Well, okay, it's not that simple. After the "One Year Later" gap following Infinite Crisis, we catch up with what Hal's been up to. And Hal's had it pretty crappy. Him, Cowgirl, and an unimportant third pilot went down in hostile territory, and were kept as POW's for about eight months during the year gap. And Hal blames himself for their trauma. Now, unlike most of Peter Parker's unnecessary angst, there's some foundation to this particular guilt trip: Hal never flies with his ring. If he'd had the ring on, he and his partners could have waltzed out of the terrorist camp with no problem. Hindsight is 20/20, and all.
To make matters worse, someone has placed an alien bounty on Jordan's head, and all sorts of bounty hunters are showing up trying to claim it. (Fortunately for Earth, Lobo didn't come calling.) However, it's not a bounty hunter who comes searching for Jordan's scalp; it's a Green Lantern, thought dead at Parallax's hands. Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner trace his path of travel to an empty region of space controlled by the Manhunters.
As you might expect from a mechanical army devoted to wiping out all life, the Manhunter "Warworld" is rather horrific; the Manhunters have a whole collection of long-dead Green Lanterns that weren't as dead as everyone thought. It turns out that the Manhunters had been collecting Green Lanterns over the years, including the so-called "Lost Lanterns", the last few to stand off against Parallax.
But it actually gets quite a bit worse, because it turns out the mysterious Grandmaster of the Manhunters is actually Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman. (Hereafter called just "Cyborg", because "Cyborg Superman" is a tragically lame name.) The Cyborg is a bleak nihilist of a villain, incredibly creepy and generally obsessed with eliminating life, sentience, or some variation thereof. Most of all, though, the immortal Cyborg just wants to die.
Anywho, he's been using the kidnapped Lanterns to power his various Death Machines, but Hal and Guy initiate a jailbreak, and the freed Lanterns nuke Warworld, allowing the Guardians of the Universe to reclaim the Cyborg's now-crippled body.
Back on Earth, Cowgirl's plane goes down again (way to fly there, lady), and she's re-captured. Hal creates an international incident in his frantic search to get her back, going through alien bounty hunters, Russian and Chinese superheroes, and even the Justice League. He frees Cowgirl, and finally finds the person who placed the bounty on him in the first place: Amon Sur, son of Abin Sur.
Amon wants his father's ring, and is totally willing to kill to get it. He also rampages through Edwards AFB to reclaim his father's ship. Hal Jordan and John Stewart are tag-teaming him rather well, until he's found by a strange yellow ring, which welcomes Amon into the "Sinestro Corp." Before he can take advantage of this new weapon, it zaps him back to the Anti-Matter universe for training.
Finally, the Star Sapphire crystal is reactivated, first possessing Carol Ferris, then Cowgirl, in an attempt to get to Hal Jordan. Its creators, the Zamerons, become frustrated when Jordan figures a simple way to outwit the crystal, and decides to take a page from the Guardian's playbook, harnessing the power of the crystal into ring form to channel its energies into a stable weapon that won't warp its bearers' minds.
Really, there are four important events in this run of issues: the Sinestro Corp rings start cropping up, Amon Sur returns to the title, the Lost Lanterns are reintroduced, and the Star Sapphires officially become a corps.
The Sinestro rings are fairly simple foreshadowing, but what's worth noting is that there's almost no indication of the sheer size of the Corps. Of course, now we know that the Sinestro Corp would be created as a mirror of the Green Lantern Corp, with 7200 members; at this point, however, there's not much of a reason to suspect that size of an enemy force. It makes the inevitable reveal all the more daunting.
The Lost Lanterns are going to keep popping up to be a source of conflict for Hal, but with the exception of Lyria, aren't that important as individuals in Johns' run. And since their team will prove to have a mortality rate just slightly lower than the Teen Titans, it's best not to get too attached.
The Zamerons will prove to be smarter than Attrocitus by taking the time to purge all the crazy out of their power-source. With the violet energy of love being on the far end of the color spectrum (as the red light of rage is), it drives its bearers a bit loopy in its pure form. Most of this information, though, won't be placed into proper context until after SCW.
Amon Sur is simultaneously the most and least important part of this run of issues. He, as a character, is a loser. He's a slightly-less shrill version of Superboy Prime, a whiner with very petty goals. He's a nothing character who is somehow incredibly prominent in the title for the next year or so.
This is mainly due to not being useful as a character, but useful as a dramatic device. Immediately, Johns uses Amon for three things: first, Amon brings Abin Sur back to the readers' consciousness. Abin Sur, despite being long-dead, becomes increasingly important in the titles as we approach both Secret Origin and Blackest Night.
Second, Amon's rampage through Edwards AFB effectively ends its use as Area-51. This alone is enough to cement my dislike of Amon; it's one thing to be a lame character, but a lame character who destroys a much-more interesting story device? Sigh.
Finally, Amon is our portal into the Sinestro Corp, both here and in the Tales of the Sinestro Corp tie-in. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a head-scratcher as well. The ring that went to Amon Sur first tried to bond to Batman as a being capable of generating great fear. After he rejects it...the next greatest fearmonger on Earth is Amon Sur? Really? I mean, thankfully, Johns addresses this fallacy in Rage of the Red Lanterns and Blackest Night, but it's still a bit of a stretch just to get the story from point A to point B.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Cyborg is an incredibly cool character who is a bit underutilized. As Hal notes in his internal monologue, there's more than a little similarity between himself and the former Hank Henshaw, even considering their shared history; that's not even looking at the dramatic contrasts of their philosophies on life. But for the most part, these character traits aren't touched again after this arc.
It's really a bit of a frustrating pattern, as I've mentioned before; several villains in Johns' run could be considered dark, twisted versions of Hal Jordan, (including Amon Sur, actually), but this is never picked up on.
With the conclusion of these arcs, Johns is efficiently done building the foundation of Hal Jordan's return. Next time, we finally look at the story that sucked me into this mythos in the first place: Sinestro Corp War!
Well, I thought that was the Cyborg Superman, but he's wearing glasses. He's clearly just Cyborg Clark Kent.
After reading your excellent and thoughtful analyses of the Johns GL stories, I'm increasingly convinced that almost all of this could have been done with Kyle-- he already had the claim to importance within the Corps as the " Torchbearer ", he's been involved in all of the major GL events, but they wouldn't have had to waste all this time trying to give Hal a meaningful presence on Earth. Kyle was already around and didn't need a big reconstruction arc.
ReplyDeleteThings like Hal being held in a Chechnyan prison camp were irrelevant in the big picture, and the Green Lantern concept is pretty useless without the big picture ( see: Kyle's debut, shoe-horning the Green Lantern mythos into a Peter Parker clone ).
I think that Kyle and Guy were reconstructed as well in the sister series Green Lantern Corps, but it isn't as obvious because A)they didn't have as much work to do, having not been dead and gone for a decade, and B) It took place in the context of a larger reconstruction of the Corps, introducing a lot of characters at once. But I don't have the whole GLC relaunch run, so I can't provide a similar analysis.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, I think that Kyle would be inappropriate for Johns' style of storytelling in the GL books. People constantly point out that Hal is a bit of a two-dimensional character even after his return, and there's some validity to that if you compare him to a well-written Batman or Superman. But if you compare Hal Jordan to an action movie hero, (Pick any of the Expendables), he fits right in.
Ultimately, I think that's the approach Johns takes to Jordan, which ironically makes Hal one of the less-developed characters in his own book. Most of the other "New Guardians" are better-developed because they're taken from different archetypes that allow for more interesting character exploration. (Heck, even Larfleeze is getting in on this action, if the latest issue of Green Lantern is any indication.)
Now, Hal Jordan as an action hero might not be to everyone's taste, but I think he works as well as the story he's placed in. For the most part, he's been placed in some pretty entertaining stories.
:)
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