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The best of... Kyle Rayner

Essential Dazzler

22:24 / 06.12.06

When asked a few weeks ago who my favourite superhero was I immediately answered "Kyle Rayner".

I love his look, I love how his real life job is imagination, I love his constant self-deprecation, I love his "every-geek" personality.

The problem is the only comics I've actually read that feature him are Grant Morrison's JLA and Warren Ellis' JLA Classified: New Maps of Hell

We haven't had a "best of..." thread for a while, and this seems like a nice way to solicit both suggestions and discussion.

Which comics do I have to read before I can really know what makes Kyle Rayner the character he is?

23:21 / 06.12.06

No, that's really all you need so far as I'm aware - don't even need the Ellis thing, really. (I assume you've read the 'Earth-2' trade w/ Quitely? It's more Batman's show, anyway.)

He's not my favourite favourite, I prefer the Martian for a start, guy's got real pathos, but I did like him an awful lot - best moments are almost certainly in DC One Million #4 ('feat status', the wink.)

Otherwise there's basically a load of Judd Winick penned Green Lanterns when he was the #1 guy and they're fairly universally derided. I'm sure geoffjohns will dislike him on some fundamental level, too.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

23:24 / 06.12.06

Agreed. Honestly, it was scary how much more the character developed in Morrison's JLA than in the main book. I loved GL so much in JLA that I picked up some trades of the Winick book, and I really thought they... well, sucked. Insipid, tired whinging for the most part.

Plus, Green Lantern proper is the straw that broke the woman in the refrigerator's back, so to speak. But I think Marz is to blame for that one.

23:38 / 06.12.06

Yup, I think that's actually part of the origin arc, and a' course what hero doesn't have a murdered girlf in their past. It's, like, necessary.

Anyway, the only other remotely worthwhile thing I can come up with is this Millar/Morrison piece:

which was published just before that legend JLA run, so depending on yer disposition, possibly a necessity. Kyle gets plenty facetime.

lonely as a cloud...

07:15 / 07.12.06

I quite liked Aztek in Mozzer's JLA... but did his solo series ever get collected?

Kyle Rayner and Guy Gardner are the only GLs I'm really familiar with (and even then only from Morrison's and Giffen/DeMatteis' Justice League runs); Rayner was probably my favourite character in Morrison's JLA. As far as I remember, wasn't Ellis's JLA Classified run a steaming pile of poo?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

11:44 / 07.12.06

I would just say in Rayner's defense that Hal Jordan was starting to prove difficult to build a series upon, the whole reason there was a Kyle Raynor was it was either that or cancelling the Green Lantern title again. Maybe the GL is just a very difficult concept to write stories about?

12:22 / 07.12.06

Bollocks. All you need to do is take a John Carter-esque protagonist, give him a ring, directive and send him to a different planet/space station/Dyson sphere each week.

A Green Lantern should be a one-man Starship Enterpise with the stories/missions to match.

12:40 / 07.12.06

Oh, GL could so be done well.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

12:50 / 07.12.06

I don't think Rayner needs any defense conceptually: I thought it was excellent: give the ring to an enthusiastic hero newbie who is creative and can stumble his way to herodom while doing more interesting things than giant boxing gloves with it.

Compare Kyle to the other "hero revamps" and he positively shines: Azbats, the Ben Reilly Spider-Man (which I sort of liked, conceptually, but then it all went to hell), Thunderstrike, etc.

Morrison gave Kyle this yee-ha enthusiasm coupled with a puppy-dog yearning to Do Good by the big heroes. Daniel's whole "You know fear -- you will surpass him" speech in the otherwise goofy Star Conqueror story was a big "fuck yeah!" moment for me and understanding what made Kyle Rayner tick.

But Marz and Winick blew it in the series. That whole thing was like a meandering 90210 episode where somebody gives Brandon a power ring and he can't decide who to take to the prooooooom. Bah.

Haus of Mystery

13:52 / 07.12.06

You know what I like about the GL mythos?
Whenever the Corps get together to face down some kind of cosmic hoo-hah, you get a glimpse of some of the other Green Lanterns - you know, amorphous pink blobs, flying squids and weird floating brains, all decked out with the GL insignia and a ring hidden somewhere - those are the dudes whose adventures I want to read.

14:22 / 07.12.06

My biggest problem with Green Lantern (as well as the Legion) is one of scope.

You have an entire galaxy to play with. Weird new worlds, exotic civilizations, and concepts beyond imagination. So why does the book read like "superheroes vs. supervillains... IN SPACE"?

Seriously... after the Jim Lee revamp of Kyle, they brought back the Guardians and Oa. A bold new direction. The first story they told? "Kyle battles intergalactic organized crime".

Alan Moore showed more imagination in ONE PANEL of a Green Lantern story (specifically, the second-to-last panel of this page) than most of the GL stories of the last decade.

14:29 / 07.12.06

I also loved Kyle Raynor's GL, almost entirely based on his JLA run. There was good things going on there with his new kids on the block relationship with Wally and that being contrasted with Batman and Superman's serious-as-hell working relationship.

Also, the fact that he was a comic-book artist meant that he seemed to be using a lot of imagination in how he used the ring compared to Hal Jordan's Speed-jock practical directness. Sadly I'd read very few Hal stories in the run up to JLA and so Hal's depiction as a sad wreck of a man in the year's leading up to Kyle taking over prejudiced me in favour of the kid.

But my favourite all-time appaerance of Kyle was when he co-starred in Hitman. Its when someone is out of their comfort zone that you find out what makes them tick. Kyle came across really well as the decent skin who's the butt of all hitman's/Ennis' jokes about being a square. His eager innocence was all the more appealing in comparison to Tommy Monaghan's cynical wastrel ways.

14:43 / 07.12.06

I got the impression that Kyle actually enjoyed what he could do with the ring, that, even though he was nervous about being around the big hitters, he still loved what he was able to do - in a way that I found so contrary to the dull, po faced other GLers (all the men on the edge, tragic life crap, when ultimately I think the GL should be about fun). It worked well in JLI with Gardner because he was so dumb, but still enjoyed what he was doing (using the ring in a brutish but still imaginative way) and it was funny to see the extremely square Hal appear in that like some GQ, Cigar Afficinado reading preppy bloke. It all went wrong when they wanted grim and gritty. For me the lantern worked best when he was having fun while weilding this all powerful weapon, rather than bogged down with the whole responsibility and tragedy of it. KR kind of felt like that more than most, and certainly more than the current, awful series.

Essential Dazzler

20:50 / 21.03.07

So Ion just finished, did anybody read it?

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

00:09 / 22.03.07

I did. Wasn't bad. It felt very much like a Ron Marz comic written ten or fifteen years ago. Even had a classic, two figures huddled together in front of an all-white background.

For effect, you know.

01:11 / 22.03.07

You know what I like about the GL mythos?
Whenever the Corps get together to face down some kind of cosmic hoo-hah, you get a glimpse of some of the other Green Lanterns - you know, amorphous pink blobs, flying squids and weird floating brains, all decked out with the GL insignia and a ring hidden somewhere - those are the dudes whose adventures I want to read.

Yes, yes, yes. I was sick from work last week, and spent a few enjoyable hours exploring this Green Lantern Corps site.

It's when you look at the GLC in these terms that the true galactic scale of the Corps takes shape. Tons of fun.

I agree with Mario, though. Alan Moore's brief forays into Lanterntown highlights the team's potential for utter coolness. Check out Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annuals #2 and #3 for two of my favorites.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

02:10 / 22.03.07

F-Sharp Bell for the Win. Green Lantern was my favourite...I dunno. I want to say "superhero" but it's more like "super-concept," right? As a kid. I loved to run around wishing I had a power ring and my first Green Lantern comic was #127, with all those Lanterns from alien worlds...

For a while they had that GLC Quartly comic with Alan Scott stories and alien GL stories -- including a female GL from Earth, as I recall -- but it succumbed to 90s "Kewlifying" and was the beginning of Young Alan Scott with tEH DARKE THREADS.

08:39 / 22.03.07

Ion was frustrating because I kept thinking what Morrison would do with it -- huge amounts of power and a galaxy to roam, he'd have written all sorts of grand adventure. Marz' version wasn't bad, just pedestrian.

Also, my cynical suspicion is that it set him up to be either the sudden villian or the inevitable sacrificial victim for Countdown.

19:09 / 22.03.07

I kept thinking what Morrison would do with it

He can't write everything. Just give him time to make the place a living entity!

19:37 / 22.03.07

See, why isn't there more GL/Flash team-up stuff? They seem like natural compadres to me, but you only see them together in JLA and other teams afaik, why is that?

20:07 / 22.03.07

Oh, and one of my favorite Kyle moments isn't really a feat at all. It's an issue where they find a humongous sea-beast, and Batman is examining it and needs somewhere to stand. Your average GL would just make a boring green disk. Kyle? He makes a tower...

...a gothic tower...

...with little tiny green bats.

20:49 / 22.03.07

Hah, that sounds good actually.

See, why isn't there more GL/Flash team-up stuff? They seem like natural compadres to me, but you only see them together in JLA and other teams afaik, why is that?

I think the new Flash is the old Impulse, but beforehand it'd've been decent, good bit of tension/chumminess - there was that three ish crossover when Millar/Morrison wrote Flash with GL and Green Arrow, but we're talking almost ten years ago there. They're maybe just not saleable enough?

18:59 / 23.03.07

There's also the Faster Friends teamup, made semi-famous by Lost. Kyle-Wally and Alan-Jay.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

20:00 / 24.03.07

A Green Lantern should be a one-man Starship Enterpise with the stories/missions to match.

He's got Supergirl with him, but even so Waid basically does exactly this with Hal Jordan in this weeks issue of the Brave and the Bold. Makes me really wish Waid and Perez where the team on the main Green Lantern book.

Twig the Wonder Kid

16:01 / 27.03.07

MacReady:
Whenever the Corps get together to face down some kind of cosmic hoo-hah, you get a glimpse of some of the other Green Lanterns - you know, amorphous pink blobs, flying squids and weird floating brains, all decked out with the GL insignia and a ring hidden somewhere - those are the dudes whose adventures I want to read.

Totally hits the nail on the head. DC should ask Iain M Banks to write it.

16:59 / 27.03.07

Kyle Rayner meets the Culture...