On the topic of Hal Jordan being maybe a bit better than anyone gives him credit for…
[I’m kidding ofc, we all know he’s a great guy, but bear with me for the sake of this post hahaha]
⚠️ Spoilers for Green Lantern #5 ⚠️
I get it, y’all, I really do. Hal can be pushy when it comes to love. And pretty undeserving of the love he pushes for because I mean how good is a guy that keeps professing his love to the same girl only to ditch her for long and unspecified stretches of time. Like of course, Carol keeps moving on, Hal, there’s absolutely no reason why she should wait around for some guy that loves her, but still leaves her! But hear me out…
Maybe Hal being pushy doesn’t actually change the fact that he’s a good guy. Maybe his pushiness is sincere. And maybe, just maybe, he’s a big enough person to set the whole “all is fair in love and war” thing aside to do what’s right and that’s what makes him so dang hard to resist.
So, this all stems from the latest issue of Green Lantern by Jeremy Adams and Xermánico which features Hal setting out to put a stop to Sinestro’s reign of terror across the earth. Hal’s first stop is Ferris Air as Sinestro has taken over all their unmanned drones to enact his plan. Carol catches Hal up on the situation and as he’s leaving to do his superheroics Carol hands him some nifty new communicators designed by her new fiance, Nate, y’know, the guy that Hal has been at one-sided odds with since the first issue of this new run. Hal, predictably, makes a snide little Hal-comment about Nate being smart and Carol, predictably, gives him no rope when she shortly replies that he’s “very” smart. I’ll always love these terse little exchanges between them.
Hal later runs into the problem of the last two drones being too far away from each other, and too close to their intended targets, for him to reach them in time. This leads to him coming up with the idea of putting his piloting skills, and indomitable will, to the test by simultaneously sending two constructs in opposite directions to catch the last two drones. Carol puts Nate on the line, and this is where my admiration for Hal, and Adams as a writer, grows considerably, as rather than getting another typical Hal remark we get a man on a mission.
Hal doesn’t care who’s guiding him in, he doesn’t care that he’s lost the love of his life (for no reason other than his own hubris) and that the one who has earned her love is now talking to him one-on-one. Rather than taking the easy drama route of giving Hal yet another opportunity to undercut his latest rival, Adams instead opts for the much more in-character route of having Hal just be the hero that he is. Hal’s only care is that there are people in trouble and Nate is the only person who can help him. And man, do they make a great team.
And this is a fact that neither gets nor needs any particular highlighting from the story itself. No remarks about Nate being the one to guide Hal in are made. Nothing is said about how well Hal followed directions from his rival-in-love. And that’s kinda my favorite part of all of this, the conclusion that I’ve come to, that Hal is not in the least bit petty and is a wholly honorable person, is not a conclusion that the story busies itself with proving. It just is. Hal just is a hero. He just is a good guy. He just does the right thing because that’s the right thing to do and, man, does that make it hard to say no to him.