Martha Thomases: My Green Lantern Problem
If I’m reading their website correctly, DC Entertainment currently publishes three different Green Lantern titles, not counting the animated series tie-in. There is also a Red Lantern comic. The last several company-wide crossovers involved the Green Lantern Corps as major players.
It’s too much.
Don’t get me wrong. I like Green Lantern. I vividly remember when I bought my first copy. I was about eight years old (which would make it 1961, for those of you keeping score), and felt very grown up. I thought Green Lantern, being a science-based character, was much more intellectual than Superman or Batman at the time, with their dog pals and mischievous imps. Hal Jordan wasn’t a millionaire playboy nor an alien. He was a test pilot. He had a job.
A decade later, when Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams took over the title, I was mesmerized. They were using a character (one whom, by this time, I realized didn’t have much to do with science) in a comic book to express a point of view on the world in which I lived. How amazing was that?
By the time my son was reading comics, there were several Green Lanterns. He loved them. He especially liked Green Lantern: Mosaic, which featured John Stewart trying to assist a world that had a variety of intelligent life forms, immigrants from dozens of worlds. It seemed like a metaphor for life in New York, but I don’t know if that’s why he liked it so much.
I guess I’m trying to say that Green Lantern is a concept that different people, at different stages of their lives, can enjoy. A man (or woman) with a strong will, and a ring that can manifest that will, is a wonderful vehicle for imagination. With the introduction of the idea of the Green Lantern Corps, 3600 strong, each patrolling a different sector of the universe, the reader can see how different personalities affect the way the ring works. Some shoot green rays, some make green weapons, some create helpers. The stories are limited only by the imaginations of the creative teams.
Still, the heart of the stories was Hal Jordan. The supporting cast included fellow Lanterns Guy Gardner, Kyle Rayner, and the previously mentioned John Stewart. Sometimes one of them would replace Hal as the main Lantern for sector 2814 (that is, Earth).
Since the introduction of The New 52 last fall, the cast has expanded quite a bit. There are Lanterns of other colors of the rainbow, representing other emotions. Each color has 3600 champions (except orange, which is avarice, and its ring holder took all the other rings because, you know, avarice). The stories involving these characters, and the Guardians of the Universe who created the Corp, span all three books.
Believe me, I understand that this may be the direction that the creative teams want. They may enjoy having the cosmos as a canvas, and they may think that having different species as characters is a wonderful opportunity to comment on the human condition. If this is the case, I don’t think they’re succeeding.
I can’t keep up with everybody. Even worse, I don’t care.
I want some stories to take place on Earth. I want to see Carol Ferris, and not in her Star Sapphire costume. I want to watch John Stewart as an architect. I want to see how artist Kyle Rayner meets his magazine deadlines. I want to see Guy Gardner with Ice. Even better, I’d like to see story ideas that haven’t happened yet, but that engage me with situations with which I can relate.
I want to see humans. More to the point, I want to see human stories.
SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman, Gone Fishing
SUNDAY: John Ostrander, Friend to the Chickens
It sounds to me like you haven’t even read all these stories that you don’t like. You only know that there are so many because you read the DC website. You said that the New 52 introduced a bunch of stuff that was actually introduced before that.
Maybe you should read the comics before judging them. No, they’re not the exact same stories that they already told 20 years ago (Kyle meeting deadlines, Guy with Ice), but they at least deserve to be judged on their own merits.
Actually, I do read all of them. It seemed to me that I was buying a couple of Green Lantern comics a week,but that seemed excessive so I went to the web site to check my facts. You know, journalism.
I don’t want the same stories as 20 years ago. I can still read those. However, I do want to read stories about characters with whom I can relate, and that is what I find lacking in the current run.
Hal Jordan has been my favorite character since the Superfriends TV show I saw as a kid. I even liked the movie. But I agree, it’s not working for me now. I started reading Green Lantern with Emerald dawn. Loved Mosaic. But for me, the soul of the character is gone. I’m down to just one book and anticipate dropping it soon. For those of you who like the book, Awesome! Keep it going. I’ll be back when it gets a new writer/direction.
I used the New 52 as a great jumping off point for the main reason Martha so succinctly mentioned: “I can’t keep up with everybody. Even worse, I don’t care.”
When the scope of the stories becomes so large that any sense relatability is lost, reading them becomes a chore. I have enough chores.
DC is currently treating all four current Lantern titles as their premier science-fiction line. And I love the cosmic scope of the Lantern series. But I agree there has to be at least one title in that line-up that centers on an Earth-based Lantern. That ought to be the one called “Green Lantern” since the Corps title is clearly the Space War book and the New Guardians is the Team book. Hal’s title needs to be a grounded Coast City superhero series. He can always visit the other titles when appropriate, but being a Spaceman should only be a small part of his title, especially since two other titles feed that need perfectly fine. Balance is what is missing from that family of titles.
That’s what I would like to see. I mean, I don’t like to tell creative teams what to do, and they could surprise me. But they aren’t, so this is what I want.
YES. So much agreement re: stories staying at least somewhat grounded. I like space stories, and Earth stories, but when they get all mixed up together for whatever reason often space seems to take over (because there’s so much freedom for the writers to make things epic, maybe?) and then the whole thing gets way too big and untethered and I become much less interested. Also when comics cross over too much for no good reason (like one character is having parts of his/her story in several ongoing books) I get just plain tired of trying to figure out the reading order, get them all, etc. Guess I’m just a bit linear!