Geek_Boy

Classic case of the writer and artist having different intentions. The old Marvel method failed them since all signs pointed to "mercilessly slaughtered," but one line of dialogue makes it all okay.

Kinda like how we knock people unconscious with swords in City of Heroes.

Except that makes no sense.

Again, I point out that not a single member of his supporting cast was in Coast City when it blew up and Hal never bothered to go see them even though he knew they were alive. If your hometown suddenly disappeared off the map and you found out that all your friends and family had survived, woudln't you go running to see them so you could grieve together?

Emerald Twilight was bad and dumb. Showing it to be bad and dumb seems to involve a lot of examples from within the Green Lantern mythos, the publishing history of DC Comics, basic psychology, and a slew of other sources of information and perspective. Defending seems to involve grasping at straws.

Resurrecting someone and then killing yourself is a pretty direct action, don't you think?

Yeah, the Guardians have always been dicks, but that was just dumb.

The sole reason the Guardians were all killed off (except for the one with the pony tail - I'm surprised he didn't have a goatee, too) was to put future writers into a corner where they couldn't just magically bring the Corps back. That's the only reason Kilowog died, too. The fewer living Corps members, the fewer possibilities of just rebooting the whole thing. It was another 90's X-TREEEEEME decision to not just change the status quo, but CHANGE IT FOREVAAAAR!!!!!!! Marz continued the trend in his monthly GL book, which it took me probably 50 issues of to realize I just didn't like it and didn't have to keep buying it in hopes it would improve.

Hal was never, ever a navel gazing type who would sit in the ruins of Coast City and hold a teddy bear and go "boo hoo." This is a guy who would immediately beat Mongul down (check), then stop whoever was responsible (check), then see who else needed their ***** kicked for messing with his home town. Assuming there were no ***** remaining, he'd start searching for survivors. Hal should have been at Carol's door the second the Cyborg went down. He should have been checking up on Tom Kalmaku and his family. He should have been at his brothers' houses. After his family and friends were known to be safe, he'd get started on rebuilding.

He was never a guy for much rumination. Sure, he'd had some self-pity over the years (which had actually been shown as an alien presence [not Parallax] influencing him and undermining his confidence just a few issues before this whole thing went down), but that had been left behind and recognized as bad characterization that was best left forgotten.

In ET, Hal just went "Oh woe is me" and then flew off to kill one of his best friends and undermine everything he'd done in the last 15 or so years of his life (assuming comic-time, not publishing time). He never even checked on his friends and family. The word "Carol" didn't even show up in his little pity party monologue.

Oh, and Hal pretty clearly killed those other Lanterns in ET. It was only future writers who tried to explain that away.

Um, Hal's father died in an airplane crash when he was a little boy. He lost a brother in he Spectre series, but that's his only family member that's died in the last 20 years or so that I can think of.

Emerald Twilight was dumb when I read it as it came out and it's even dumber now. I've perused most of the Green Lantern books that have ever been published at one time or another and it's right up there with the dumbest things that have ever been done with the franchise. Dumber than Itty, even. Dumber than a badass test pilot selling toys. Dumber than G'Nort. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.

The franchise has never been in better hands than it is right now.

Oh, my girlfriend who I have never mentioned before in the 30+ years I've been around and has never been mentioned since and was never even seen in the background of a panel in so much as an filler issue is dead. I think I'll kill my best friends and destroy the universe.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I find that most people who ***** about Parallax haven't actually read all of the books leading up to him coming into existence (or in many cases, anything but the first issue of Rebirth). Not a single member of Hal's supporting cast was killed when Coast City was destroyed. Literally zero. No ex-girlfriends we'd ever heard of before, not his family, not Tom, not even Ch'pp (though he died in GL: Mosaic, which is still one of my favorite comics ever).

The best part is that the last storyline before Emerald Twilight was a story about Hal exorcising some evil influence that had been holding him back for years. Then in in the next issue, we have a Return of Superman crossover and he goes crazy.

Hal as Parallax never made even the tiniest bit of sense. Ever.

Combine that with Ron Marz not being a very good writer (despite coming up with a fantastic character in Kyle Rayner) who constantly tried to write future authors into a corner so that they could never bring back the Corps and you get a recipe for "REBOOT, PLEASE."

Little known fact: Gerard Jones (who wrote GL before Emerald Twilight and GL: Mosaic) approached DC about rebooting the GL continuity a la Man of Steel and they flat out turned him down. He wanted to streamline everything and take us back to Hal's first days as a space cop, but they had no interest in doing so. Then the 90's took hold and it became all the rage to make people go crazy/die for no reason and replace them with a new X-TREEEEME version, so they hired Marz to kill off the Corps and start from scratch.

For the record, I don't blame Marz. He was handed a story by editorial and did the best he could with it. I just don't happen to think he's a very good writer.

How this post lead to "As if you're entitled to real conversation after trying to justify that nonsense," I have no idea. How someone saying something that is sexist is sexist, then defending their ability to have an opinion on whether something is sexist or not despite owning a y chromosome, then laughing at someone who is claiming they're denying that sexism exists despite the whole thing starting with pointing out sexist imagery in the first place qualifies as "nonsense" is beyond me.

Again, next up I'll be called a Nazi for pointing out anti-Semitic imagery. Or maybe racist for speaking out against the White Power Movement. Ooo! Ooo! Or maybe I'll be accused of abusing animals because I think Michael Vick is a scumbag!

The only nonsense is anyone taking the internet seriously. As long as negative comments are allowed, I shall be searching it out to giggle at.

AMEN +REP LOLS +1

That's preferable to leaving a comment that the person can actually find apparently, so I guess we're back to the old "90% of posts are unreadable agreements with someone else in the thread" version of the forums.

For the record, if anyone ever does actually take the time to find posters they don't like just to -rep them, then they have already lost at the game we call life.