How do you Rank the Series?

[sundrop Fatality's Blacksmith Find all posts View Profile Close sundrop]

How do you rank the eight comic book series, in order of your most favorite to least favorite?

I'll start:

#1 - Series 4: Johns
#2 - Series 2: Classic
#3 - Series 5: New 52
#4 - Series 7: Morrison
#5 - Series 3: Kyle
#6 - Series 6
#7 - Series 8

Series 4: just had the best art ever to me, a blend of realism and amazing color, and the stories were really imaginative with epic plotlines. Basically if you can pull off long plotlines, I'm sold!

Series 2: is the most fun series to read especially towards the end, and I love anything with Tales of the GLC

Series 5: At one point they had SIX GL comic titles running at once! GL, GLC, New Guardians, Red Lanterns, Larfleeze, Sinestro! 7 if you count Animated GL

Series 7: confusing to read, might make more sense if you read it backwards. But that's part of the charm, very imaginative and alien

Series 3: I just never clicked with this one, maybe the coloring makes me nauseous, and the mishmash of random addon comics is not fun to collect, tho I do like Kyle as a GL

Series 6: pointless, helps series 7 come off as an improvement

Series 8: havent read enough to make full judgement, it may rise out of this spot, the art in issue 1 was excellent

unknown:

Series 1: golden age with alan scott from 1940s, don't even have one issue of this so who knows

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

I can confidently say 2, 3, 4 are top favorite, but after that, I really don't know. I have read the first hard-cover collection of Alan Scott, so however much of vol. 1 that is (1/3 or 1/2?).

[Trey Strain Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Trey Strain]

My favorite runs are Steve Englehart and the first two years of Gerard Jones, before Kevin Dooley took over as editor.

However that fits in.

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

My favorite runs are Steve Englehart and the first two years of Gerard Jones, before Kevin Dooley took over as editor.

However that fits in.

Same.

So, for me, it goes:

Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4

After that, I'm honestly pretty indifferent or just didn't generally enjoy the content. I've only read a little of Alan's adventures in Volume 1. Volume 5 is just a poor man's continuation of Volume 4. Like the whole thing was just going on for too long and using the same tropes too much. Rise of the Third Army, Wrath of the First Lantern, whatever that Relic story was called...what was it again? Oh yeah! Lights Out wasn't it? None of those are good stories and at that point, that type of formula had lost its novelty.

I can't keep track of which volume is which by that point. Comics just started relaunching way too much for me to do that, so from this point on, I'll just discuss runs.

Aside from "Renegade", Venditti was just doing Geoff Johns-lite stories with less character bias. The same can be said of what was going on in the "Green Lanterns" title, except it stars characters I don't like and that I feel are totally superfluous. I had no desire to ever see anything involving First Lantern again.

The Morrison run was an interesting change of pace, and I think a change of pace was desperately needed. I just didn't particularly enjoy his vision, and near the end, it completely collapsed into non-caring self-indulgent masturbatory storytelling.

The Geoffrey Thorne run is absolutely atrocious...I'll just leave things there, even though I could go on and on and on about why.

I realize the bulk of this post is very negative. Later on, I'll see about posting more about the runs and volumes that I actually do like.

[Trey Strain Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Trey Strain]

When a new writer takes over, I wish i could point to that Englehart-Jones stretch, grab the writer by the throat and say, "Just do THAT, damn it!"

[Emerald Enthusiast Sinestro's Sparring Partner Find all posts View Profile Close Emerald Enthusiast]

I'll do my top 5:

Vol 3, 48-181. This is my all-time favorite comics run because it was nearly perfect until the end.

Vol 4- GL 1-67- It lead Hal to new heights of relevance and introduced Blackest Night, my all-time favorite crossover.

Green Lantern Corps Vol 2- There were several outstanding arcs here like the Dark Side of Green, Sins of the Star Sapphire, and Ring Quest.

Green Lantern : New Guardians: I'd almost put this at #3 since Kyle becoming the White Lantern is one of my favorite events for him. The first 20 issues of this are amazing.

Hal Jordan & The Green Lantern Corps- It doesn't get the credit that it deserves, but Venditti did an excellent job of developing the brotherhood of the Four Corpsmen. Their mantra is still one of my favorite comic book quotes.

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

...Hal Jordan & The Green Lantern Corps- It doesn't get the credit that it deserves, but Venditti did an excellent job of developing the brotherhood of the Four Corpsmen. Their mantra is still one of my favorite comic book quotes.

What mantra? IDR.

[Emerald Enthusiast Sinestro's Sparring Partner Find all posts View Profile Close Emerald Enthusiast]

What mantra? IDR.

There's four legs on a table. Four walls on a house. And four seats in a Mustang GT. We're the four Corpsmen.

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

There's four legs on a table. Four walls on a house. And four seats in a Mustang GT. We're the four Corpsmen.

That is good. Forgot about it. That was when they did the Four Horsemen comparisons too?

[Trey Strain Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Trey Strain]

When you create a television series, you have to write what's called a series bible. It's what all the writers are required to read and abide by. Otherwise you'll have people writing all kinds of stuff that conflicts with what's come before or that strays too far from the concept that got the studio interested in the series.

That's what each comic needs. A series bible. Unlike television, it's possible for one comics writer to write every story for a long time, and with no bible, he tends to go astray.

What Englehart and Jones did could easily be described in a title bible, and thus more or less reproduced by other writers, the way it's done on television. What most writers have done with Green Lantern couldn't be summarized that way, because their work been more about their idiosyncrasies than about the title.

[Trey Strain Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Trey Strain]

If a writer didn't create a title, he should be allowed to remain on it for a maximum of one year. Then he should be required to step away from it for a minimum of one year.

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

One thing I do like about Englehart and Jones is that the franchise seemed to be expanded at just the right spot to be manageable and realistically facilitate all its characters and support more than one title.

Hal could still hang out with the Ferris Air crew, Guy could be bothering everyone and doing his own thing, and John could either hang out with the GLC (Ch'p, Salaak, Kilowog, Katma, etc...) or do something like Mosaic. Alan and other GLC characters could show up in Quarterly adventures. And they could all pull together whenever the story needed it. All of that was feasible. Now, there are SO MANY of these redundant characters that I think EVERYONE gets lost in the mix, and a lot of things that made the franchise cool are totally forgotten. I like that the Jones and Englehart periods still resembled and built upon what John Broome and Gil Kane established as opposed to something like Volume 4, which added a lot of things that worked well for the audience at the time, but I think it was getting too far away from the original vision and becoming something else. Or the later period of Volume 3, which, while interesting, junked a lot of the stuff and contracted.

[Trey Strain Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Trey Strain]

I agree with that. The writers could handle everything in one title. Now there's no way everything can be handled in one title, yet the market will long-term support only one.

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

1. Volume 2 (1960 to 1988)
2. Volume 4 (post Rebirth era)
3. Volume 3 (1990 to 2004)
4. Volume 5 (nU52 era)


I dont have all 38 of the originals or reprints to volume 1 for Alan Scott's series so I cant honestly rank it fairly. But I'm sure I would enjoy the rest of it far more than I did Thorne's horrendous volume 6.

There have been some solid spin off and satellite GL titles. Tomasi's work on GLC with Patrick Gleason was tits and ice cream. One of my favorite times as a GL fan. Guy Gardner Emerald Warrior was only a 13 issue run but decent. John Stewart's 18 issue run in Mosaic is underrated and underappreciated.