Soooo…
Who is the rightful Green Lantern of space sector 2814?
Hal, Alan, Kyle, John, Jade, Guy, or Abin Sur?
And why?
What they did to Hal was unforgivable. The worst part is taht DC wouldn’t just 'fess up, and spent at least three company-wide x-overs trying to fix it!
Brintg him back or let him die!
For the benefit of non-readers of Green Lantern who wish to broaden their knowledge, could somebody provide some background info to this question, or a link?
I have a dim memory Green Lanterns real name is Kyle something, but they have probably changed the continuity a few dozen times since last time I read the title. Is he still allergic to yellow?
Whether he is really the rightful Green Lantern seems more like a religious question to me. Is John Paul II the rightful pope? Who knows?
aegypt: Th’ upshot was that A) Green Lantern sales were mediocre, B) big “torture the hero” storyarcs were hot (“The Death of Superman”, “The Breaking of Batman('s back)” and C) The editor (who drove Peter David off Aquaman) was an idiot.
In a big crossover about 6 months earlier, Coast City was destroyed. The writer at the time had spent several issues of Hal coming to grips with it. There was some good stuff. But, the big 50th issue was coming up and the (idiot) editor decided to have Hal go insane and kill the entire Green Lantern Corps. The writer at the time refused and the (idiot) editor hired someone who’d script his plot.
The (idiot) editor’s plot involved throwing out 6 months of story (and an ongoing arc), 30-some years of Hal’s character and broke a number of continuity rules (more rings do NOT make a GL more powerful: it’s willpower only). Anyway, in an abysmal 3-issue story arc, Hal goes insane and kills a bunch of the Green Lantern Corps (stealing their rings as he went, so he had about 20 rings), killing the Guardians, and breaking the central power battery in an effort to bring Coast City back from the dead. Why the Guardians didn’t just turn off the rings as they’d done in the past remains a mystery.
Anyway, eventually, Hal’s evil plot (to save lives and rescue people) is defeated and Hal vanishes to become the idiotally named “Parallex” for the Zero-Hour Crossover.
Th’ issue after the arc, the one remaining Guardian shows up on earth and gives an Uber-Ring (no allergy to yellow, doesn’t need to be recharged) to the first bozo he sees. Unfortunately this kid is so dumb that he’s lived in the DC universe and never heard of Green Lanterns, Guardians (even though there’ve been TV specials broadcast from Oa), etc.
Three problems with the new kid (Kyle) at the start:
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He’s got an inferiorty complex. The first 40 issues of his run could be summed up by saying that he ran to every super-hero around snivelling that he needed affirmation (“Am I really and truly a good Green Lantern? Really? Please tell me I am.”)
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Because the ring has no weaknessess, it was too hard to write. So the writer compensated by making Kyle dumb. He couldn’t think his way out of a paper bag and he kept losing the ring. People would steal the ring. People would trick him out of the ring. Validus (IIRC) once got the ring from Kyle. During that period, Kyle could’ve been defeated by a girl-scout with a handful of “magic” beans, if she offered a trade.
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He had/has a godawful bad costume.
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The idiot editor (the writer…um…Marz has commented about this) kept teasing the Hal fans (Next Issue; The RETURN OF THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS! [sub]jes’ foolin’ suckers[/sub]. But seriously folks, Next Issue; The RETURN OF HAL! [sub]madeja look![/sub])
To add insult to injury, the idiot editor, the writer, a number of other DC types and, strangely Peter David, who I respect normally kept misrepresenting the fan’s position. They kept repeating the mantra “You just can’t cope with change! It’s a good thing you weren’t around in the '50s, or you’d be bitching that Barry Allen’s no Jay Garrick!” apparently without realizing that many of us had no problem with a new Green Lantern (we didn’t with Wally taking over for Barry) but we had a huge problem with the trashing of Hal. This smarmy “You just hate change” attitude lead to a lot of the anti-Kyle sentiment
There was a big crossover that totally failed called Zero-Hour where Hal was trying to recreate the Multiverse (while leaving the post-Crisis universe intact (“We can all have what we want! I’m trying to save infinite lives here!”)) For some reason, this pissed everyone off and Green Arrow shot Hal, who just barely survived. The big problem with this crossover is that everyone (pro-Hal and pro-Kyle, were rooting for Hal to win. The heroes resistance to Hal’s scheme to save all the people who died in the Crisis was baffling)
In the next big crossover, Hal died, saving Earth from a Sun-Eater (if he can recreate the multiverse, why did a giant amoeba kill him?). Now Hal’s ghost the new Spectre in a remarkably dull book, given the high level of talent involved.
A while back the writer and the (idiot) editor of GL have left the book and there’s been a new creative team or two and things have improved. I have nothing against Kyle as written now, or as by Grant Morrison ('though the costume is still gawdawful bad) but I still resent the shoddy treatment of Hal.
Tony Isabella had a wonderful idea in an issue of CBG. (This was right befor the Sun-Eater thing). His idea was that the Real Hal has been trapped on Apokolypse all this time (DeSaad: He won’t break! Why can’t I break him?"), and the guy who went insane, etc was Power Ring (a post-Crisis version of the Earth-3 character). He proposed a big crossover where Hal’s rescued, and either dies heroically, or retires due to the injuries suffered, saving Hal’s rep but keeping Kyle as GL. But such was not meant to be.
In one sense the stunt worked. Sales were somewhat better after Kyle. GL had been a very stale book (in terms of sales) for years. Apparently, it’s still one of DC’s better sellers. But at the same time, how much better could sales have been if the (idiot) editor didn’t go out of his way to alienate a huge chunk of fans every time he could? One data point: every time Hal or the GL Corps were on the cover, sales jumped.
I’m not a Kyle hater (outside of the first 40 issues or so). There are possibilities for the character…Grant Morrison and this new guy have explored some. But given his first 40 issues or so, to me the One True Green Lantern will always be Hal.
Fenris
I stopped collecting comics back around the time Kyle became the new Lantern. So he’s still the only Green Lantern? There’s no new corp?
What’s happening with John Stewart? I seem remember he became a Darkstar. Is he still one?
One of the (idiot) editor’s decrees was that there would be only ONE TRUE GREEN LANTERN AND IT’S KYLE, DAMMIT, KYLE!!! because “it’s too confusing to the reader to have multiple people with the same powers.”. (Well, that and the fact that Dennoy O’Neill got tons of $$$ when his now-forgotten “Batman’s new, better than the Joker, dammit! arch-villain” Bane was optioned for a movie. Apparently a lot of writers at the time got the idea that if their version of a character became a hit, they’d get $$$$ too. That also probably had something to do with it)
Therefore, Jade? Depowered. Alan (Golden Age GL) Scott? depowered, repowered with different powers and renamed (Sentinal) repowered with his real powers, but no ring/lantern. GL Corps? Dead or depowered. A character from Legion of Superheroes (Celeste Rockfish) in the middle of a story-arc where she’s accessing green solid energy? Poof no longer has mysterious green force powers, she has been and is a Darkstar. Why? Dunno. Arc was totally forgotten and was probably the last straw that forced the Legion to reboot. Guy Gardener (who was having a really good run with Sinestro’s yellow ring) Poof now an alien shape-changer (Don’t ask me, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either.) Somewhere in here, (may not be this (idiot) editor) John Stewart got crippled. I don’t remember how. Hal in one last act before the space-amoeba killed him de-crippled John .
What’s dumb is that at the exact same time, Mark Waid was happily recreating the Flash “family” during Wally’s best (ahem) run (roughly 64-110 or so). Jay Garrick, Wally, Johnny and Jonnie Quick, Max (Quicksilver) Mercury, Bart (Impulse) Allen, the Tornado Twins, etc were all regularly guest starring and the book was a financial and critical hit. So the idea that “More than one person with the same powers is too confusing” is right out the window.
After a half-dozen teases (The Corps is back—fooledja!) the new team has given into fan pressure and given Jade a power ring so there’s exactly three people who can do the GL thing: Kyle and Jade, plus Alan (“Sentinel”) Scott.
Fenris
Thanks Fenris!
Now I remember why I stopped collecting comics in the first place. 
Ron Marz is so stupid that I would invoke some punitive sodomy if I had half the chance. Yeah, Dooley is stupid too, but Dooley doesn’t write complex moral dilemmas that involve Green Lantern agonizing over if he should chase the villain or rescue a bus full of handicapped children about to be hit by a train. Just to pull the audiences heart strings, the children are all screaming, “Help me! I’m handicapped and lovable and I’m going to get hit by a train!”
I think Kyle went back in time and ran into Hal Jordon or something. It was really stupid.
I think I got some of this story arc when my ex was my current and he was spending his rent money on comic books. Wasn’t the deal that Hal Jordan somehow came forward in time and slipped Kyle a copy of his (Hal’s) ring, which could be used to make duplicates of itself? he gave one to Jade and then took off into space to re-create the GL Corps. He ended up giving a ring to a tyrant or something and all the ring copies were destroyed? I thought Jade’s copy was also destroyed somehow in this mess.
Oh, and may I just add, any fool knows there is one and only one true Green Lantern, and that is Ch’p! “Don’t mess with the furballs.”
It was. It got lost in the ocean or something. But somewhere along the way she got another one. Or her powers back. Or something.
Fenris
Thanks for bringing up that stupid storyline, Fenris. I was almost over the death of Killawog. 
Killawog? The only thing I’ve ever run into with that name is a hamlet in southern New York State between Marathon and Castle Creek (or between Cortland and Binghamton on a smaller-scale map).
And none of this matches Niven’s “Green Lantern Bible”!!
You’re not finding the character because everyone’s spelling his name wrong. It’s Killowog. He’s a vaguely hippo-looking GL, originally a from a herd-race (Gentle Giants of Ganymede-esque), he became a tough-macho drill sergant type in the face of multiple revisions. You can see a picture of him here (he’s the Green Lantern, not the guy in the black jumpsuit.*)
And as much as I like Niven, his “GL Bible” shows that he didn’t do his homework. It would be like doing a Star Trek bible and saying…“OK, first up: let’s say that there’s never been a “warp drive”, no possiblity of interspecies breeding and let’s lose the transporters, 'kay?”. If you throw out the “Origin Story”, huge chunks of the DC Universe are undermined, the most obvious example is the entire Crisis on Infinte Earths thing, which, without the “Origin Story” couldn’t happen (since the “origin story” was the linchpin for it.
Niven’s aversion to mysticism is to be commended, but not in a universe that has Zatanna and the Spectre running around. (It was a neat article, though)
Fenris
*Speaking of the guy in the black jumpsuit, what the heck does the expression “black hand” mean? The character describes his origin as “I’m the black sheep of the Hand family. So I’m the Black Hand, geddit?”. And well, no. I don’t. I’ve heard of black sheep, bad eggs, green thumb, jack of all trades and so on, but I’ve never heard of a “black hand”.
The good news is that on TV, all of the above is ignored.
On Superman, the first time in recent decades taht the GL mythos was shopwn to TV audiences, Kyle was given the ring, but through Hal’s origin (he was chosen when Abin Sur, the previous GL lay dying, instead of given it randomly). The Guardians are alive and the Corps is still active, althpugh the yellow weakness seems to be gone.
More recently, on Cartoon Network’s Justice League, John Stewart (another vetran GL) has the ring. The yellow weakness is gone (or at least not yet commented upon, but I did note the color of the gas that knocked him out in the pilot) but several favorite departed members of the Corps were present at his trial in the latest episode.
Can television influence things in the comics? Two Words: Harley Quinn.
Oh, and Fenris, Stewart was injured while defending Rann from (ahem) Darkseid’s illigitimate son (not Kalibak or Orion), whose name escapes me because he was dumb. He looked like Darkseid in dreds, IIRC.
Unknown if it has anything to do with the origin of the character Black hand, but I believe that “black hand” is slang for the Mafia.
[black hand hijak]
The term 'black hand has been used by, and affiliated with, organized crime in several different cultures/countries. Mainly Japan, the American ‘family’, and several carribean cartels.
[/B.H.H.]
Was theere not an idiot GL in a few Justive League Internations series… I think his name was “Nort”???
what happened to him???
“G’nort” I believe.
What I remember of his rather bizarre origin is that his uncle was made a “Green Lantern” by some fake “Guardians” who looked amazingly like earth clowns. G’nort wanted to be a GL too so his uncle took him to the “Guardians” and they gave him a ring. When the fake Guardians were exposed, I think G’nort was given a real ring by a real GL. While G’nort was almost pure comic relief, I do seem to remember a few moments of true heroism and sacrifice. Presumably he is de-powered along with the rest of the Corps.
I’m not positive at all, but I believe he was butchered in one of Dooley’s periodic “NO ONE CAN TALK ABOUT A GREEN LANTERN EXCEPT KYLE” rages.
Fenris