OH SHIT IT'S A HAL JORDAN RANT

16th June 2011

Post with 146 notes

OH SHIT IT’S A HAL JORDAN RANT

So I have a profile on a dating site. This is not the point of the post. The point is that I mention that Hal Jordan is a dick, and therefore get regular emails from guys who go “What? Why is Hal a dick? HE IS AWESOME!”

I have spent so much time ranting about Hal Jordan… and then I realized that I hadn’t ever posted something vitriolic to my various blogs. So, hi guys, you get to be exposed to Toast ranting about superheroes.

This is for two reasons. One, I figure it’s never a bad thing to have more “HAL IS A DIIIIIICK” on the internet. Two, if I get any of the facts and such wrong, I know someone will come in and tell me that I screwed up :D

So, without further ado,

“Hal is a dick” is one of my core mantras.

You see, Hal is a dick for a number of reasons. Even if we gloss over the fact that he dated a sixteen-year-old, he also has a very annoying tendency to assume that he knows best when he doesn’t.

He let John take the flack for his misdeeds as Green Lantern because John’s ID was public, to the point where he let John get imprisoned by South Africa.

During the Apartheid.

And then his solution to the fact that his “friend” was being tortured by a foreign country for being a black man was… to slip him a ring and tell him that it’s totally cool to bust out if he needs to. Only, when John did bust out, he promptly decided that this was a bad decision and that John must be behind all of the “terrorist” murders and such that were occurring, nevermind that when he escaped, John freed all the rest of the political prisoners, many of whom already had a history of violent activities. (John, meanwhile, was just trying to get his life back together.)

All this dickery in only /one issue/.

And don’t even get me started on how Hal was a dick to Guy. “Oh, my friend died because my lantern battery exploded in his face? Huh… TIME TO FUCK HIS GIRLFRIEND :D”

In regard to the Green Lantern movie, I have nothing against Ryan Reynolds. It’s Hal Jordan that I dislike, and when it comes to the Green Lantern movie… well.

Give me John Stewart, a successful Marine and architect who worked his way out of the slums through hard work and diligence and, because of his intellect and talent for unconventional thinking, managed to forge the Mosaic into a society and become the first mortal Guardian of the Universe.

Give me Guy Gardner, who managed to become a special ed teacher with two degrees even after a childhood of abuse and neglect, and then proceeded to function for years as a superhero, even with severe brain damage and a complete dearth of respect from the rest of the superhero community.

Give me Kyle Rayner, who was inexperienced, but who was willing to learn and listen and give respect to issues he didn’t understand yet (see: Judd Winnick’s Hate Crime arc), and who didn’t treat his friends and teammates as somehow lesser than him just because he was Ion and the Torchbearer, even though he could have.

Give me any of those three men, each with their own unique and interesting origin story, over Hal Jordan, who represents a whole bucket-load of white, male priviledge and ignorance and who, in terms of being a role model, pretty much sucks.

Tagged: get in the car hal is a dick toast has a lot of feelings

I have energy beams, and you have no pants.

OH SHIT IT’S A HAL JORDAN RANT