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Before I worked in comic book stores, I was biased reader. I liked most Marvel team books, and I liked Batman and his various close associates. That was pretty much it. In my earliest twenties, I got into the Vertigo line, but still didn't branch out that much, mainly as I was a casual reader who rarely spent time in shops. I started working in stores in 2007, and made it a point to read Whatever I could so that I wasn't a cliche, gatekeeping asshole like some of my peers. Some of this I owe to the fact that I was hired by two strong women (not like Wonder Woman strong, one was Carol Danvers level cool, fun, and in control, and the other was Mystique: confident, powerful, definitely needed mental health counseling that she wasn't getting). Apart from a few select stories, I couldn't get into Superman. I enjoyed some 90s and 2000s era Wonder Woman. I loved most of the Teen Titans. I liked The Flash when he wasn't battling villains whose power was that they could run. (I felt this way about the TV show in the 2010s, too.) I wanted to like Green Arrow and Black Canary but never did. And Green Lantern? Who could be bothered with color-coordinating space caps with magic jewelry? Geoff Johns helped change my perspective on both The Flash, and Green Lantern. And it was the lead up to Blackest Night that got me to go back and read as much post 70s lantern books as I could get. This Headcanon will be about building up to Blackest Night, and then have maybe a season or two of dénouement. While I haven't enjoyed much of the post-Blackest Night Lantern Mythos, there are still some books worth reading. This chronology isn't going to be precisely by publishing date, as reboots, reimaginings, and flashback stories get printed that improve on a legacy story to the point where the legacy story isn't really necessary to read anymore. If you're someone who loves the silver and early bronze age material, I'm sorry, there isn't going to be much of it here. This is going to be focused on modern storytelling. I'm setting up each entry as a television season of 15 "episodes", often contained in 5-7 trades...I'm not suggesting people read fifteen different books for each "season"...This is based on my readthrough of the series in 2015 but I'm rereading it and removing any books that are so out of print that you'd have to pay a small fortune on EBay for them. You should be able to get these at libraries, any store that carries graphic novels, an on DC Universe Infinite.   Green Lantern Hal Jordan Volume One by Gerard Jones, Keith Giffen, M.D. Bright, Jim Owsley, and Romeo Tanghal Also featuring Carol Ferris, Abin Sur, Legion, Tomar-Re, The Guardians, Salakk, Kilowog, Sinestro, Tomy-Fai, Guy Gardener, Katma Tui Episodes 1 & 2: Emerald Dawn. The first arc is serves as a modern origin story about how Hal Jordan, who absolutely sucks in this story, becomes the Green Lantern. I like including this as a starting point because I think it's important to see what a bad person Hal Jordan was before he received the ring. It makes his downfall and later redemption more interesting when his origin story presents him as, not a heroic everyman, but a drunk driving loser who ruins his friends' lives. Also, the ridiculous Green Lantern trope of "willpower doesn't work on the color yellow" is laughably present. My own sidenote, when Grant Morrison took over this title in 2016ish, his first story was called "Intergalactic Lawman", and I always read it as "Intergalactic Lawnman". There is a wonderful panel in this book of Hal mowing a lawn with his ring. Episodes 3 & 4: Emerald Dawn II. Serving time for his DUI in the first volume, Hal breaks in and out of jail to foil bank robberies and other petty crimes until his cellmate is killed and he needs a lawyer to defend him. I honestly never knew Guy Gardener was a lawyer, and I feel like I've read dozens of books with him in it. We also get to see more of Sinestro, who briefly appeared as a background lantern in the the first arc. Now we see that he's a bit of a fascist on his own world. The jail storyline, and the Sinestro training storyline are nice counterpoints to one another.  Green Lantern Green Arrow Vol 1 by Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams Also Featuring: The Guardians, Black Canary, Appa Ali Apsa Episodes 5-7: Green Arrow. A collection of fifty year old stories that you can share with an comic "fan" who complains that comics are "too woke" now to show them that comics have always been progressive. The collection starts with Hal Jordan, who still sucks, rescuing someone who turns out to be an evil landlord. Green Arrow shows him who the real heroes and villains in the real world are, and Hal agrees to try and help him. It doesn't go particularly well, and then The Guardians seek to punish Hal for not being an obedient slave to the law. He and The Green Arrow convince The Guardians to send one of their members to watch them as they travel across America battling racism and capitalism. Several times they remind us that Nazis and Hitler were bad. So, if you missed that memo, it's here. It goes a bit off the rails at the end when Hal and Black Canary end up in a dimension full of Greek mythology, but it's a nice way of developing Hal Jordan's character by playing him off of Green Arrow.  Green Lantern Green Arrow Vol 2 by Dennis O'Neil, Elliot S! Maggin, Dick Giordino, and Neal Adams Also Featuring: Black Canary, Carol Ferris, Black Hand, Speedy, Guy Gardener, John Stewart, Lobo, Appa Ali Apsa Episode 8: Peril. Lantern, Arrow, and Canary deal with an evil school, and we see what's happened to Carol Ferris in Lantern's absence in the most underwhelming issue of this collection. This is followed by a showdown with Black Hand, another underwhelming villain who's going to be important down the line. Episode 9: Speedy. A classic hokey anti-drug story where Green Arrow discovers his former ward is a heroin addict. It was groundbreaking in the 1970s. Now, it's...well-intentioned. This very important issue for Green Arrow lore is not very impactful for our Green Lantern story. Episode 10: What Can One Man Do. Finally, meet John Stewart. No, not the Daily Show Host, the second Green Lantern in our chronology. Another case of "well--intentioned" and "didn't age well", it is nice to see a Black Person Of Color getting his own Lantern Ring. Also, you will be shocked to learn that Hal Jordan absolutely sucks as a trainer of lanterns, and has a severe case of Institutional Racism Bias. Meanwhile, Green Arrow witnesses a riot that takes a Black child's life, and decides to run for mayor. Episode 11: Savior Complex. We begin with a Bad Story with, again, good intentions. An anti-pollution/anti-Capitalism story that ends with a character you've just met being crucified on a plane, along with Hal Jordan and Green Arrow. They survive, he doesn't. There's another story after this, but my brain was so rotted by the pollution/crucifixion story that now, two minutes after reading it, I can't remember what it was about.  Green Lantern Sector 2814 Vol 1 by Len Wein, Dave Gibbons, and Gil Kane
Also Featuring: Carol Ferris, Javelin, Shark, Predator, The Monitor, The Flash, The Wrecking Crew, Predator, Jason Bloch, Green Arrow, Superman, The Guardians, Kama Tui, Wonder Woman, Mister Smith, Arisia, Tomar Re, Xax, Arkkis Chummukk, John Stewart Episodes 12-15: Take This Job And Shove It. We end the season with a somewhat hokey 1980s set of stories where Hal Jordan returns home from space (I know, I know, why didn't we get to see more space stories in this series about a space cop? Well, um, they didn't collect many decent space stories from this era. I promise we'll get there.), after a year away and ends up protecting Ferris Aircraft from some really low-rent villains like The Javelin, and The Shark. Meanwhile, The Monitor, who is going to wreak all kind of havoc in the DC universe is sort of hovering in the background. Well, Ferris Aircraft is destroyed, and Hal Jordan, who, remember, SUCKS, decides to give up his ring so that we can spend next season with a better Green Lantern.
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January 2025
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