Showcase Presents: Green Lantern, Vol. 1

I absolutely love the idea of Green Lantern - a super-powerful corps of police officers who patrol the universe to keep it safe from harm. Part of what makes it so interesting as a result, for me, is that there is no one Green Lantern, but rather thousands, each with their own individual personality and abilities. It's a very rich storytelling milieu.

What makes reading Green Lantern difficult for me, though, is that one Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, seems to loom large in the minds of most readers. It's kind of understandable, as he was the “classic”, Silver Age version of the character, but as someone who started reading Green Lantern comics during the tenure of a different lantern (Kyle Raynor), I've never really been able to understand the appeal of Jordan as a character. So, as a result, I decided to pick up this collection of his first adventures in order to see what some of the fuss was about.

I still don't see it. The stories haven't aged well (a lot more poorly than Marvel's output of the same era), Jordan isn't that great of a character, and he doesn't really do much within this volume to justify his position as “the greatest of the Green Lanterns”.