Hal Can Finally Go Home

When we covered Green Lantern: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, one of the issues within that book was “Judgment Day”, from Green Lantern #172, published in 1984. At the time of that review I noted that the issues felt scattershot, single stories that clearly connected to larger arcs but the collection of issues never actually addressed those arcs. Hal Jordan had been sent out into space for a year, not allowed to go back to Earth to see his friends and family, but we never got a real example of why that decision was made. Nor did we get a clear follow up showing how his return to Earth affected him and his relationships. The issues there we dropped in a void and if you just had that collection you might not even realize how vast the overarching story of Green Lantern might have been.

With that said, DC is very good about publishing their archived stories, and not long after I grabbed that Green Lantern collection I also picked up Green Lantern: Sector 2814, Volume 1. To my pleasant surprise the collection started with “Judgment Day” and then continued the story forward. This was a reprint of all of the issues from that storyline, going book to book, to let us see what came next. It’s a collection meant for fans that came on with later arcs who wanted to go back and see the earlier stories. Fans like me.

Just having this volume was nice because it let me see the earlier stories of the 1980s. When Arisia comments upon a special connection to Hal in the arcs that came after Green Lantern: Rebirth, it was back in the 1980s that we first learned she was in love with him. When we hear about the troubles Hal had dealing with the Guardians of Oa, or how he struggled to balance his personal life with his professional life as a Lantern, this is the arc where those storylines really began. Green Lantern: Sector 2814 is a formative book for the Green Lantern saga, and while the writing in it might feel a little outdated now, there’s no question that it is essential reading for any Green Lantern fan that really wants to know the ins and outs of their favorite hero.

Written by Len Wein and Dave Gibbons, this first volume of Green Lantern: Sector 2814 starts with “Judgment Day” and then follows Hal from there. Returning to Earth after his year of exile, Hal and Carol Ferris try to start up their relationship once more. Being able to be together was a key part of why Hal returned to Earth, and Carol is happy to have him home. Only there’s more going on than the relationship between these two love birds as Ferris Air, Carol’s company, is struggling under the weight of a number of issues.

First of those is financial. Ferris Air isn’t the company it once was, with contracts drying up and buyers unwilling to purchase what Ferris is selling. They need something new, and fast, and they get that with the development of the Solar Plane, a special jet that… well, we don’t actually see just how special it is in this book. But the development could be what saves the company. However villains keep showing up to try and steal the plane, or its engine, or just to destroy the plane and the rest of Ferris air in the process. Why? Because a senator, Jason Bloch, has a vendetta for Ferris Air and will stop at nothing to see it ruined once and for all.

As I noted above, Green Lantern: Section 2814 is interesting for a few reasons. The first of which is seeing the evolution of Hal’s relationship with Carol. This on again, off again romance had been teased over and over through the decades that Green Lantern had been published, but the two characters had never been able to come together for any length of time. Sometimes they were dating, sometimes they weren’t. Hell, sometimes Carol was a Star Sapphire desperately trying to kill the Lantern, the love of her life. Comics are weird that way. Regardless, this book was the one where the two finally got together for real, and their relationship is cemented (at least for a little while) when Hal (spoilers) gives up his power ring at the end of the first volume to be with Carol.

Now, obviously, we know that doesn’t last. Hal is considered the greatest Lantern of them all. His life goes through more ups and downs, especially when serving in the Corps., leading to his eventual downfall during Emerald Twilight (Hal goes evil, we’ll get there soon enough). At some point he has to pick back up his ring, and that will put strain on his relationship with Carol, but for a time this shocking twist felt like the definition of a new era. A Green Lantern book without Hal as a Lantern? Is that even possible?

Well, that’s another thing that slowly gets developed in this book: Crisis on Infinite Earths. This 1984 continuing series was one of many that featured the Monitor in a background role. Monitor would eventually be revealed to be an observer, someone that watched the events of the universe and made note of what happened. He monitored, if you will. Here he has a more active hand, playing with the chess pieces that were humanity, which doesn’t seem quite in line with the character we’d eventually know, but all of this is just so we know who the Monitor is and remember his name when, a year later, the Crisis would begin (not that we knew it then).

These kinds of developments are cool, and they show that Green Lantern: Sector 2814 tied into a larger narrative that was only developing. That gives the book weight and relevance you might not have expected. On the flip side, though, there are elements working against the book, chief among them the classic storytelling style of the Silver Age. Crisis on Infinite Earths was just around the corner and it would define a new era for the publisher’s line with a new way of telling stories, but this book is very rooted in the past and it feels almost antiquated in comparison to the stories that would eventually arise.

This is most evident in the villains Hal fights and just how easily they’re bested. Hal crosses paths with the likes of Javelin (a villain that uses javelins), Shark (a mutated, humanoid shark), and the Demolition Team (a group of supervillains who like to demolish things). These are all very silly, very dumb villains that would seem out of place in modern stories. They’re like Hal’s version of, say, Condiment King. They’re villains of a sillier era that would soon get phased out, but who stick out weirdly here in a book that wants to be more serious about Hal and his life despite him fighting the goofiest C-string villains that could be found.

The writing also falls into a very obvious setup/retcon format. One issue will show Hal on the edge of death, having fallen prey to the villain’s traps. “He’s going to die! There’s nothing he can do to stop it!” The next issue would then come along and immediately show, “oh, Hal was fine all along.” It’s very silly and was clearly done just to get kids to slap down their quarter (or however much comics cost at the time) and get the next issue a couple of weeks later so see how the hero survived. It’s the same trick old movie serials would pill, only done in the simple colors and newsprint of the comic format.

It feels very old and very silly. I liked the book because of the characters and where it fit into the overall DC mythos, but at the same time I recognized these were not the stories that really hooked me on the character. I jumped on with the Geoff Johns run and these earlier tales pale in comparison. It was a different time, and I don’t hold that against the authors. I understand what they were going for even if, at the end of the day, this wasn’t the most satisfying storytelling I could have hoped for.

Green Lantern: Sector 2814, Volume 1 is a fine book for anyone interested in the earlier days of Green Lantern. It collects a whole arc of stories, so you get a solid perspective on the character, and it shows us key moments that would become essential parts of the hero’s story over time. But if you aren’t already a deep fan of the hero I don’t see you really enjoying this book. It’s a better collection than Green Lantern: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, in large part because it tells a cohesive narrative, but I don’t think anyone outside the hard core fans are going to fall in love with Green Lantern from this collection. It’s good for the curious, but not great for new fans.