The Green Lantern Season 2 #8. What the actual heck?

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

I am so ready for Morrison to be off this title.

Making things needlessly convoluted, and weird for weirdness sake, is just not my cup of tea.

Also, I'm trying to remember when we last saw Sinestro before Morrison, to figure out if his use here makes ANY sense given what came before.

And I'm beyond caring to know anything about Sinestro's sex life. I mean, it was surprising that he had a daughter and apparently loved Abin Sur's sister (guess that was part of an attempt to make him seem more relatable? That he could actually care about anybody else? Seemed out of character.). And now he's apparently into some kind of pain-intensive relationship with the anti-matter version of Hal? Ugh.

[jhpace1 Green Lantern Initiate Find all posts View Profile Close jhpace1]

I hate reverse-writing. It started with Zantanna the tuxedo'ed witch/entertainer, and spread to Bart in Young Justice, etc. But it's a cheap trick. And I don't want to read my comic book or graphic novel with a pencil and paper to translate the reverse-speak. The same goes for "right to left mirror" pages vs. normal left-to-right in American publications.

[IonFan Forum Member Find all posts View Profile Close IonFan]

lol i was gonna give this one a shot cause war and GL are like my thing (bad art be d@mned ) but then i tried to read it and D@MN

wtf DC, WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

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

So, I havent had the interest to read new comics for a while, but I've been picking them up at the shop to not screw my local store. I've just let them pile up for a bit. This weekend I plowed through the last few issues of Far Sector and #8 and 9 of the Morrison run.

I couldnt even get through them. Just terrible and unreadable. I had to skim along to get to the end and couldnt file them away in my GL longboxes fast enough. Morrison was entertaining me quite a bit on his GL run for a while, but he's officially lost me amd my interest. Time for this run to wrap up and file Green Lantern away in the mothballs with the rest of the DC characters when AT&T turns the lights off.

Yikes. What a sh#tshow.

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

Morrison has not helped his reputation with this.

To paraphrase Casey Stengel, "Can't anybody here write this comic?" Damn, it shouldn't be so difficult to do. Green Lantern is a straightforward concept, folks.

Let me give Morrison some credit. He saw that what Geoff had done with it needed to go, very badly, and he knocked all that stuff in the head. Good for him. But then he made it about Hal on tour through the universe.

Nope. Just put Hal back on Earth with his supporting cast. Knock the ring constructs in the head and put Hal on Earth. And of course keep Geoff's approach knocked in the head too.

If that doesn't work, you can change it. But it'll work.

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

Let me add something about Hal. He's just not so fascinating that he can carry a comic as the sole character. There are a few fanboys who will run out and buy anything that's about Hal, but there aren't many.

For a long time DC put a big effort into making people think of Hal as "the greatest." But most readers don't want a daddy. If DC had put an equal effort onto making him "the most interesting," they might have seen a payoff from it.

Hal needs some other characters around him, and not just goofy space aliens or one-shot super-heroes from Earth. He needs some regular people around him. He needs a supporting cast. On Earth.

And not regular people who creepy assed comics writers will slaughter in grotesque ways the first chance they get. I mean regular people who are permanent cast members. And who are as interesting as Hal ought to be.

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

Here's some more credit I'll give Morrison. He realized that Hal alone was a bad idea, and he tried to fix that by making it a team-up comic. But putting Hal and a rotating co-star in outer space was still too weak in terms of the human factor.

Hal is a colorless character, and if you try to make him more colorful, his fanboys will throw wild, screaming hissy fits. What you do with a leading man like that is to surround him with colorful supporting characters. And, as I said, not just with goofy space aliens. Hal needs PEOPLE around him who will do off-center things he can't do. Morrison wanted to write Mystery in Space starring Hal and call it Green Lantern, and that just wasn't going to work.

Yes, the execution of this comic was poor. But I don't think a good result was possible from this premise, regardless of the execution.

Maybe there's an upside to this though. Sometimes people just have to be shown that what they wanted to see was a bad idea.

[jhpace1 Green Lantern Initiate Find all posts View Profile Close jhpace1]

Hal is a colorless character, and if you try to make him more colorful, his fanboys will throw wild, screaming hissy fits. What you do with a leading man like that is to surround him with colorful supporting characters. And, as I said, not just with goofy space aliens. Hal needs PEOPLE around him who will do off-center things he can't do. Morrison wanted to write Mystery in Space starring Hal and call it Green Lantern, and that just wasn't going to work.

By George, I think he's got it! (Now to convince the DC editors.)

The strength of the GLC was always aliens with different skills, talents, and abilities coming together in the old GLC comics. This "no GL may aid another" garbage was something brought in after Recharge. Half the GLC stories was about how Hal, as a new human in the Corps, brought different ways of defeating Sinestro that worked. That's gone from today's stories in lieu of showing diversity amongst humans, down to their skin color and other factors, rather than using aliens for that diversity.

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

By George, I think he's got it! (Now to convince the DC editors.)

The strength of the GLC was always aliens with different skills, talents, and abilities coming together in the old GLC comics. This "no GL may aid another" garbage was something brought in after Recharge. Half the GLC stories was about how Hal, as a new human in the Corps, brought different ways of defeating Sinestro that worked. That's gone from today's stories in lieu of showing diversity amongst humans, down to their skin color and other factors, rather than using aliens for that diversity.

Hal needs to be based on Earth, with a supporting cast of people, not of other Lanterns. And not Cowgirl or any of Geoff's bullshit. All the way back to the beginning, with Carol, Tom and Carl.

"Diversity among Earth Lanterns" was a terrible idea, because where does it stop? We don't have anyone in the Corps yet from the world's two largest populations, China and India, so how are we going to keep them out?

Furthermore, if you put an Indian in there and no Pakistani, you'll insult Pakistan. It's a huge country, with 212 million people. There are only 40 million African-Americans vs. 212 Pakistanis, so if you have an African-American in the Corps, you have to have a Pakistani too, don't you?

You want diversity? You think that's going to sell your comics? Your market research has told you that? Then put it in the supporting cast. Everything doesn't have to happen in outer space, and everyone doesn't need to have super-powers. Don't demote your existing stars and assume without evidence that you'll thrive by doing so.

And later for Sinestro. Who finds him fascinating? I have no idea. He looks like those old caricatures of Satan. He makes me laugh.

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

If I wrote a reboot of GL, I'd put Sinestro in the first story but would never use him again. Geoff thought Sinestro was the bee's knees, but he also thought Larfleeze, Baz and Cruz were the bee's knees.

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

There's really a great rogue's gallery over the years. They don't need to invent new ones for a long time. But, yeah, Sinestro should be used sparingly.