#joe staton is a bit in love with guy i think

[rillette]

What do you think of the alternate versions of gl like earth-6 and the tangent one

i dont know much about them tbh!! i read the first couple pages of tangent green lantern but that's about as far as my knowledge goes! i do like the tangent gl design tho

[thecomicsnexus]

GREEN LANTERN #190-193 JULY - OCTOBER 1985 BY STEVE ENGLEHART, JOE STATON, BRUCE D. PATTERSON AND ANTHONY TOLLIN

SYNOPSIS (MIXED WITH DC DATABASE)

John Stewart, Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Tawny Young discover that the Predator has tampered with their memories, while Guy Gardner comes out of his coma.

Hal Jordan tries to track the Predator down.

The Predator kidnaps Carol Ferris, and Hal Jordan traces him down to an old theater to rescue her.

It is later revealed that Predator and Carol are two sides of Star Sapphire.

Star Sapphire relates her origin to Hal Jordan, revealing that the sapphire gem split off the Predator-self from Carol Ferris after she fell into despair from losing him. Finally, the Zamarons summon her back to their world, where John Stewart, Katma Tui, and Dalor have arrived.

After being repelled from the Zamarons' world, John Stewart and Katma Tui encounter Replikon in space.

At the end of the story, we finally catch up with the Crisis and Guy Gardner is ready to become Green Lantern.

REVIEW

Green Lantern is no stranger to “fixing retcons”. I am not sure if Wein’s idea was that Hal was being manipulated by Carol to quit, but it kind of always felt that way. This of course brought one DC’s most dreaded problems. Legacy characters. Now, I love legacy characters, they mark progress in the stories of these characters. But at the time, there could only be one Green Lantern on each sector, and having three Green Lanterns, each with their own fandom, that’s just asking for more problems. As a result, Guy and John would be treated with mixed respects until Geoff Johns came in.

But soon it wouldn’t matter because this title is about to become “Green Lantern Corps”, and under that title, it would make sense to have more than one Green Lantern. Too bad they eventually needed to have just one Green Lantern (and it would be a new one, with his own fandom, again, very hard to undo).

But enough of the guys. Let’s talk about Carol. This story feels like it is walking a very thin line between respecting its character and the “bitches be crazy” trope. It is thanks to Johns that we know Shapphire’s power is love, and as such, it’s irrational. That can go wrong very easily. You don’t want to sound like Jack Nicholson in “As good as it gets”:

Carol is not being mind-controlled here. These are her actions. But the Shapphire gem makes her irrational. Perhaps that is the reason why Predator’s plan make no sense in the Zamaron story. Why bother into getting control of Ferris Air if she is later going to become Queen of the Zamarons?

Having said that, Carol forcing Hal to stop being Green Lantern now feels a bit more understandable. But you can see why some people may take offense on a plot like this. While I think there is a bit of that in this case, I see these characters developed well enough to not be offensive. After all, no one mind-controlled Hal into quitting. It was his own decision, even if Carol gave him an ultimatum. I feel that it wasn’t just Carol that made him quit. He was fed up with the Guardians and their rules. And we all know Hal doesn’t like authority that much.

So, in conclusion, this isn’t as simple as it sounds. Carol wanted Hal to be at her side to be able to become a queen, something that actually makes sense for her, as she felt that being a woman was stopping her from achieving her full potential. I don’t think she needed to become a man to win, though. And Hal may have been “pushed” into stop being a Green Lantern, but it seemed at the time that Carol wasn’t the only factor in his decision. Furthermore, this Predator/Carol merge, seems evil and is not very fond of Hal (she leaves Earth after all). So, while she is not being mind-controlled, she doesn’t seem to be herself either. I don’t know. Honestly, it’s a story that belongs to its time. I don’t think it could be published nowadays without a backlash.

What do you think? Is Carol depicted in a bad light here? Or is her message of breaking the glass ceiling the biggest takeaway of this story?

I have to give this story a technical score of 9.