The Funnies Ain't So Funny Anymore
By
Omri
Issue #7
Lately I’ve been
re-reading some of the story arcs that I haven’t visited for a
while. Those emotional, powerful stories that DC has a habit of
putting out every once in a while. For today’s column, my
random pick was Green Lantern Rebirth, one of these
recently reread miniseries. One of the largest fanboy disputes
out there is the question of who is the better Green Lantern.
This miniseries is a certain fanboy turned writer’s fantasy come
true of re-legitimizing the late Hal Jordan.
Hal was the Earth
GL of the silver age and the early modern age, until he went
insane after the Death of Superman arc, and destroyed his
corps, his superiors and Oa in general. He was very quickly
established as a villain, which was a less than noble way of
replacing him for the modern age. Compared to Barry Allen, the
silver age Flash, Hal left his legacy title with a very
unfavorable light and shrouded in controversy over how he did or
did not deserve to become that. Years passed, and his odd
appearances more and more supported the new persona of Parallax,
his new adopted name. Zero Hour came and went, which
asserted his position as a force to be reckoned with (after all,
he did try and to a certain point succeeded to rewrite the whole
universe from scratch.) But then came The Final Night,
and with his last glimmer of humanity, Parallax sacrificed
himself to reignite our dying sun. A noble hero’s death to a
man who had been so much for the world, but was now only
remembered for his recent actions.
Ok, enough
background history for now. Let’s just fast forward a little to
Day of Judgment, where Hal was chosen as the new host for
the Spectre, as a chance to redeem himself or, as the Spectre
put it, his penance. Batman’s mistrust of him only grew from
here on.
If you ask me,
this seems like a succession of rabid fanboys trying to give
credit or discredit their favorite GL. Once it was time to
replace Hal, DC decided to make him mad over the destruction of
his city. A writer who liked the newly created character of
Kyle Rayner decided to eliminate the competition by making
Parallax a full fledged villain. Another writer later joined
these ranks and made him even worse. Then came a writer of the
other band who liked Hal more than Kyle, so he showed us the Hal
that was still buried inside Parallax. Then the Batman writers
made plenty of comments on how Hal can and could never be
trusted. And then came the redemption as yet another skirmish
in this never-ending tug-of- war. Hal has gone through so much
pulling and pushing that the number of stages he went through in
his evolution almost equals Hawkman’s. At least Hawkman’s were
attempts to fix something broken, whereas whatever state Hal was
in, one of the GL fan camps thought he was in the wrong place,
and went on to change it. Rebirth is just another one of
these attempts. Geoff Johns is a ‘Hal over Kyle’ kind of guy,
and it killed him that Hal did not realize his full potential,
so he decided to change that. But he was smart while at it: he
made sure his reincarnation would have a shield against all the
previous attacks, thereby making all the arguments against him
null, pleading to the case of “it wasn’t me, but someone else in
my body!”
Can’t DC make up
their mind? Well, in a certain way, they already have. It is no
secret that they are in this business to sell books and make
money. Any story that readers would buy is worth publishing.
And for someone as controversial as Hal Jordan, whatever light
is cast on the character, it is a fact that half the GL fans
would buy it. It is simply a question of alternating the good
guy and bad guy stories to appease both sides. But Johns went
beyond that in Rebirth. His story really begins at the
birth of sentient life in the universe, and creates an entity
that feeds on fear called Parallax. This creature was
imprisoned, forgotten, and eventually escaped captivity through
a conduit to Hal’s ring, possessing him in the process. This
particular story is about the internal struggle of the Parallax
creature, Hal Jordan (the normal, sane version), and the spirit
of the Spectre. With one swift stroke, not only had Johns
explained the ring’s age old weakness to the color yellow, but
also claimed that Hal was not in control of his body during all
his actions, and as such does not deserve the scorn directed at
him. Yes, the story is very well written, both structurally,
script-wise, true to the characters, captivating and emotional.
And yes, the art team, led by Van Sciver, is absolutely
stunning. But did such a decisive move have to be done? Many
would claim that yes, as Hal deserves his dues and this finally
clears his name, but the question is a different one. It is
why did the name have to be cleared in the first place? We
have plenty of villains who attempt redemption (Suicide Squad
and Secret Six) some of which even succeed (Flash
rogues, mainly.) But where is the flip side of the coin? Where
are the heroes who turn evil? The closest we got to that was
Terra in the New Teen Titans, but Wolfman revealed her to
be a villain working undercover all along, and not a hero-gone
bad type. The next one was Hal Jordan, who truly went all out,
but the powers to be felt that this was too much, and allowed
his redemption to go through. The current Supergirl is so
interesting exactly because her programming is tugging her to do
bad things, but she fights it. Why can’t we have a truly good
hero turn a complete 180 and stay that way? I truly believe a
series following his exploits could hold its own. Morally
ambiguous, it’d explore his motivations, disillusions, and
document his slow descent into the darkness. Bah, who am I
kidding? A title like that would get pushed to the Wildstorm
imprint immediately after issue 2, or skip Wildstorm
altogether and go directly to the darker Vertigo. DC
proper just can’t have that kind of darkness and ambiguity. In
the last couple of years, a huge push has been made to make
Superman more human, make Batman saner, make Flash more
contemporary and all the team books more effective. This was
done by taking them as low as possible, dragging them down there
in the mud for a while, and only then picking them up and
letting them climb the summit. The ‘darkness’ and ‘immoral’
stage is powerful and necessary, but in the DCU, it is always a
stop along the path, never the destination itself. Personally,
though I liked the story, I absolutely disagree with the
redemption of Hal, but with the DCU in the shape it currently
is, it was inevitable. I blame you, DC, for believing the world
has to be inherently good. For believing that good things can
happen to bad people but bad things to good people are never
permanent (remember – the story of Ralph isn’t over yet!) Stop
twisting impressionable people’s minds with your feel good
tales. Take some gambles once in a while. The Parallax Saga,
the now defunct Lobo and Vigilante titles, and the
recent Lex Luthor- Man of Steel were good stepping stones
in this yet experimental approach. Secret Six bent the
envelope a little more. I think the world is ready for a full
fledged villain book. One written from the bad guy’s
perspective, and where our title character would actually end up
winning for a change. The world is ready - now we sit patiently
and wait…
Cheers,
Omri