He’s still that cocky daredevil pilot, but for the first time in a long time, it feels like life is moving a little fast for him. Geoff Johns wrote Hal as a man without fear, who was eternally led forward by his restless soul and his sense of right and wrong (and invariably to the right place, no less), but after that rollercoaster, Hal seems to want a moment to set his house in order. Venditti’s Hal Jordan is much the same man we’ve come to know since his Rebirth, but there’s a twinge of humanity in him that seems promising. Administrator, rebel, soldier, we meet them all and that’s definitely good, given that this is a big opportunity to be reintroduced to his world. Robert Venditti gives us a look at the little multifaceted emerald that is Hal Jordan. With this in mind, Green Lantern #21 feels like a fresh start. Even Geoff Johns himself seemed upset by the development, penning Green Lantern 61, which criticized Hal for never stopping to be Hal Jordan (I kind of really want to see a comic about Geoff John’s writer and fanboy halves warring with each other for control of DC). Hal is great but he needs his friends and allies. Early Johns Green Lantern was focused on reintroducing Hal to his world and then the Sinestro Corps War set the stage for the War of Light, however once War of the Green Lanterns rolled around and we weren’t distracted by all of the more interesting characters in the other corps the book went into a tail spin. What went wrong? Well, I think that the increasingly fanatical focus on Hal’s superiority was definitely a large factor. Though the reboot seemed poised to deliver a return to glory, it never managed it. Many feel that the book dragged between Sinestro Corps War and Blackest Night, and I felt that it started to fall apart around issue 60. Still (and I realize how much this review has been about what came before, but bear with me for a moment longer), Johns was hardly without fault. Simon Baz is Earth’s fifth Green Lantern, but it seems that Johns took him in the divorce. The Guardians of the Universe became a danger to all of creation, but Oa has a new overseer now. Sinestro was completely revitalized (literally) by Johns’ work, but he’s gone now. Nevertheless, Geoff Johns found a way to channel the energy of those original silver age stories and make Denny O’Neill’s ultimate yes-man into the rebellious flyboy who frequently replaces Wonder Woman in DC’s attempts to market the trinity.īut that time is over. In fact, when Hal returned to headlining his own series he burst onto the scene with silver streaks in his hair. In the Bronze Age, Hal became most famous for his team ups with Green Arrow, playing the by the book cop who was now teamed with a rag-tag social reformer, often learning lessons about what it means to wield power in the course of their adventures. Hal was synonymous with the Silver Age of Comics, but, somewhat unsurprisingly, he didn’t weather its decline with the grace of some other heroes. Originally the product of John Broome and Gil Kane’s revolutionary silver age reboot, Hal Jordan burst onto the scene in Showcase #22, a wonderful issue that holds up much better than many of its peers and predecessors. When Johns got his hands on the franchise, Kyle Rayner was in a period of creative flux, John Stewart was TV’s Green Lantern, and fewer people thought of Hal Jordan as the Green Lantern than possibly ever before. Whether you loved it or hated it, it’s hard to deny the sheer power of Geoff Johns’ nine year run on Green Lantern. Twenty-one months after the reboot, something finally changes in Green Lantern.
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