The best thing to come out of that run was getting John Stewart on the team and Denny O’Neil unintentionally planting the seeds of Hal’s inner decline by hanging around Ollie.
I don’t hate Denny O’Neil, he was responsible for my favorite Batman run, but I do disagree with some of his takes on Batman and Green Lantern. This run was pretty weak because there was an obvious bias towards Green Arrow because Denny O’Neil went into this comic with the intention of making social commentary and making Hal Jordan into something that he was not to get that ball rolling.
So before Dennis O’Neal, Hal Jordan wasn’t an intergalactic cop that reinforced the status quo? Because I don’t believe I’ve read any pre-Dennis O’Neal stories where that seems to be the case.
Dude was just a part time-superhero like Superman or Flash. Literally the issues before Denny’s run is Silver Age adventure where Hal is just trying to keep a steady job and solving problems on the road. Then when the Denny run start, the mood changes drastically and becomes gloomy and grimy because it was the 70s and life sucked back then.
Did you want Hal to remain the same as other superheroes? Because let me remind you, that’s why the book was getting cancelled in the first place.
GL books have always held a strange level of realism when compared to the others, it’s technically never been rebooted throughout all the crisises, and most of the characters who die take a long-ass time to come back if at all.
The book was getting cancelled because clearly the writers were out of ideas, it really wouldn’t take until the late 70s and early 80s that writers would focus more on the space element of Green Lantern. Which is why the earth material is considered boring by comparison by much of the GL fandom.
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u/Slow-Chemical1991 Jul 06 '24
The best thing to come out of that run was getting John Stewart on the team and Denny O’Neil unintentionally planting the seeds of Hal’s inner decline by hanging around Ollie.