The All New State Your Opinion on a DC Character Thread

See, I view it as an awesome idea.

The fall of a hero. And Hal Jordan is not a hero who is easy to make fall from a symbolic point of view. His strength is the power of will, and his is an indomitable will.

So how do you make a hero fall when his strength is pretty much boundless?

You subvert that will against those that gave him his power in the first place... The only way to make him fall is to twist that indomitable will, and turn it against the wishes of the Guardians he serves.

Then Johns in all his f***wittery tore down all the symbolic beauty of that years later by retconning it all away and destroying any hopes for character development and growth and earning back trust after throwing it all away.

I don't view it the same as The Dark Knight Returns... because TDKR is an amazing symbolic story which neglects character and doesn't really have any place in regular continuity. Emerald Twilight could have been a pivotal moment in the life of a rise-fall-redeem storyline, and then it was just all written away by a fanboy knob-end who essentially writes fan fiction.
 
I get it. I really do, but the thing is in the space of 30 pages a perfecly normal Hal Jordan goes insane, kills the corps, the guardians, Sinestro... Hell, even Friggin' Kilowog! Then becomes a grinning, cackling supervillain: "Parallax".
And all of this happens without even a HINT of forshadowing!
Emerald Twilight is like, the biggest comicbook "WTF moment" in a decade full of them. Nothing makes any sense! A completely irrational slap in the face to a beloved fictional character... And his fans.
And the terrible decisions didn't stop there! A couple years later they actually killed him off in Final Night!

One thing I'll say about Geoff Johns: He may have gone off the boil lately but I'll always be completely grateful to him for bringing Hal back to us.
 
Exactly, the execution of it was poor. The idea itself was sound, but they rushed the madness. The reason behind his madness was acceptable but the pacing of how it was handled sucked.
 
Why did Hal go so darn crazy in it anyway

next
get ready to do the Electric Boogaloo!
it's

LIVEWIRE

359285-195561-livewire_super.jpg


come on !she tosses lightning!I like lightning tossers... and in latex and thigh high boots too!!! oh mama! I am there!( even if that cut is a bit butch looking):cwink:

Hawt lady with short blue hair dressed in black latex and thigh high boots

Naturally I dig her :atp:
 
City got blowed up by Mongol and Cyborg Superman.

She aight'. Could be used better. Not enough chick electrical villains......Conspirazee!!!! :argh:
 
One thing I'll say about Geoff Johns: He may have gone off the boil lately but I'll always be completely grateful to him for bringing Hal back to us.

I disagree there. Johns' retcon was pretty bad, and came off as the fix fic of a whiny fanboy.
 
I disagree there. Johns' retcon was pretty bad, and came off as the fix fic of a whiny fanboy.

See, I absolutely love GL:Rebirth. In the space of 176 pages, Johns takes a beaten up, largely irrelevant franchise, one that had long since ran out of ideas and rebuilt it as the most exciting series' DC had.
His Green Lantern work, it's... well, it's pretty masterfully done.
 
See, I absolutely love GL:Rebirth. In the space of 176 pages, Johns takes a beaten up, largely irrelevant franchise, one that had long since ran out of ideas and rebuilt it as the most exciting series' DC had.
His Green Lantern work, it's... well, it's pretty masterfully done.

Except the Parallax retcon was pretty weak and the emotional spectrum is a ridiculous and stupid idea.
 
Except the Parallax retcon was pretty weak and the emotional spectrum is a ridiculous and stupid idea.

Well, that's totally subjective. I know a lot of people who'd completely disagree. What Johns did with Parallax makes much more sense than Hal just all of a sudden becoming a cackling, homicidal lunatic in like, five seconds.
In fact, I'm surprised it took someone as long as ten years to think of the Possession Angle as a way out of the cluster**** that was Emerald Twilight.

Out of curiosity, why do you think the emotional spectrum is a ridiculous and stupid idea?
 
City got blowed up by Mongol and Cyborg Superman.

She aight'. Could be used better. Not enough chick electrical villains......Conspirazee!!!! :argh:

It's sexism!

Lady villains have just as much right to electrical powers as the guys do :argh:
 
Well, that's totally subjective. I know a lot of people who'd completely disagree. What Johns did with Parallax makes much more sense than Hal just all of a sudden becoming a cackling, homicidal lunatic in like, five seconds.
In fact, I'm surprised it took someone as long as ten years to think of the Possession Angle as a way out of the cluster**** that was Emerald Twilight.

It may have made more sense in light of Emerald Twilight being ten issues too short, but it still was a shoe horned retcon that invalidated pretty much all of the character stuff Hal went through after ET. The story in of itself isn't bad, but in context it just makes Johns seem like a *****ey fanboy who only wants people to play with his toys on his rules.

Out of curiosity, why do you think the emotional spectrum is a ridiculous and stupid idea?

1: It humanized the GLC too much. One thing Green Lantern's usually been pretty good at was portraying aliens as actually being alien. You had the blind Green Lantern who called himself the F-Sharp Bell. You had Mogo, and GLs who were sentient viruses and math equations. The series recognized that life could develop in a way that wouldn't share the same experiences with us. But the emotional spectrum is based on the color spectrum that humans can see and emotions humans can feel. It doesn't acknowledge that there could be races that have different forms of cognition from us, and it ignores that there are other colors. For instance, X-Ray is a color. We can't see it because our eyes don't work that way, but it's a color. And we do know that there are races in the DCU that can see X-Ray. The entire concept of the Emotional Spectrum is incredibly human-centric in a setting that's supposed to be bigger than that.

2: The spectrum itself doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Why those seven emotions? Why are they the end-all-be-all of human experience? What about sadness? Or boredom? Or hell, happiness? Where the hell is happiness? They're not represented on the spectrum and they're all a big part of my life. Hell, willpower isn't even an emotion at all, it's a trait, but it's on there. And what about people who are really hopeful and really angry? Most people feel a lot of stuff in equal measure, and it shifts depending on the situation. They're can't be easily defined as just "hopeful" or "greedy." I'm reminded of Wonder Woman's commentary on the whole thing, "Life is more than just seven colors."

And then there's the issue with fear. With all of the colors, wether or not you're qualified to be a blue lantern or a green lantern or whatever is dependent on how much of whatever trait it is you have. Blue Lanterns are all really hopeful. Except for yellow. With yellow it's based on how much you make other people afraid. Why? Why is it different just for them? The out-of-universe reason is that the Sinestro Corps are supposed to be the bad guys and spreading fear is evil, but there's no decent in universe justification why they break pattern.

3: It contradicts the mythos of the GLC in a dumb way. Originally, it was always pretty heavily implied that the reason you need to have a lot of willpower to use a power ring is because shaping energy into three dimensional objects to do stuff for you solely with your mind is really hard and takes a lot of concentration. It was never intended to be that the rings are somehow "powered" by will like a battery. And now with the other rings, you have them being "powered" by rage, greed, or an "ability to instill great fear," and basically being able to do what the GL rings do. So they took and explanation as to how the rings work that kind of made sense and made it make less sense. If they made how the various rings work even more distinct, and gave them specific abilities that really only work if you have a lot of a specific trait, with green being the making of Constructs because that requires a lot of will and the powers of the other rings being based on their respective emotions, then it would work better, and they did that a little bit but not enough because most of the rings still just make constructs.

4: And this is I think the most subjective, but it hurts the tone of green lantern. GL always used to have this weird vaguely British 70s space opera feel to it, with weird aliens and locations and social/political allegories and a lot of imagination and wit. The Emotional Spectrum, however, feels a lot more new age sword and sorcery, which is just fine in of itself but clashes really badly with how Green Lantern's supposed to feel.
 
Last edited:
Agreed Question :up:

I dig the Blue Lanterns though

Saint Walker is :awesome:
 
Extremely well thought out points, Question.
But I think it really all depends on every readers individual interpretation of the character. For instance, although I can see what you're getting at with the 70's British thing (at times almost feeling very michael moorcock-ish) I've always thought of green Lantern as embodying the very US ideals of the decade that created him.
"Square-jawed, white american male, test pilot is empowered by an absolute authority to combat threats to the homeland". Also, the space-race parallels are there in spades too.
But even ignoring all of that, although you make a lot of strong points, the botom line is that (imo, of course) the Colour Spectrum and the other Corps are cool.
The last few years have gotten a lot of really good stories out of them and at the end of the day, isn't that why we read these the books?
 
next
Sorry. i apologize in advance.. but we must. no way around it.there was a time when parachute pants,teens carried cardboard and fingerless glove swept the nation!From the fires of vapid fad arose a hero. it's
Vibe
vibe.jpg


VibeIndex.jpg


"I wonder if the jabbawockeez are hiring!"
 
Last edited:
next
Sorry. i apologize in advance.. but we must. no way around it.there was a time when parachute pants,teens carried cardboard and fingerless glove swept the nation!From the fires of vapid fad arose a hero. it's

VibeIndex.jpg


"I wonder if the jabbawockeez are hiring!"

I'm not seeing who it is :huh:
 
what!! whatsamatter with you wolf it's

VIBE

vibe%2Bstands%2Balone.jpg

geez!:cwink:
 
I've actually read very little Vibe stuff. But judging from that picture he looks like someone who enjoys his life. :hehe:
 
He just makes me think of vibrators. :(
 
But even ignoring all of that, although you make a lot of strong points, the botom line is that (imo, of course) the Colour Spectrum and the other Corps are cool.
The last few years have gotten a lot of really good stories out of them and at the end of the day, isn't that why we read these the books?

I guess I just don't see what's good about them. They're kind of stupid, kind of shallow, pretty by-the-numbers predictable in some parts, and not especially fun. And most of the really good stuff, like the higher points of the Sinestro Corps War, could have been done without the emotional spectrum. So I don't see the point of it. I mean, we might have gotten some good stories during the era of the spectrum, but the spectrum's not what made them good.
 
I don't care for the emotional spectrum either.

Vibe? Vibe..........I got nothin'. I don't feel one way or the other about him.
 
Next
Caviar and cigarettes
Well versed in etiquette
Extraordinarily nice

She's a
KILLER FROST
Killer_Frost_003.jpg

Gunpowder, Gelatine
Dynamite with a laser beam
Guaranteed to blow your mind
Anytime!
 
Next
Caviar and cigarettes
Well versed in etiquette
Extraordinarily nice

She's a
KILLER FROST
Killer_Frost_003.jpg

Gunpowder, Gelatine
Dynamite with a laser beam
Guaranteed to blow your mind
Anytime!

I definitely wouldn't mind her icing my drinks. :o
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Staff online

Forum statistics

Threads
202,265
Messages
22,075,716
Members
45,875
Latest member
shanandrews
Back
Top
monitoring_string = "afb8e5d7348ab9e99f73cba908f10802"