At least the cancellation of Green Lantern will put a tailspin to the mess that's been made of Kyle's life (one can hope, at least).

I have been exasperated with most of the characterizations in Green Lantern since #150. Kyle gets nearly unlimited power as Ion, actually does stuff that makes sense on a personal level (find and make peace with his dad). Then he decides that no one person is competent enough to wisely use that power, so he goes to Oa, recreates the guardians, and lays the groundwork for restarting the Corps. Then he comes back to Earth and finds out a good friend of his has been severely beaten up by homophobes.

It always seemed to me that the fact that Kyle could have prevented it if he still had the power of Ion was a big part of why he got so upset. How would you feel if you got three wishes from a genie, and after you wished for wealth, health, and the Red Sox to win the world series you get a phone call from the police saying your parents just died in a car accident?

How hard would it have been to show that Terry's beating crystalized Kyle's need to re-form the corps? He basically gets beaten up (from Kyle's point of view) because Kyle gave up most of his powers to start the Corps again. If I were in his place I'd make **** sure to do everything I could to ensure the Corps reforms after that.

Besides that....
Kyle's parents have ceased to exist. What kind of idiot is he to do this whole "nobody at all wants me" routine and not even bother to go see his parents? His relationship with his mom was pretty good, and he and his dad finally made up, too. Why exactly is Superman the only hero who can go home when he needs some "chicken soup for the soul"?

Plus, if the people I worked for suddenly turned around and stabbed me in the back, not just a little, but so much I could see the freaking yellow energy sword STICKING OUT OF MY CHEST, I would wonder WHY. I would not just go back home like nothing had happened, and would certainly not go two issues without it even coming up. It's just bad writing, period.

Oh, one note: if you look in issue 177, right after Kyle's fight with Sonar, whe he sees Jen, she's sitting on a HOTEL sign. In the half-page panel, though, all you can see is the HO. So I think we can judge the artists opinion of the little green bedhopper.

Fisrt issue,not so good,Second issue,good

It has gotten better, but its so not current Superman.
I see what he's getting at though. Classisc Superman in Action comics was dishing out wise### remarks all the time.

yeah,it's definetly different.It's good writing,it jusy doesn't seem like modern Superman.

No its not good. It's inconsistant.

Like the latest issue. Superman has Kryptonite IN him and yet he still has powers! Well apparently except for his super hearing cause he gets snuck up on.

Gog is phasing in and out of this dimension. Of course superman is caught off guard. We also know that Superman
can continue to put up a fight for limited amounts of time with Kryptonite in him. Heck during the hunt for Lois he put
up with it for a week. So other than Superman not recognizing Gog I like the story.

Alright, ignoring all the Superman/Austen stuff (what is that doing in a GL thread?), I am completely with you, BAKID. The Winick run up through Ion and even into the beating of Terry Berg was just good stuff. As to the ####fest that came after (including the whorishness that inspired this thread) can be answered for in two words:

Ben.
Raab.

He's the one who decided to cut Kyle's Parents from the book, he's the one who (when tasked with getting Jade out of the book) decided to make her a ##### instead of a graceful bow-out, he's the one who had the mother of confusing turns with the Guradian Gal stabbing him in the back. He's responsible, largely - if not exclusively - for the mess Kyle's life is currently in. The man is a hack, and with him gone I can only look forward to Kyle's swan-song in the hands of the man who crafted him. Thank God they brought back Marz to do Kyle justice one last time before whatever happens happens.

On one note, though - I don't think there would be a connection between Kyle's grief over Terry and a burning desire to reboot the Corps. While I agree that he felt some shame for having given up the power of Ion just in time for his friend to be beaten nearly to death, I don't see why that would inspire in him the need for a Corps. Maybe if Terry was hurt because Kyle was off in space, but Kyle was on Earth at the time - just not close by. But maybe that's just me not wanting to see the Corps come back. Meh.

Kyle immediate reactions to Terry's beating were very Ion-ish though, which is what makes me think there should have been an emotional link there. One of his responses is to actually try and go back in time and alter the event, which would normally be chalked up to superhero hubris or the author watching the original Superman movie to many times, but made a lot of sense considering Kyle was able to time travel earlier that week.

Moreover, I don't see how Kyle could re-create Oa, and the guardians, and not feel some sort of responsibility to make sure the corps was re-formed. One of the big themes that I always liked with Kyle was that he worried about his responsibilities. He never thought having a power ring was his right, it was something to live up to. That's what set him apart from Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner. The writers sometimes overplayed it so that he went over into whiny and angst-ridden, but when played right, he was the sort of super-hero you would feel comfortable wielding earth-shattering power. Sort of the Omar Bradley of Green Lanterns to Hal's Patton. I think what caused the biggest problems in the book was that you had a character that NEEDED to grow, but was thrust into an iconic role, and ended up having his personal growth erased every time a new writer showed up.

The iconic "guy with great skills/power but lacking in confidence" is in practically every cheesy sports movie ever made. At the end, he finds his inner stregth/confidence, and then makes the winning shot so that the underdog team beats the favorites. Kyle was that guy, but at the end of every storyline, he would get rebooted to his old self, at least in part. I don't know about you, but after about the fifth time I save the Earth from destruction and go out for barbeque with Superman, I think I would finally stop wondering if I belong. I have given up on Green Lantern, at this point.
*spoilers for the most recent issue*



















In the most recent issue I saw today, he gets hit with a poisoned hypodermic syringe. Not snuck up on, mind you, but after the villan is revealed and begun their mustache-twirling dialogue. The guy is smart enough to infiltrate a galactic crime syndicate and careful enough not to get caught until faced with a "heroes don't kill" moral dilemma, yet he hasn't yet come up with some sort of shield to avoid subsonic projectiles from hitting him. Add to this the absurd notion that the stuff in the hypo isn't poison, it's just something to disrupt his concentration/sap his willpower. If you actually manage to hit a green lantern and inject them with something, why not something that will just kill them immediately? It's like Kyle's life has become a bad Jerry Bruckheimer movie.

I heard that someone in Green lantern will be killed off by the end of the series.With the impending return of Hal I wonder if Kyle will get the ax.At this point I wouldn't mind if he went out a hero,and not the whiney wuss he's evolved into.

Also, when Kyle left, even though it was a gut 'I don't feel like I can do this with humans for awhile' reaction, he (1) went to a place where he felt he could also do good, and (2) found the best replacement he cound find and formally handed responsibilities of JLA and stuff over. Brought his girlfriend, when she changed her mind he still kept in contact (also-- she has a ring/equivelent. If she wanted to cheat, couldn't she, y'know, leave a page and break up with him FIRST? It's not like she was getting his messages with no means to respond. Even if breaking up via ringmail isn't too good, it's excusable compared to just cheating flat-out and having your boyfriend find out when he walks into his apartment).

Considering his motivation, Kyle was pretty darn responsible on making sure things were set up before he left.

Q99- My thoughts exactly.

Spiderhulk- Kyle isn't a whiner, and hasn't been the angsty "why me?" type since before Winick came onboard. If he's a little mopey right now, it's part of the storyline. He came back to Earth expecting his friends and lover to be happy and excited to see him back. Instead she's been cheating and nobody else seems to have missed him. So he's a little depressed, can you blame him? I, for one, hope he lives, just so a talented writer who cares bout the character can do something interesting with him, someday.

Bakid- I agree about the Ion connection when Terry was attacked, but still not on the Corps. While his run has definitely been more about living up to the responsibility of the ring, I think he felt more a responsibility to Ganthet and the memory of the Corps than to actually restarting it, himself. He tried that once, and it bombed miserably. So, I think, he remade Oa and the Guardians so that they could do whatever they felt they had to do.

As far as writers constantly resetting his development, as I recall only three writers have touched the GL series - Marz, Winick, and Raab. By the time Marz left, Kyle had blossomed into a confident and self-assured ring-wielder. Winick explored some of the consequences of his newfound self-assurance, and Raab took a steady bowl-movement. But I don't think he was rebooted every time a new story started.

It took a while to convince everybody he was the one, true GL, but that was more for the old Hal fans they were trying to woo than for the sake of the character. In the end, Kyle grew more and more after every story.

As to the latest issue, Fatality did use the poison on him, but she got him by surprise at a moment when his head wasn't in the right place to fend her off properly. And she didn't want to kill him with the dart, she wanted the satisfaction of using her own two hands. Easily excusable, and pretty well done, if you ask me.