Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities GREEN LANTERN

The latest annual was enjoyable. No beautiful Sharp art, which has been spectacular, but a fun story without the disjointed Morrison storytelling that some of the issues of this run have been suffering from.

Love the twist ending.

BIG Alan Scott news from the GL 80th Anniversary Issue

I don't think I really like this development.

I don't like it either. If they were going to retcon a gay character into the JSA, why pick the one member who has been most presented as straight, canonically. His romantic relationships with Rose & Thorn and Harlequin and his paternal relationships with Jade and Obsidian are big (and I would argue the most interesting) parts of his personality/history. (Those relationships don't preclude him from being bisexual of course, but then why make him "queer" if they're just going to downplay that aspect of him.)

I feel they should have picked someone that we've seen very little romantic history of (as far as I know) like Doctor Mid-Nite or the Atom, which would have made for a more seamless retcon.

If they needed to make this retcon at all which I, as a gay man, don't feel like they did. It strikes me as DC just trying to ride on the coattails of 'Watchmen' again.

I agree. And I'm saying this as a gay man too. Alternate version of Alan becoming gay: sure. Taking an established character and making him queer without good explanation? Meh.

It worked with Obsidian, because he indeed had troubled relationships with women before - so there was a plausible explanation for it. The one for Iceman, I didn't actually read it, but by all accounts it seemed to have been done well.

The thing is that, assuming they haven't completely screwed up JSA history, Alan is supposed to be over 100 years old in continuity by this point. So it's either a kind of pointless thing where he apparently had something with a guy when in his twenties which has never been brought up or affected his life since, or they have to radically rewrite his entire history, or at least cast it in a new light, which is a terrible idea. Plus it feels like it diminishes Obsidian in some way, but I can't exactly put my finger on why. At least this is my gut reaction to the idea.

I always thought Terry Sloane would be the most obvious candidate if you wanted to reveal a 40s JSAers as having been gay, just based on what we know of them in the GA stories.

now Terry Sloane would have been an inspired choice. The "perfect" man, revealed as gay. And yes, someone who's a bit of a blank slate, in comparison, with regards to his past and personal life!

Even his relationship with gal pal/confidante Wanda Wilson, who is often listed as his "girlfriend", is presented as generally platonic, at least in the Mr. Terrific stories that I've read (which, admittedly, isn't a huge number).

So, what did ya'll think of the last two Hal books by Morrison?

To me, Morrison is hit or miss. Doom Patrol, crushed it. Flash, meh. GL...no. We are left with Hal...what? We've had no real time with him on earth. And it's apparent that DC doesn't really want him back. Why, I can only guess. But, with him now kicked out of his own book for a different character, and a writer of that book that has stated he hates Hal, guessing it might be some time before we get anymore of his story. So, this was, a bit of a let down.

Look, I get it was full of big ideas, and it should have read as a great way to end his run, but to me, it didn't. It seemed...impersonal. It was written as Hal being great, and doing cosmic things, but it's the small, personal relationships that make the character.

And, as I've pretty much hated the "super space cop" run that has been his story for years now, this just seemed a sad exile of an ending rather than a great sendoff.

Wasn't a fan of the art as well. Yup, I'm oldschool, I like clean art. I'm not saying it was bad art, just that it wasn't to my taste.

So, I guess this is it for the foreseeable future. Only other GL i've ever really cared for is Alan, and without a JSA book, don't even get that.

I don't give [REDACTED FOR BEING TOO FOUL] about Hal Jordan, but I looked at these books for the Multiverse stuff and because of the proto-Legion in the form of the United Planets Superwatch.

Liam Sharp's artwork was amazing, though.

I've read the two Morrison "seasons" because Mike gets them, but it almost joined his Transformers books in the pile I don't read. As Sarky said, Sharp's work is great, but Morrison's story pretty much lost me. I think Mike's actually glad it's ending, too, but not about them ditching Hal.

*Next up... I read his Spidey books, where he gets a new outfit...

At the Classic Comics Forum, there's a new thread on "Great writers' missteps". Here's my response...





To me, a jaw-dropping "WTF?" moment from Steve Englehart in the mid-80s that tends to be overlooked, was when he was doing GREEN LANTERN. He got cartoonist & comics historian Fred Hembeck to research the entire history of Carol Ferris, a character who'd been horribly and inconsistently written for decades, in order to "figure out" what made her tick. And in one issue, he did an overview of her history, and, without my actually having read most of those older stories, I assume he did a fairly good job of it.

UNTIL the ending. When, suddenly, out of left field, he decided to reveal that not only was Carol Ferris also Star Saphire (something we'd known for a long time), but, that she was ALSO... The Predator, a character that the previous team, Len Wein & Dave Gibbons had just recently created.

Steve wanted to bring some kind of closure to Hal & Carol's relationship (such as it had been), so he could basically RID Hal of her permanently from then on. But this just made no sense. It was like a case of too much LSD kicking in suddenly, derailing what was otherwise (mostly) a well-intentioned and well-done story, while also insulting Wein & Gibbons in the process.

Several years later... and not long before power-mad editor Kevin Dooley KICKED him right off the series, writer Gerard Jones took aim at that glitch... and FIXED it.

I began to notice more and more instances in long-running comics where one writer would SCREW something over... and then another writer would have to come in and put it right... until, of course, another writer (or in some cases, the same one) would then SCREW things over even worse, until then another writer would come in a fix THAT.

Why don't they just TELL GOOD STORIES, and stop messing with the heroes and their lives and careers? (Because "soap-opera" is easier for lazy writers to do, of course...?? )




The most MIRACULOUS thing the live-action GREEN LANTERN movie did was make Carol Ferris LIKABLE, and completely eliminate, right out of the gate, that stupid Hal-Carol-GL "triangle" that had always been a 5TH-RATE imitation of the Clark-Lois-Superman triangle. I know back in the 50s, DC editors & writers held their target audience in contempt and felt that "kids don't want romance", so every DC girlfriend was a horrid shrew. But kids don't read comics these days, and the over-aged adolescents who do (heh) deserve better.