Page 33, Vol. 1, #8

Look. It's not that I actually hate Hal Jordan.

Rather, it's not that I've always hated Hal. I really don't… didn't… whatever. He used to be really interesting.

It's more that Kyle is cool the way Hal used to be cool.

And immediately the hate comes in about how Kyle is nothing like Hal.

Let me explain.

Back when Hal was cool, he used to be arrogant, overconfident, manipulative, and not necessarily as competent as he liked everyone to think he was. Now he's just arrogant and overconfident, and (what's worse) he's right more often than not. Whatta joik.

The immediate argument brought up (because comic geeks are notorious for not caring what your complete argument is because you've said something they can interpret as a logical fallacy), is that Kyle is few of these things. Except less often successful and a little too hasty on the planning thing. See? Nothing like Hal.

But what made Hal cool was not that he was super confident or manipulative. But that he was OVERconfident, and rushed into things before he had them thought out, which sometimes results in dramatic successes (like his first adventure on Oa), and often resulted in headaches and more attempts (like his first adventure on meeting another Green Lantern).

Kyle, of course thinks that he's thought things through. He's got a very different perspective on the hero thing. He used to idolize them and draw about them, but he never thought he was a hero before he got the ring. Hal was a test pilot. If he wasn't doing the macho hero thing, he thought the world had it in for him. So Kyle, if anything is underconfident. He thinks he's thought up a plan, but he just doesn't know enough about what's coming to do well, resulting in his failures.

Which is the other similarity. Kyle, even after the years since the Parallax affair, is still learning. You can actually see his progress, though. Hal, on the other hand, if anything, reverts to his old selfish ways (yes, he was, he used his ring to get a girl… if that's not selfish, nothing is). He thinks he knows it all and the world just hates him and his life is awful because of it… I mean, who hasn't tried to destroy the entire universe, right?

Hal still has the potential to be interesting, but after 40 years of hardly changing at all, it's hard to read him, and that's why it really, really sucks that he's replaced just about everything Kyle did. A repentant, humble Hal would be really cool. A Hal who felt bad about what he did. Who didn't resent that he wasn't trusted.

As is, he's just kind of a jerk. Maybe I have a misperception. But that's how he comes across. We already had that guy. I mean, if there was one character we didn't need to duplicate it was Guy Gardner (yeah, I like him, he's got his reason for being a jerk, reasons that don't involve escaping responsibility, but we don't need another one). Give me something else.

In the mean time, can we please treat Kyle right instead of sending him off to be little Ion boy in a title that won't interest anyone?

Discuss it in our forums.

Written by SaintEhlers on December 08th, 2005