#emerald twilight

[incorrect-green-lantern-quotes]

I was rereading Kyle Rayner's origin and it occurred to me that Earth seems surprisingly well-connected to the intergalactic community. Or at least, the heroes of Earth are.

Like, even tho Ganthet tells Kyle jack shit about what happened to the Green Lantern Corps, he finds out pretty quickly. And not even because he went looking for answers or encountered Parallax- Alan Scott breaks into Kyle's apartment (must be a Gothamite thing) to tell him what went down with Hal Jordan.

And yeah there's perfectly good explanations on both the Doylist and Watsonian levels. The readers had seen Hal's grief-fueled descent into madness over the previous three issues. And in-universe there are a bunch of Earth heroes who have ties to space (Superman, Martian Manhunter, Starfire, Adam Strange, the Darkstars, etc.) and the fall of the whole GLC is the sort of news that shakes the entire cosmos.

But I can't help but wonder about a version of Kyle's origin where Earth's status as a "primitive backwater" is played completely straight. A version where Alan doesn't track him down or warn him about Parallax. A version where none of Earth's heroes know what really happened to Hal Jordan or the Green Lanterns, only that he disappeared after Coast City's destruction and that the Corps have gone mysteriously silent.

Imagine if, instead of the Emerald Twilight we got, the 90s Green Lantern comic went straight from Coast City getting blown up to Kyle getting his ass yeeted through a window. The implication being that Hal Jordan was unceremoniously killed off with his city, and has thus been replaced by this new guy.

(This would piss off so many readers and is exactly why it would not be done by any sane comic publisher. Being that I am not a comic publisher and of questionable sanity though...)

Naturally, longtime readers will be questioning whether Hal really is dead, but the comic doesn't immediately answer that. Instead, it focuses on the new kid and his initial attempts at learning how to use the ring. But strangely, there's no mention of Oa or the Corps, save for the flashback to Ganthet in the alleyway. Even if Kyle is aware of other Green Lanterns, none of them show up.

It's only once Kyle meets Superman that the story begins to hint that Hal may not have been the only one missing. Even the Fortress of Solitude doesn't have a direct line to Oa, but the Last Son of Krypton has been around long enough to have some contacts in space and all of them confirmed that the center of the universe has gone dark. So when Superman meets the new Green Lantern, he spends a bit more time trying to get answers about what happened to Hal and the Corps.

Of course Kyle doesn't know anything, but in this version he understands the gravity of the situation quicker and goes out searching for the Green Lanterns much sooner. And it's through his eyes that the readers learn that the Corps is gone.

The Green Lantern comic thus becomes a mystery/horror story as Kyle tries to piece together what happened. He finds out that the entire Corps suddenly lost power not long after Coast City's destruction. The few survivors he meets like Adara aren't able to tell him much more than rumors, but that's enough for Kyle to confirm the timing.

Then, someone begins to hunt Kyle.

An enemy who calls himself Parallax. Whenever he's shown on-panel, he's shrouded in blinding light or intense shadow, so you can't see what he really looks like, only the shape of his armor and cape. He claims to have destroyed the Green Lantern Corps and the Guardians of the Universe, and he wants the last power ring.

It's all that Kyle can do to escape this powerful foe, to flee to Earth to try and enlist the help of more experienced heroes. He tells the Justice League about Parallax and how he has powers just like Green Lantern's. That, and the villain's vendetta against the Corps and the Guardians, sounds all too familiar to those who'd known Hal. The other heroes come to the conclusion that somehow, Sinestro must have escaped his imprisonment within the Central Battery and taken revenge on the Corps.

Oh, how wrong they are. Because when Parallax finally arrives on Earth and they see him clearly for the first time, he comes wearing the face of a beloved friend thought dead.

I've always thought that if DC were to use Kyle as their primary GL for a cinematic universe or TV show, they should adapt his origin to be similar to the Original Trilogy of Star Wars, and this is the "I am your father" moment. Parallax!Hal is pretty obviously Vader, but I think the role of Luke is best split between Kyle (the audience surrogate) and Wally (the personal connection to the villain)

Wally: You're going to pay for what you've done, Sinestro! Parallax: Sinestro? You've got it all wrong, kid. *the blinding aura around Parallax fades, revealing his face* Hal: It's me, Wally. Wally: Uncle Hal? No... no, that's not possible!

[wajjs]

You're Hal Jordan.

Your whole life has been nosediving into a steady decline, but no one seems to notice. You hardly notice yourself, at first.

But then when you hit the accelerator you start to see the truth, and as much as you try to hit the breaks next, everything keeps coming at you faster.

Glory days, they passed you by. You grip onto the steering wheel but it's not answering to you. There was a sign, back then, and now you don't know if you can blame it or if everything is your fault.

When what you've been devoting yourself to for more than half of your life seems to only harbor disappointment, is there anyone but yourself to blame?

Don't rock the boat, they tell you. We were never friends, is a conclusion. I don't need patronizing, you think. I miss you, is what you don't say, not even to yourself.

And then in this steady decline you find that there is still more that you can lose. Your hands and will weren't enough to make it stop. You weren't enough.

Around you, it seems as though everyone is turning their backs on you. No one wants to deal with the mess and, consequently, with you. There are brand new sunny days everywhere but in the crater you're knees deep in.

There are no living beings left here to enjoy a sunny day.

You're Hal Jordan.

You turn around and bite the hand that gave you scraps, starving you in a way it took you too long to notice. Your grief is so big, so great, it doesn't fit within your body and least of all within your mind.

When you snap, you're a monster. There is blood on your hands. You kill your darlings, you kill your mentors, you kill the self you've always been, pummel it to the ground until good old Hal Jordan is nothing but dust.

Your grief is so big that is has turned to soul crushing anger.

You dive into the green, green, green, green. You don't come back twisted.

Another you comes back. A new you. The one from the past died alongside your city.

You're Hal Jordan.

You want to rewrite history. You always wanted to make the universe a better place.

Now you have the power to do it.

[nitewrighter]

The evil done to me has won the day. I understand too well the dreadful act I'm going to commit, but my judgment can't check my anger, and that incites the greatest evils human beings do.

--Euripides, Medea

[cantsayidont]

Honestly, my biggest objection to Hal Jordan becoming a supervillain in "Emerald Twilight" in the '90s was that it was accompanied by another of DC's periodic foolish attempts to eliminate the Green Lantern Corps and its attendant mythology in favor of a single solitary Green Lantern. They'd done that before, more or less, in 1988, when they blew up the Power Battery and de-powered most of the Corps except Hal so that he could become the flagship character of the terrible, short-lived ACTION COMICS WEEKLY anthology.

This didn't take for long — Guy Gardner and G'Nort (!) were exempted from the de-powering because of their popularity in JUSTICE LEAGUE, and Christopher Priest subsequently wrangled a pass for John Stewart (whom DC put through the wringer for no good reason). After ACTION COMICS WEEKLY collapsed, it wasn't that long before DC reversed course and restored the whole Corps.

With "Emerald Twilight," they went further, even de-powering Guy and John in a pointless effort to promote Kyle Rayner, and they stuck with it for longer — although even then, Judd "I Only Have a Career Because I Was on TV With a Poz Guy That One Time" Winick eventually found an excuse to give John Stewart his ring back. By 2002, they had again restored the Corps, which to me was much more significant than whether or not they brought back Hal.

The unavoidable fact is that the main thing, if not the ONLY thing, that makes the modern Green Lantern interesting is that it's a job rather than just a secret identity. Neither Hal Jordan nor Kyle Rayner nor any of the other flagship Green Lanterns have ever been terribly compelling individually. The coolest thing about Hal Jordan, by far, is that his first work friend was a humanoid parrot from another star system …

… and his other work colleagues include sentient geodes, rutabaga, and grasshoppers:

I mean …

[yellowtilltheend]

Emerald Twilight Redraw

“Too bad it had to happen this way.”

[torchbearing]

green lantern #49 / green lantern #63 (1990)

[ufonaut]

Jordan loved the Coast City he knew-- and soon its destruction he'll seek to undo. To blot out this, his darkest hour, he knows that he will need more power. Thus the madness of grief will leave its scars in a swath of destruction he'll cut 'cross the stars.

Deadman: Dead Again (2001) #4

(Steve Vance, M.D. Bright & Rick Burchett)

[themyscirah]

@hal-jordan-events Emerald Twilight Weekend | Day Three: Memory

[thecomicbookbookclub]

He is an icon, he's a legend and he is the moment and the focus of our next meeting: none other than THE Kyle Rayner. We will be reading the downfall of Hall Jordan and introduction of the man who will 'just have to do’ as his replacement by among others writer Ron Marz and artists Darryl Banks and Romeo Tanghal We will discuss it December 2nd!

New members are always welcome so feel free to join our book club meetings or the other events in our discord server!   

[splooosh]

“My will is stronger”

Romeo Tanghal - Dennis Cramer

[incorrect-green-lantern-quotes]

do you ever think about what it was like for the Green Lantern Corps during Emerald Twilight? I try not to do it too much because when I do I wanna punch holes in the wall and cry

Hal fights at least eight of his fellow Green Lanterns on his way to Oa. Some of them, like Boodikka and Kreon, he'd personally recruited to the Corps. All of them, he strips of their rings and leave them floating in the void. Geoff Johns might've brought them back as the Lost Lanterns, but before that retcon, there was no way for them to have survived.

How many other Green Lanterns died like that when Parallax destroyed the Central Battery? Their rings suddenly shutting off with no explanation, cutting off their life support and leaving them to choke in the cold vacuum of space. Some, I imagine, were on their way to fight Hal, and they die wondering if they could have stopped this if they'd just been faster, stronger, better...

Others however, had no clue of what was happening on Oa. Adara, a former Green Lantern that Kyle meets on his first venture into space, says as much. Her ring died while she was fighting Corellian privateers, and she only survived because her enemies wanted to capture her.

Green Lantern (1990) Issue #56

Dozens, perhaps even hundreds of her fellow GLs aren't as fortunate. Their final thoughts are of bewilderment and pain and terror. But perhaps the ones who died early are the lucky ones.

Adara is tortured by the privateers before she's able to escape. Later on, Kyle encounters Fatality, the last survivor of Xanshi. Her ship is filled with trophies of the former Green Lanterns she'd hunted and killed.

The Green Lanterns had many enemies as a result of both their successes and failures. The fall of the Corps would have been a golden opportunity to exact revenge on its now-powerless members. And they likely wouldn't have had much trouble finding them.

Old habits die hard. Green Lanterns are heroes after all, with or without their abilities. The Oath is not just a passphrase to charge their rings, it is the promise that they keep with every breath. They would have continued to help others and protect the innocent because that's what they do. But without their power, without the protection of their Corps, one by one the former lights of the universe are snuffed out.

And of those who remain, at least a few are forced to sacrifice the principles they had once sworn by, just to survive in a universe that is now hostile to them. Fear and desperation drive even the best of the universe's heroes to allow evil to escape their sight, and for at least one, the shame is too much to bear.

Adara seduced Kyle and stole his ring while he slept, trying to reclaim the life that had been taken from her. Neither knew then that this last ring was keyed to his DNA and would never have worked for her. For all Adara knew, the ring rejected her because she'd broken her oath, and this is the final straw that breaks her. She rejects Kyle's offer to start a new life and instead turns herself into yet another casualty of the Emerald Twilight

In the end, it is impossible to name all of the Green Lanterns who fell with their Corps, whether it was in the initial slaughter or in the dark years after. It is easier to count the survivors, the lucky few like Salakk or Rot Lop Fan who lived to see their Corps reborn and helped rebuild it.

[wajjs]

when you compare the two events together, it is interesting to see how Hal failing to save Coast City and John failing to save Xanshi sparked in them different reactions motivated by two similar, but yet distinct, emotions: Hal's descent into madness is fueled by unadulterated grief, while John's rapidly and steadily consumed by his life-altering guilt.

And it is also interesting to compare them from the point of view of what caused the tragedies: in Hal's case, it was the lack of help and the scope of events being way more than what he and Superman could handle, meanwhile in John's case the tragedy happens because he grows too overconfident and cocky.

In the two cases the heroes lose. Except in one case the hero ends up turning into a tragic villain.

[nitewrighter]

I was struck by the way the gutter cuts off Parallax!Hal's leg in these panels. Like, for one, it's an economic way of using one pose to indicate both time and movement in sequence, but it also reminded me of a bit from the Tom King run on Omega Men/Kyle Rayner--

Hal Jordan is locked into the narrative, he has seemingly unlimited power, but he is flying away from us, the reader.

[angstandhappiness]

BAH HAH HAH

the transition from hal to kyle's section of gl1990 is objectively very funny because the launchpad just hal's pure, undiluted misery. everyone is dead. i spent my entire life trying to become someone my father would have loved and not only do i resent the person i became i know in my heart of hearts that fighting for a morsel of the late martin jordan's affection has always been an exercise in futility. in desperation. i have been so naive about the institutions i dedicated myself to. i gave everything to the corps i gave my loyalty my fealty my life and once again i am left with nothing. i can't do this anymore. the "man with no fear" is scared to death. this world is unsalvageable-- i'll make it right.

kyle rayner gets thrown through the window into a lingerie store. narration box: HI! my name is KYLE RAYNER. and i don't know what i'm doing. 👍👍👍💯💯💯

[pricelessreviews]

[lucidwonderlust]

I spent the day breathing in air that cleansed my soul.