Betrayed by Green Lantern

I've been needing a pick-me-up recently, so I picked up my Green Lantern comic collection, and started reading through it, as a prelude to buying the trades of the most recent issues which I hear are really good. You can imagine my dismay as I read through them and find I don't like them at all. I still like the character, the costume design, the powers, the universe, but the stories that I have are just awful. I've read good superhero comics and these aren't them. I'm through 60 issues now, and there's been maybe 3 that were tolerable. It's been fairly horrifying for me, and I must share the pain.



This is from the Emerald Twilight trade where Hal Jordan goes crazy and destroys the Corps. The first issue is not great, it's a depiction of him going crazy after his home city is destroyed, and it's not a great read but mostly tolerable, but it has this odd moment (shown above) where Hal is talking to an illusion of his first girlfriend, and for some inexplicable reason, while wearing tights that leave nothing to the imagination mind you, talks to her casually while thrusting his groin into her hands, as you can see. This is probably the worst of it, but the Hal Jordan stuff I have is full of hokey and weird moments like this. And the story writing is terrible. Just awful.



Enter Kyle Raynor. I remember liking him. So again I find myself horrified at his issues. He's awful. He's stupid and sexist and not interesting. The author makes a valiant stab at trying to make it a more character driven series, but good lord does he miss the mark. I'm really starting to like character driven stories, but this writer just does not pull it off. And then I get to scenes like the one above and just want to start banging my head against a wall. I suppose there is inherent humor value in giving a guy a power ring that responds to his imagination, and having it accidentally generate sexual imagery, but that's not really what they do. And reading the above just made me go "Ick" and immediately dislike the character. I suppose it might have been tolerable if the dialogue, plotting, villains, and characters were in any way compelling, but they're not. I mean, shortly after this issue he fights a tiger in a zoo and nearly LOSES. Deep sigh.

Anyway, I think the truth is, I'm just not who I was when I bought these comics when I was younger. I'm going to finish reading these and keep the issues that I might actually consider reading again, but I think the rest I'm going to sell. And thinking over most of my collection, I think I'm going to sell a lot of that too. Of course, I'm really lazy about it, if any of my real life friends want to sell them for me, I'll split the proceeds 50/50. In any case, it is liberating and disturbing to find that so much of the crap I lug around I flat out don't like anymore. But losing Green Lantern, man that hurts.