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Animalman said:You mean...like Hal going insane and wiping out the Green Lantern corp?



Exactly like that.

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If you were hiring a bodyguard...would you rather have some random Joe Schmoe with no skills in that area...or would you rather have someone actually qualified to be a bodyguard? I'm fine with the whole "struggling hero" thing in comics..but use it where it's applicable, like with Wally becoming the Flash.



If I was hiring a bodyguard, I'd go with someone like Hal. If I was writing a story about a bodyguard, one of the possibilities would be Kyle, because it would be out of the oridinary. In superheroes, the ordinary is having a perfect guy, like Hal and Alan, fight villains without a problem and become the best in what they are in a second. Kyle is out of the ordinary, because he was one of the few heroes out there who wasn't qualified at all to be a superhero when he started. What happens? He fucks up constantly. His girlfriend gets murdered because of who he is, he willingly gives his ring to Parallax, he blows up a planet, he gets a horrible crab stuck in his face... If anything, I would have liked to see Kyle fuck up more often. But still, the way Ron Marz had him start learning how to be a good hero (see "Capital Punishment", "Parallax View" and "Trial of Fire") was quite nice until it was interrupted by DC's need to keep him a newbie (which is why Judd Winnick's take made no sense at all).

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In a way, you're right that my problem was how he was handled. If he was used just as a punchline, like the aforementioned Guy Gardner and G'Nort, I'd be fine with it...but instead writers like Judd Winnick try to pass him off as some savior, a Neo-like figure. Not only is that uncreative, it's lame.



I agree that Winnick's take is lame, but we also have writers like Ron Marz and Grant Morrison who used the real potential in him.