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

I still have to read that! Thanks for the reminder, EDE.

I remember it being enjoyable, though the story was stretched super-thin over however many issues it was.

That does seem to happen a lot in modern comics, unfortunately.

I'll keep my expectations realistic.

That sums up the appeal of the Silver Age Lantern in a beautifully succinct way. Thanks, Drake.

So, in a way, the Green Lantern mythos has come full circle, with Hal (presumably) back to being the only spotlighted Lantern (I didn't follow the Lantern books regularly for several years, so anybody's free to elaborate and/or make corrections.) Moreover, this recently launched Hal-centric series (on it's 3rd issue, I think; I only bought the 1st, I'll get to that shortly) is written by none other than Grant Morrison, the sometimes great (IMHO hit and miss) proselytizer of the Silver Age DCU's special kind of creative magic.

But let's not forget that Morrison is now 58 going on 59 years old, and very few superhero writers manage to sustain their sincere enthusiasm for the genre. The word I'd choose for Morrison's GL is "tired." Morrison once dreamed of being a rock star, so to stretch that metaphor, he's now in his Summer Sheds Oldies Circuit phase, going through the motions on his stale old tropes -- a gross-out joke here, a bit of cosmic fancifulness there.

I will admit I was impressed with GL #1 at first shine. And a lot of that has to do with Liam Sharp. Funny how, back in the heady early-mid 90s days of my first years as an avid superhero reader, Sharp seemed like the epitome of absurd Image Founder Style excess. I never could have predicted that he would mature into the heir apparent of the Al Williamson/Frank Frazetta school of hyper-detailed yet dynamic sci-fi/fantasy stylings. Good for him! Now I just hope GL is a stepping stone to a project *worthy* of Sharp's late-blooming talent!

Soooooo I have been a HUGE Grant Morrison fan. This run is... not amazing or huge. I think he's really sticking to the police procedural view of GL. I agree that his voice does seem "tired."



The art IS fantastic

I took a peek at a couple of these, and they looked more Jaded than you'd get if Alan Scott's kid was starring in it. Echoes of Morrison Past and the art is the strongest point. Shame, as early Morrison could at least be relied on to pinch from new sources rather than retread his own work. It's was just a skim, so it may read a lot better in full.

It doesn’t feel so much “tired” to me as “mismatched.” I think he was right that GL has been huge spectacle for so long that it needed to go the opposite direction. It’s just a shame he didn’t realize he was the wrong person to do that.

I'm biased from the start. I fuckin' hate the police procedural stuff and I hate that he's been in space for over 15 years now to try to drub up Kyle and John and all those other GL's from earth.

That said, it's good for what it is.

I just hate what it is.

Really fuckin' hate it.

While not as passionate as Rick, I'm also a little cold on police procedurals (Top Ten was another book I recognised the quality of, but couldn't get into). I'm also still not sold on Hall Jordan. He's always been boring to me, and when he's not boring, he's a macho asshole. Morrison's kept him out of the asshole category, but he's still boring.
Now, despite those two factors working against it, I still dig the fun concepts and satire (the bit about humanity willing to sell out future generations for immediate gain was gold). I'm willing to let it play out, because I think he's going somewhere interesting, but it certainly isn't in the stratosphere of other Morrison works by any stretch.

Edit: actually, on thinking more on it, I would warm to procedural if it was either Katar Hol or Adam Strange, so maybe my hangup really is Jordan.

A Katar Hol police procedural in space sounds like a brilliant idea!

Latest issue suffers from some serious "Morrison Muddle", which is what I term the times when the narrative breaks down in service of the idea and it becomes unclear what actually happened between panels. So far he and Sharp have been fairly in sync, but the end sequence needed to be tighter and give the reader more.

I skipped through a friend's copy of this today. I didn't find it as muddled as the previous issue I'd looked at. There's a certain acceleration of plot in the last third. it goes from a personal duel to the imminent death of a universe very quickly. there's some merit in shaping the book as the events within it race towards an unforeseen climax. Other books have done it with both story, and particularly art. Here, it's too uneven. Morrison has a lot of dialogue and one cast member looks to escape before she needs to in the plot. The timing of certain characters arrivals is also forced.

So, instead of a breathless escalation to the finale, it comes across as Morrison realising that he hasn't left enough room to fit in the steps needed to reach his pre arranged cliff hanger.

Remembering who the character is on the final pages (only thanks to Who's Who: Don't leave home without it.), I do think what's going on has been set up well enough in the preceding couple of pages.

Bit if you want someone connected to green visiting Rann for an adventure with Adam Strange, get yourself the Alan Moore Swamp Thing issues. this doesn't come close on any level, even the big science reveals.

Has it really ben an entire decade since I stopped buying comics regularly (due to lack of money)? I guess so.

Well, my best friend's been sending me custom DVD compilations of comics-related TV shows & movies, and one of those I saw a couple weeks ago I wanted to comment on.

I recently watched not one but two different "GREEN LANTERN" movies. The live-action one, and the cartoon done some time earlier (if I'm vague, it's only because my best friend sent me these on a DVD and I don't know the dates).

While not claiming to be an expert on the series, I read enough and saw enough incompetence and chaos on the part of so many editors and writers that all the way back in the 90s I did a 40-page feature on it for the KLORDNY apa, lambasting how bad it too often was. I've seen great runs, interspersed by many more really horrible runs.

Well, in my view... BOTH of these movies got the series BETTER than it had EVER been in any of the comics. They're so different from each other, it'd be difficult to say which might be better or not. However, I told my best friend, although the cartoon focused 98% on the GL Corps, which, MAYBE, is the way it always should have been... I was actually MORE impressed with the live-action film. Why? Because, while it gave almost equal attention to both sides of Hal Jordan's schizophrenic life (Earth and space), the EARTH scenes really impressed the living hell out of me.

That movie, which has inexplicably caught uncalled-for hell, managed to take the part of Hal's life that has almost NEVER been done right, even from the very beginning... and FINALLY, "done it right". I mean, they EVEN made Carol Ferris likable, for God's sake!! That's an astounding achievement!

As a result, I consider the live-action GL film to be one of the VERY BEST DC Comics superhero films EVER MADE.

It's one of those instances where, wherever they made changes, they were right to do so.

So I'm pottering around town this morning and as a last stop I pop into the DVD place. Lo and behold, if that's not a Green Lantern movie willing itself off of the shelf. Thinking of the prof's post...

I'm not really fussed about superhero movies, as I'm sure I've mentioned. I don't dislike them but they don't much for me. I only recall two things about the Green Lantern film. That the colour on all the ads was terribly overbright, showing up the CGI. Secondly, that it tanked.

I thought it was fine. I saw an extended version, so I don't know what got lost in the cinema. As the prof said, it balanced the Earth/ Space stuff nicely. It connected the origins of a few characters together, as is the movie way, and that all worked very well too. Hal got a nice personal arc across the movie, although Carol could have got one too. A subplot showing her relationship with her father would have strengthened something that was a theme throughout.

If anything, the editing could have been improved, although the pacing might have been a little off with what was available. One of the earlier scenes reappeared as flashbacks later on, which was unnecessary in that by doing so, the opening could have been changed. The pacing against the Big Bad, and the nature of its threat, could really have been amped up. For a release, that would have meant tightening up the pacing of the Earth scenes a bit more. Even just thinking along these lines, means that it was worth putting the thought into, which is a plus. Another plus was the casting, that allowed a lighter touch to a number of scenes, without being too obvious about it.

But overall, it did what it set out to do. I remember thinking that Suicide Squad had just spend 90 mins fighting their way up a single street and one building. Justice League seemed to be a rather dull extended combat against a minion, sacrificing a movie as a set up to something else. This was much better than both of those.

It's funny, my friend sent me around a dozen DVDs with a pile of stuff on them, and he saved the GL disc for last.

I recall thinking the coming attraction looked good, so I was baffled when the film bombed (I don't enter into the equation, I hardly go to ANY movies these days!).

At the beginning, Carol was as tight-A***** as usual. DC in the late 50s and on were aiming their books at KIDS, and young boys generally do NOT "like" girls, so most DC "girlfriends" back then were the kind of girls that just make boys want to AVOID girls.

So I was pleasantly surprised-- if not outright shocked-- that she turned out to be a decent person as the film progressed. And frankly, ELIMINATING the whole Hal-Carol-GL "triangle" (which was always a really BAD variation on Clark-Lois-Superman) by halfway in may have been the best thing they did. This was not a Hal who ever had to decide, should be be a pilot or a space cop. This was a guy who, instead, was struggling with internal self-doubt problems, and managed to overcome them.

I also LOVED that they ditched the "training module" thing and replaced it with what Hal actually does-- giving a fighter jet a TEST-FLIGHT, and in front of government types.

Shortly after seeing the film, I read a lengthy criticism of it, and I had to admit there were a lot of valid points about editing, pacing, and the order the story was told in. But all of that somehow seemed inconsequential to me, compared to what they managed to do RIGHT.

I mean, as a retelling of Hal's origin, this blew EMERALD DAWN completely out of the water.

My best friend and I both agreed there was only part of the movie we hated-- THE EPILOGUE. Clearly meant to set up a sequel they never made (in my view, ALWAYS a bad idea), after everything that preceded it, it seemed to come out of NOWHERE.

The earlier animated film, GREEN LANTERN: FIRST FLIGHT, which ditched Earth after the first 5 minutes and spent nearly its entire running time in space, showed a Sinestro who was devious, self-serving and plotting against the Guardians right from the beginning. (I waited a whole week between watching these films, so the cartoon wouldn't completely undercut the impact of the live-action fim on me. Seriously, HOW MANY completely-conflicting versions of some characters do we have to have?)

I am reviving this thread due to recent conversations in the Legion: Millennium thread. I am developing a Glossary/Index of DCU species, so I have been deep in Green Lantern history as so many species have been created in and for those titles.

There have been a lot of Earth Green Lanterns. The main reason, until recent history, is because of sales. As popular as Hal Jordan is, the main reason DC introduced new Green Lanterns pre-John's retcon is because of low sales.

In universe, they have justified it with substance abuse issues and being mind-controlled by alien parasites. Therefore, even though Hal Jordan is extremely popular with a segment of fans, he is not the fittest Green Lantern in my opinion. That is why the Guardians have replaced him multiple times. Now, this does not easily explain why post Johns recton why there are five or more active Earth based Green Lanterns. In real life, I think it is because Green Lantern is the easiest title to add diversity to because of it's nature (around 3600 species, many of them not humanoid).

I seem to remember that at one point in some era of DC Continuity (maybe in COIE?), it's mentioned that Earth is of particular cosmic significance, so that might explain why it would need extra protection.

Though I believe it was also stated at one point that Earth was never supposed to have any GLs, since the Guardians knew it would we well protected by native super-beings.

My first reaction was to say that most of the Earth GLs were appointed during one of Jordan's absences and once a GL always a GL, but then I thought of the most recent two and that kind of thumped that on the head.

Alien view:"Pitiful little isolated planet that a ridiculous number of extraordinary things seem to happen to. It is almost like the Universe is being written just for the planet's inhabitants! Ha! What a crazy concept!"

According to the Guardian and Zamoranan that created the 'New Guardians' back in 1988, mankind was fated to evolve into the Oan Guardians replacement.
Thus the creation of the 'New Guardians' who were intended to be the ultimate ancestors of this future super-race.
Also explanation for many Green Lanters on Earth.

But I think we all just want to forget that series, right?

I have heard that there are things going on in the Green Lantern book which contradict the Superman line of books? I know 'Everything is Canon' so it is doesn't matter, but it could cause problems if the writers ever switch books.

Conversely, I have also heard that

Well, following any GDS parallels, and there was a hint that things would fall apart at some point; a happiness based person weilding an artefact of power, that could be siphoned, isn't going to last long.

The fate character is also new and also has an artefact of power. That might end badly too.

I'm just picturing a situation where Hal becomes incapacitated... and some alien of Kilowog's species turns up as the "new" Green Lantern of this sector.

And I'm imagining how Earth people would react to that.

"Your planet is acting in VIOLATION of our interplanetary laws. Stop at once-- or suffer the consequences."


Oh wait a minute... Robert Wise already made that movie!

You cannot be trusted, humans. I will now introduce you to the trinity of Lanterns who will protect sector 2814: Klaatu, Barada and Nikto.

There is a "Golden Lantern" in the latest "The Green Lantern" who was a Don Quixote type of character who saw his role as Guardian of the Cosmic Grail and was holding various Green Lanterns in stasis, until they were needed to fight in the impending Multiversal Crisis. Whether that will have *anything at all* to do with this new Gold Lantern is anyone's guess.