There’s a popular narrative that’s been going around in the fan community for a while now. It’s this idea that DC hates Hal Jordan, and refuses to use Hal Jordan in any projects across any form of media. And if you just list it all out, it might sound convincing…Hal’s not starring in the Green Lantern comic right now, he hasn’t been part of the Justice League in a long time, he’s not supposed to be in the HBO Max tv show…and when he does show up, it’s in an elseworld mini series where he’s usually some kind of bad guy. But no matter how I look at it, I just can’t agree with this idea that DC is somehow disrespecting the character, or the fans of the character, by choosing not to use him for much right now.
I think it would do everyone a lot of good to get some perspective, so let’s take a look at a handful of fan-favorite characters who’ve each existed for a very different length of time, and see how long it’s actually taken them to come and go from the spotlight, and see what that tells us about DC’s commitment (or lack thereof) to presenting those characters to fans.
Let’s start with my favorite, Jessica Cruz. The Green Lantern Annual that came out in late 2021 was the first time we’ve seen the character get any real focus in what feels to me like a long time…except that feeling is wrong, because I checked the dates. She first showed up in an issue of Justice League, and became a mainstay of that book from 2014 to 2016. The series then reshuffled and renumbered for DC Rebirth, and she stayed on until 2018. At the exact same time, she co-starred in a new Green Lanterns book that also ran from 2016 to 2018. As soon as that series ended, she moved over to Justice League Odyssey, which ran from 2018 to 2020. Jessica Cruz had been used non-stop from the moment she was created in 2014 right through the end of Justice League Odyssey in 2020. There is a gap of almost exactly one year between the end of Odyssey and her Green Lantern Annual. That year is the only time Jessica has been out of the spotlight since 2014, and even then she showed up in some anthologies and Death Metal one-shots. Do I wish my favorite character was still appearing in new stories every month? Of course I do, but I can’t exactly get mad at them for taking a year off after giving us non-stop Jessica stories for seven years.
Let’s look at Kyle Rayner. Green Lantern became his book from 1994 to 2004, at which point it went back to being Hal Jordan’s book, and Kyle moved over to the Green Lantern Corps Recharge mini-series that ran from 2005 to 2006. At the same time, Kyle was appearing in the Rann/Thanagar War mini-series. Then from 2006 to 2007 Kyle starred in the twelve issue ion series, before rejoining the cast of the Green Lantern Corps book from 2007 to 2011. Once that run ended, Green Lantern New Guardians started up, and ran from 2011 to 2015, leading to Omega Men from 2015 to 2016, then becoming part of Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps from 2016 to 2018, and then finally joining the Titans from 2018 to 2019. It may not seem like it, since he got shuffled around a lot, but Kyle was being used pretty much non-stop from 1994 to 2019. That’s a run of nearly 26 years, leading to the character taking a break for the last three years.
Now let’s finally talk about Hal Jordan. Between his first appearance in 1959 and the transition to Kyle Rayner as the main character of the franchise in 1994, there was only one notable time when Hal Jordan stopped being the main character of Green Lantern: when Hal quit the Green Lantern Corps for about two years, from 1984 to 1986, leaving John Stewart (and later Guy Gardner) to take his place until right after Crisis on Infinite Earths ended. Once he came back, it was business as usual until 1994, when Emerald Twilight got rid of Hal and replaced him with Kyle.
…although, to say that they “got rid of” Hal isn’t actually true. The character has a habit of sticking around, even when he’s not the star anymore. That stint in the 1980’s when John took over had a running subplot for Hal Jordan, so you could still follow him even though he wasn’t a Green Lantern anymore. Even the book being canceled can’t keep Hal away…seriously, back in 1972, Green Lantern got canceled, and DC still told Green Lantern stories starring Hal Jordan for several years, in the form of a backup feature in The Flash. If you’re interested, all 22 issues worth of backups are collected in “Showcase Presents: Green Lantern Vol. 5”. But the point is, the lack of a Green Lantern book starring Hal Jordan doesn’t mean the character gets forgotten. During the ten years of Kyle Rayner headlining the franchise, we got several new stories about Hal set in the Silver Age. We also got a time traveling Hal running around in the present who took over Kyle’s book for a few issues to have his own solo adventures. And then we got Hal as the new Spectre, which lasted from 1999 to 2005, including a solo series that ran from 2001 to 2003. And then by 2005 he was back as Green Lantern again, the franchise revolving around him right up through the end of the Grant Morrison run in early 2021.
…which brings us to today. We’re about a year into Hal’s latest break from the spotlight. The current series is focusing on characters like John Stewart, Sojourner Mullein, Simon Baz, and Keli Quintella. The other characters aren’t gone, they’ve all shown up in the current run several times, they’re just not the priority right now. Even still, they do continue pop up when the story calls for it…Hal and Jessica have both come back into focus during a moment in the story where it made sense, and there’s no reason to expect that to stop, or to expect that we won’t see the same from the other characters too. And again, Hal continues to be featured in Elseworld stories like DC vs Vampires and Justice League Last Ride. Hal Jordan still manages to pop up, even when he’s not the star of the book, and then after a while he comes back and is the focus again. Sometimes it takes a few years, but he still always comes back. And that’s the point, really…this cycle is normal. This happens to every Human protagonist of the Green Lantern franchise. They go into heavy use for a while, and then they back off for a while, so other characters can take the spotlight. They all cycle in and out, they always have, and the only difference is how long it takes each of them to do it. Hal Jordan is one of the oldest Green Lantern characters, and he has starred in more issues than every other Human Green Lantern put together…you have absolutely no reason whatsoever to worry about the future of Hal Jordan, or be concerned about what DC thinks about the character. He’s not gone, any more than Jessica or Kyle are gone…he’s just waiting his turn.
…and I imagine a lot of the response to this will be people talking about how none of this would ever happen if there weren’t so many Human Green Lanterns, and how the only Earth Lanterns we need just happen the specific favorites of whoever is writing the angry comment. And to everyone thinking some version of that, I offer one final bit of perspective. Take a look at Showcase #22, published in 1959. Not only is this the first appearance of Hal Jordan, it’s the beginning of Green Lantern being reimagined as a science fiction property. And before the ring even touches Hal’s finger, we’re told that there are many Green Lanterns, that this is a mantle that gets passed down to new members all the time, and Hal is just the next one in line. The Silver Age began by cementing Green Lantern as an identity shared by numerous people, and the creation of Hal Jordan, a legacy character meant to replace both Abin Sur and Alan Scott, was the first step towards ensuring that Green Lantern would never revolve around one single main character. Because that’s what Green Lantern used to be, it used to be all Alan Scott all the time, but then they added Hal Jordan, and with him came the concept of the Green Lantern Corps, and just like that the idea of Green Lantern being one specific person was gone. And that’s a good thing, because even if you don’t personally like many (or any) of the characters who came after Hal, the fact remains that a lot of us might not have become Green Lantern fans without those characters.
Whether you like it or not, the Green Lantern fandom is only as big as it is because of all these characters. There are plenty of people who only like Hal Jordan and couldn’t care less about any other Human Lanterns, just like there are plenty of people who love Kyle Rayner but don’t want to read Hal Jordan stories. Every Green Lantern fan has their favorite characters, and the characters they don’t care about, and if you remove any one of them…if you decide that from now on, there will never be another Hal Jordan book ever again, you’d lose a large chunk of the fanbase and it would do irrevocable damage to Green Lantern as a franchise. Just like how you would completely gut the Green Lantern franchise, and fandom, by making it all Hal Jordan all the time, ensuring that anyone who’s a bigger fan of the other characters would have less reason to buy the book.
Green Lantern fandom is made up of Hal Jordan fans, Kyle Rayner fans, John Stewart fans, Guy Gardner fans, Jessica Cruz fans, Simon Baz fans, Sojourner Mullein fans, Alan Scott fans, Jade fans, Tai Pham fans, fans of the Green Lantern Corps, fans of the Emotional Spectrum, fans who love everything that I just listed, and fans who hate most of it. And you know what? We need all of them. We, as a fanbase, are always going to argue with each other because, just like the characters we love, every single one of us is too a strong-willed for our own good, and we want everyone else to see why our personal favorite is the best. But without every segment of this fanbase continuing to show up and do its part, by talking about Green Lantern or buying Green Lantern or just proving that Green Lantern still means something to us, we would be left with nothing. We’re only strong together. If any one segment of this fanbase was all that was left, even if it was the biggest segment, it wouldn’t be enough to support the franchise, and Green Lantern would be over.
The Green Lantern Corps is an opportunity for the franchise to appeal to a larger audience than any one character ever could. Green Lantern, as an overall brand, has incredibly high potential for growth and expansion because of the Corps, because of the variety of characters, because there’s not one central protagonist that you have to like if you’re going to enjoy Green Lantern.
The characters that make Green Lantern so interesting can be as numerous and diverse as the fans who consume it, and I’m fine with my favorite character taking a break for a couple years if it means that someone else gets to find their own favorite character for the first time. And I know for a fact that my favorite character will be back in the spotlight eventually…worst case senecio is that I just have to wait longer, which isn’t that bad.
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