The fancy covers were $3.99 at the time, which seems almost reasonable now; but I have picked up a bunch of them on the cheap in the years since, sometimes with the lenticular covers, sometimes the plain. Huh, I didn't think I had read the
G.I. Zombie one, and there it is,
top of the pile. But, here's a
Future's End issue I maybe hadn't read before. Maybe. From 2014,
Green Lantern: Future's End #1, "The Next Life" Written by Robert Venditti, art by Aaron Lopresti and Martín Cóccolo.
Although this was ostensibly in the, duh, future; despite a TV annoucement about Green Arrow Day and a new female GA, it still felt like the current, present-set books. Hal was still Green Lantern, and looked about as young as he did in his regular comic--no
grey hair or anything. This might have been to contrast him with the ghost of his dad Martin Jordan, who appears, and apologizes for dying in a jet crash right in front of Hal as a kid. He had been brought back as a Black Lantern by Krona, although he and some former deceased GL's had been able to resist a bit. (I'm not sure how Ghost Dad knows about microbrews, though. I also figure Michelob is probably the fanciest beer Hal chugs...) Hal is reluctant to leave earth, since there had apparently been a big war or some such, that he had completely missed while doing space crap on some planet he couldn't even remember the name of. Still, he of course suits up to help his dad, and knows exactly who he was going to call in as back-up: Relic!...Relic? He was a fairly recent addition, having done the Galactus-thing of surviving the previous universe to get to this one; and while not particularly a friend, he was against Krona.
Since Relic spent all his time poking and studying the Source Wall, the fight gets started there. An old pro, Hal already knew how to defeat Black Lanterns: they had to be hit by two colors at the same time, and Relic had "reflectors" that could throw out the works. That works pretty well, until Krona disrupts Relic's tech, and Hal gets swamped by Black Lantern zombies. Hal tells Relic to launch his reflectors with whatever power they had left, and destroys Krona and most of the Black Lanterns in a "lightshow," but is mortally wounded. With the Black Ring contained, Relic finds it interesting that the "uncorrupted" dead Green Lanterns and Martin remain; while Martin yells at Relic to help his son. Relic wasn't a doctor, and didn't super-care, but he could stick Hal in the Source Wall, where he maybe could be retrieved someday. Martin sadly lowers him onto the wall, saying it wasn't Hal's time yet, as he turns to stone, cold and unchanging.
I felt like the art could've aged Hal up even a little, but they might have been making a point about him? Does Hal never change? We won't blog it right this second, but I also have handy the
Green Lantern Corps: Future's End issue, where John Stewart seems to shift from Marine Corps superhero to burnout space hippie.
3 comments:
Huh. Since when have jet-jockeys become beer snobs? By that line of thinking, his dad would’ve been against moonshine & making your own PJ🤷♂️
To your point though, this DEFINITELY feels like subtle commentary on the nature of certain comic book characters never being allowed to evolve or change. But that’s the nature of these kinds of classic characters; they can’t because most of us don’t want them to.
Well, we kind of learned our lesson about classic characters changing or being replaced in the 90’s, Hal being one of the prime examples. Though that really ended up not helping either- maybe the lesson is that catering to an increasingly small demographic is a bit of a quagmire.
I’m not so sure that particular lesson was learned, but at least the drive to replace certain iconic characters/character roles has slowed down considerably.
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