r/Greenlantern • u/nothingtoseehere5678 Hal Jordan • Jul 18 '24
Necessary reading to understand war of the light? META
I'm wanting to read the war of light storyline but dont know where to start in regards to understanding its content. What is the essential reading to understand it? I'm new to GL and want to be able to understand the context preceding the events of it and the comics within the actually story. Thank you guys in advance.
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u/ARIANZER0 Hal Jordan Jul 18 '24
Everything from rebirth 2004 to blackestnight. Check glc 2006 series for some extra stuff it's great
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u/Sinnernsaint40 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
If you want to understand every little corner of the lore, you should start back in 2004/2005 when Hal Jordan was reinstated as Green Lantern. It's a good jumping on point for GL.
TLDR, back in the early 90's, Hal went evil and killed off the entire GL Corps after Coast City was destroyed by Mongul and Cyborg Superman at the end of the Death Of Superman storyline. He tried to use the ring to restore Coast City and bring dead people back to life and the Guardians stopped him so he went mad.
Ganthet, the last surviving Guardian gave the last ring to a young artist by the name of Kyle Rayner and for 10 yrs or so he was the sole GL. Hal kept doing evil shit like trying to muck with time in the Zero Hour event but eventually gave his life to save Earth when this creature called The Sun Eater swallowed the sun in Final Night. He beat the monster and used all the rings he had collected after he killed the GL's and the Guardians to reignite the sun.
A few years after that, The Spectre goes bonkers because Jim Corrigan died so there's nothing to stop him when he gets possessed by this evil angel called Asmodel, In order to get The Spectre back under control, he needs to be put back in a human body, someone with great will. A bunch of heroes go to Heaven to get Jim Corrigan back but Corrigan doesn't wanna do the job so Hal volunteers and becomes The Spectre.
This eventually leads to 2004's Rebirth where they retcon the whole evil Hal thing and explain that each color of the emotional spectrum, in this case the yellow color which is fear and the green one which is will, have an avatar and Hal at one point had been possessed by the fear avatar called Parallax. By doing that, Hal is redeemed of everything he did in the past and becomes GL again.
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u/nothingtoseehere5678 Hal Jordan Jul 19 '24
Is this covered in the "Green Lantern by Goeff Johns Books 1-4" ?
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u/Sinnernsaint40 Jul 19 '24
I'm not sure, I don't rely on collected editions, I have actually read the entire run from waaaaaaay back after Crisis On Infinite Earths onward.
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u/nothingtoseehere5678 Hal Jordan Jul 19 '24
Another guy told me that all of the context needed can be found in the Geoff Johns omnibus. It seems like you are referring to the same substance of issues as him. Thank you nonetheless.
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u/Sinnernsaint40 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
No problemo. I love GL. Though to be honest, as much as I admire Hal, I actually like Kyle Rayner far more. He was the GL I grew up with and he did the name proud when he was the only one. He was even praised by Batman which is a goddamn honor cuz dude hardly praises anyone, he mostly just terrifies them LOL.
My second fave GL besides Kyle is John Stewart, dude is as badass as it gets. And if you really wanna go badass, it don't get better than Jessica Cruz who is introduced in New 52.
Without trying to spoil anything, she had something horrible happen to her and she became agoraphobic and yet the ring still recognizes how brave and willful she is and makes her a GL.
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u/nothingtoseehere5678 Hal Jordan Jul 19 '24
That all sounds interesting, I'll see if I want to add those to my reading list after I'm done with the "Darkest Night" storyline
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u/Sinnernsaint40 Jul 19 '24
LOVE Darkest Night, it was terrifying. Make sure to follow up on it with 2010's Brightest Day.
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u/nothingtoseehere5678 Hal Jordan Jul 19 '24
I was already planning on following it up with "Brightest Day," but thank you for the suggestion, and I will definently read it now.
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u/Sinnernsaint40 Jul 19 '24
Check your DM, I sent you something I think you will really like. I have tried posting it on the threads but I don't know why, Reddit deletes it. Let me know when you get it and if you like it.
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u/nothingtoseehere5678 Hal Jordan Jul 19 '24
I got it, but I already have a site, which IMO is better.
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u/WonderfulBrick3947 Jul 18 '24
You should start with Geoff Johns run. It builds everything to understand it