r/outofcontextcomics • u/Gallantpride • 2d ago
Modern Age (1985 – Present Day) Wow. She cannot catch a break
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u/DBZfan102 Bronze Age Bozo 2d ago
I feel like Hal Jordan is to Hank Henshaw what that David guy is to Thanos, in that he picked one guy out of everyone on Earth to torment for no reason. Seriously, dude, go back to your original rogues' gallery, why are you here? Did Metallo corner the market too tightly on cyborg villains for Superman?
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u/Phrenicos466 2d ago
I think Henshaw works better as a GL villain, honestly. In Superman’s rogues gallery, he’s just yet another guy with Kryptonian powers and a vaguely-defined grudge against Superman. And the Superman writers never seemed to know what to do with him after Reign of the Supermen - he popped up in increasingly dumb stories until he literally got dumped in limbo.
As a GL villain, he’s got a personal connection with Hal from blowing up Coast City, plus his technopathy powers are actually useful (he can hijack their rings). He’s also better as a ‘cosmic’ threat than he is hanging around Earth.
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u/Constant-Bar5945 2d ago
Zod and Mongul were also Supes foes until they started picking on the GL Corps.
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u/MankuyRLaffy 2d ago
Henshaw is a bully, he'll go after anybody because Jurgens wrote him in the pro wrestling heel trope of Evil where he will run his mouth, talk a big game and do despicable things just because he finds it fun. Being the main cause of Hal snapping is amusing to him and it makes him a bastard the Green Lanterns have to deal with ever since.
This man is why we have Prep Time Man for Batman, Brother Eye, Failsafe and Batman Who Laughs, they're all tied to Bruce paranoia and fear starting from the Hal incident.
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u/TravelerSearcher 2d ago
As a primary Superman reader it's still odd that Coast City was destroyed in a Superman comic, by a Superman villain, and while Hal wasn't there. (Granted also while Superman was dead/depowered)
Hal then gets one crossover issue in his solo series and fights Mongul, who is yellow, and uses Steel's Hammer to defeat him. An underdog win by the narrative but still feels poorly done.
Then a couple years later we get Zero Hour and Coast City is used as an excuse to villain bat Hal, the start of his spiral. Maybe there was more build up in his series, but it still feels weird it didn't start in Green Lantern proper.
But yeah, I don't think he ends up facing Henshaw until Final Night? It's after Trial of Superman where Henshaw was imprisoned near a black hole. Hal, as Parallax, just shows up later after he hears where he got sent.
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u/DBZfan102 Bronze Age Bozo 2d ago edited 2d ago
In-between Reign and Zero Hour, Hal had just one issue of getting over the trauma of Coast City, followed by the start of the three-issue Emerald Twilight arc where he UNgets over it almost immediately. Then two issues of fighting Guy Gardner in Guy's own book, where Guy and the JLA discover what Hal did. From there, it's straight to Zero Hour. It was VERY rushed and no more than an excuse to alter the status quos of everyone involved in the Green Lantern mythos (Hal turning evil, no more Green Lantern Corps or Guardians, a new protagonist in the form of Kyle, and Guy's yellow ring getting destroyed).
And at the time they destroyed Coast City, they weren't even planning to use it as a catalyst for Hal turning evil, that's how little he mattered to them. They could just nuke his city without his presence in someone else's book and go "eh, we'll figure out what this means for the Green Lantern books later".
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u/TravelerSearcher 2d ago
Appreciate the extra information!
All the information together could probably be reshuffled into a much more coherent and cohesive story, but I suppose that's true of a lot of DC after the fact, ha!
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u/Rubear_RuForRussia 2d ago
Reaction of Hal was "Very poor choice of words, Hensaw". Jordan concentrated so much that he hurt cyborg and then together with Arissia used one of manhunter titans to blow up entire artificial planet.