Kyle Rayner vs. Hal Jordan and the DCU reboot

Green lanternsAfter the (largely woeful) Green Lantern film, I’ve been reading through some old issues of the comic. I’ve not been one for geeky discussions on minute points of detail in the various comic-verses but every now I read a bit of something and think "hang on one minute there…"

The specific case in point here was the Hal Jordan resurrection sequence following his ‘death’ as Parallax. And it wasn’t particularly the fact of the resurrection – they’ve done those things before for Superman (and I think now for Batman too), but the fact that the return of Hal Jordan diminishes the role of Kyle Rayner from the series.

Hal Jordan – the test pilot man-without-fear – was duly heroic and made sense for the era in which he was created – but Kyle felt much more current. An artist, a man with more flaws than Hal’s misogyny, and a more versatile personality, I thought, made for much more interesting reading.

With that in mind, Topless Robot (my new favourite geek blog) points me at news that the DC Universe is rebooting. The comicverse does this every now and then – realising that their stories have grown to an unsustainably complex place, the reset normally involves a ridiculously complex story-arc in which history is changed and the world as we know it takes new form. I don’t know if that’ll happen this time, but we’ll see… It looks like Hal will be Green Lantern once again, but at this stage – all I can say is – nice costumes, and I’ll miss Kyle if they write him out completely.

Like Topless Robot – I’m not bothered about the continuity reset. Some of these series have been running for so long they occasionally reference events up to a decade in the comics real-world past. When you do that, all but the most ardent of fans lose track…