMc]

Originally Posted by Trey Strain

That was a LONG time ago, and it wasn't set in cement.

Guy actually said it at her funeral. Ofcourse that was before Johns decide to masturbate his ego by rendering events non canon that didn't line up with his vision of exonerating Hal [Arisia was apparently captured along with Boodika, Laira, Tomar-Tu,etc instead of them being clearly killed when Hal took their rings in Emerald Twilight] and regressed Guy to being an unlikable asshole because he and Didiot refuse to accept that they grew up.

[Space Cop]

Originally Posted by JohnMc

Guy actually said it at her funeral. Ofcourse that was before Johns decide to masturbate his ego by rendering events non canon that didn't line up with his vision of exonerating Hal [Arisia was apparently captured along with Boodika, Laira, Tomar-Tu,etc instead of them being clearly killed when Hal took their rings in Emerald Twilight] and regressed Guy to being an unlikable asshole because he and Didiot refuse to accept that they grew up.

A lot of that I don't like but Rebirth undoing the volition of Hal as Parallax I will always be grateful for. In my mind, that was just fixing a much worse mistake. If Hal had been what Parallax was in the 90s, he was irredeemable as a superhero. I might be good drama (tragedy), but it's bad for a superhero.

[Michael Heide]

Hal had never been 100% irredeemable, even if Batman sure thought so at the time.
But everything he did, every line he crossed, he meant to undo anyway, first with the power of the Central Battery, later through Zero Hour. To him, those were necessary and reversable steps on the way to the big retcon that Johns later provided.

When they started to move away from that characterization in Parallax View (because editorial didn't allow the original plan of Hal creating a new Silver Age world where everything was like Earth-1 before Crisis), he also started his road to redemption, with major steps being the Final Night Parallax one-shot, the ending to Final Night and then Day of Judgment. Continuing his stint as the Spectre and slowly burning away his own sins would have been a great alternative to Rebirth. But instead, Johns decided to throw out the whole orphanage along with the bathwater.

[Space Cop]

Originally Posted by Michael Heide

...Continuing his stint as the Spectre and slowly burning away his own sins would have been a great alternative to Rebirth. But instead, Johns decided to throw out the whole orphanage along with the bathwater.

Yeah, but there would be no reason to believe that the GotU let alone the rest of the GLC would receive him back as a GL (which is what I really mean by redeemable here*--going back to square one) and that's all I'm interested in for Hal. Sure he showed regret and made contrition, but that wouldn't be sufficient reason to trust him again with universe's most powerful standard-issue weapon.

But, yeah, if Zero Hour had been a full reset presumably he would've reset himself too with no one (including reset Hal) the wiser. That could've worked because the new Hal would essentially be innocent.

*I'm talking working narrative here, not actual morality since, as Christian, redemption is central to my worldview.

[Michael Heide]

Now I want to read a Marz era story in which Ganthet and Hal meld minds and see the world like each other for a day, changing both characters in the process. That would have been cool.

[Mister Ed]

Originally Posted by JohnMc

[Arisia was apparently captured along with Boodika, Laira, Tomar-Tu,etc instead of them being clearly killed when Hal took their rings in Emerald Twilight]

I don't think they were "clearly killed". I mean, Hal even explicitly said in Emerald Twilight that they WEREN'T killed. True, they didn't have much chance of rescue, and if it had been revealed that they DID die (the Legacy HC GN, in fact did reveal that Boodika survived, but Tomar Tu did not, IIRC) that wouldn't have been too strange, but they weren't "clearly killed" in ET.