Anybody remember John destroying a city?

[Mister Ed Horse of a Different Color Find all posts View Profile Close Mister Ed]

I was rereading Cosmic Odyssey the other day (why did I do this? Who knows. My son has been reading my GL collection and just got to it, but that probably wasn't a good reason to subject myself to it), and came across something I'd forgotten.

There was a line, after Xanshi was destroyed, where John is thinking back on it and compares it to some incident where he was responsible for the destruction of a city. Anybody have ANY idea what that's about? I thought I had read pretty much every John Stewart appearance prior to that point, and that doesn't ring any bells. Did the writers just casually toss that in as some kind of half-hearted attempt to make his awful characterization in this mini sound as if it had some basis in something that came before?

[Andrew NDB Shot Caller Find all posts View Profile Close Andrew NDB]

Jeeze... you got me. I suspect it was something around Crisis on Infinite Earths when he was the "main" 2814 GL.

[Space Cop The Dandy Find all posts View Profile Close Space Cop]

Doesn't sound familiar. I wouldn't be surprised if it was unshown backstory.

[Star-Lantern Weaponer of Qward Find all posts View Profile Close Star-Lantern]

I don't recall that line in Cosmic Odyssey.

I'm pretty sure John didn't destroy any cities prior to that.

[HalFingJordan Alpha-Lantern Find all posts View Profile Close HalFingJordan]

Doesn't ring a bell, I'm afraid.

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker Moisture Farmer Find all posts View Profile Close Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

Edit post: found it. JLA #110. John teams up with the JLA to stop the Key who has a bomb he will take out part of a city with. The bomb goes off and John contains the blast so only a few. buildings need to be rebuilt.

[Andrew NDB Shot Caller Find all posts View Profile Close Andrew NDB]

It might be GL Vol. 2, #183... where John Stewart had to deal with a major flood from a busted dam by Major Disaster.

Edit post: found it. JLA #110. John teams up with the JLA to stop the Key who has a bomb he will take out part of a city with. The bomb goes off and John contains the blast so only a few. buildings need to be rebuilt.

Yeah, it's totally that. He rebuilds them all with his ring.

[Mister Ed Horse of a Different Color Find all posts View Profile Close Mister Ed]

I wish I could read that issue. Doesn't sound like a situation where stuff was destroyed because he screwed up, which is what was implied by the line in Cosmic Odyssey.

[Andrew NDB Shot Caller Find all posts View Profile Close Andrew NDB]

[Space Cop The Dandy Find all posts View Profile Close Space Cop]

But in what way is that destruction or a mistake?

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker Moisture Farmer Find all posts View Profile Close Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

To be fair, John never destroyed Xanshi. He only failed to save it. And that story did a hackjob on John's character. It was an idea for the story, and nobody cared that it didn't fit with John's character, let alone Hal's. The only human GL I would begrudgingly see fitting that particular role as written in Cosmic Odyssey by Starlin MIGHT have been Guy Gardner. And even THEN I would have hated it.

[Mister Ed Horse of a Different Color Find all posts View Profile Close Mister Ed]

But in what way is that destruction or a mistake?

Yeah, that sequence doesn't seem to fit the implication given by the line in Cosmic Odyssey. (I really should get around to looking up the exact quote, so you can see what I mean.)

[Star-Lantern Weaponer of Qward Find all posts View Profile Close Star-Lantern]

I know this doesn't add much to the discussion, but I don't think Cosmic Odyssey is a particularly enjoyable story regardless of the Xanshi incident. I think the most notable thing about it is the print quality of the book for when it came out.

Going back to Xanshi, I think that was the beginning of the end for John Stewart in comics. Post-Crisis/Post-Watchmen/Post Dark Knight Returns wrecked him with its "real world" deconstruction approach. Christopher Priest only added fuel to the inferno Cosmic Odyssey set in motion. DC wasn't quite ready to wreck characters like Hal Jordan yet, but more secondary guys like John Stewart were easy pickings (Jason Todd is another example [lol Jim Starlin again]). You can write big shocking stuff that changes a character forever without completely upending the status quo or mythology.

It's kind of amazing that Gerard Jones crafted Mosaic from those ashes, but I still don't think it completely repaired the character. Considering all that happened to John Stewart and how he was handled (getting crippled even after all that other stuff), it's no wonder few people really cared about him until the Justice League cartoon, which basically ignored all the baggage that comics had heaped on him and kept heaping on him. And Dan DiDio and Geoff Johns weren't interested in doing anything for him, so he continued to languish and still pretty much does to this day, IMO.

[Mister Ed Horse of a Different Color Find all posts View Profile Close Mister Ed]

I dunno. I think Mosaic did wonders for the character, and a lot of that was built on the trauma of Xanshi, which is why, as terrible as I think Cosmic Odyssey was, I wouldn't want to completely erase it.

The beginning of the end for John was when Mosaic was cancelled. After that, he was pretty much an afterthought, ignored during ET, shuffled over to Darkstars for a bit, then depowered entirely and crippled. He was brought back with Rebirth, but merely as a supporting player, not anybody who actually got much focus (even later, when he was leading the Corps, it didn't seem like his character got a lot of focus).

[Andrew NDB Shot Caller Find all posts View Profile Close Andrew NDB]

I dunno. I think Mosaic did wonders for the character, and a lot of that was built on the trauma of Xanshi, which is why, as terrible as I think Cosmic Odyssey was, I wouldn't want to completely erase it.

The beginning of the end for John was when Mosaic was cancelled. After that, he was pretty much an afterthought, ignored during ET, shuffled over to Darkstars for a bit, then depowered entirely and crippled. He was brought back with Rebirth, but merely as a supporting player, not anybody who actually got much focus (even later, when he was leading the Corps, it didn't seem like his character got a lot of focus).

And nobody has any idea who John Stewart is. Every writer would completely change his character to suit their idea of what "strong black GL" should be, ignoring his entire history.

Then on top of it all Geoff waltzes in and mutters, "Hey, people like his Marine stuff from dee cartoon, I should retcon that in!" and that becomes like the only thing subsequent writers even focus on.