I always find it funny when the detractors claim that they can't believe that Hal was possessed by Parallax , yet turn around and believe that he would go bad and destroy the Corps. What i've mostly found out is that these people are simply Kyle fanboys angry that their special GL was getting shipped out in place of the real GL. Sadly the writter of this piece seems to fall in the same direction, you could have saved everyone alot of time and just typed up "I hate it that Hal is back and Kyle is no longer the main GL" because that is exactly how this piece reads.

Just thought I'd point out that, although this mini-series is a coupla years old, this thread is suddenly very timely, given this announcement:

http://comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=17385

Yes, another "Rebirth" on the way.
For the record, I wish there were just ONE character who stayed dead. (I was actually hoping that, despite his "Final Crisis" return, Barry Allen would be around just for that story, then return to "dead" again. Ah well.)

C'mon. There are degrees to everything. Wonder Woman killing one bad guy and Hal Jordan killing hundreds of innocents are very different situations. It's like comparing a rough policeman to Osama bin Laden. But in any case, I don't think even a "vigilante" mass murderer like the Punisher would be invited to the JLA, or would hang out with Superman and Batman. The point was not to make Hal Jordan workable as a dark hero (they ALREADY did that when they made him Spectre), but to make him workable as the sort of hero that can belong in the JLA.

Sure, the right writer can make a troubled, repentant mass murderer into a sympathetic, and interesting character, but that was not the point. And in any case, I'm not saying DC did the right thing. I'm only saying that if you want Hal Jordan as conventional superhero again, some retcon like possession is mandatory. Yeah, you can say you don't want or need Hal as a conventional superhero. Sure, okay. But that is your oppinion, and that is cool.

Really, it all feels like DC wanting to avoid a HEAT style backlash, so they keep Kyle in the DCU, but without any of the stuff that made people like me like the character. Honestly, I’d much rather have the character be dead and forgotten so that I wouldn’t have all these two-bit new stories further reducing a character I liked.

Give it a few years, and he'll pop up somewhere good again!

I thought it was great that they didn't kill Kyle off in the mini, although I was a bit shocked he didn't stay after the first GLC mini.
Is Ion worth checking out?

Bravery isn't exactly something unique amongst super heroes. How many cowards are there in the JLA? Same thing with honesty and loyalty. How does that separate Hal from any other hero out there? These are traits that are *assumed* in a hero, not differentiating character points.

Ladies' man? Reeeealy cliche at this point.

Patriotism is a little bit interesting, I guess, but for a character like a Green Lantern, whose responsibilities not only include the entire planet but dozens of others, it's probably more of a character handicap. Then again, I never thought of Hal as being much of a "... and the American Way" type of character.

And the job was interesting... in the 1960s. These days, no one cares about test pilots, and it's not a great story springboard either (as I've noted before, one of the only reasons to bring Barry Allen back would be that his job is both far more relevant than it was when he was given it, and it's a great springboard for new stories).

Different situation, Skemono. John Stewart was negligent and allowed people to die through his incompetence. Hal killed lots of people. There is no redeeming mass murderers, but there is a lot more room for sympathy for heroes who made a mistake, even a catastrophic mistake.

My big problem with Rebirth is that Hal Jordan was never as interesting a character as Kyle or John or Guy, and in bringing him back they took away the one thing about the character -- his redemption for betraying the GL Corps and mad quest for power -- that would have made him remotely interesting. Not denying that the title's been fun when I've read it, but Rebirth stunk of a writer wanting to bring a character back for the sake of bringing them back because they read about them as a child (and that's a terrible reason to bring back any character).

Have a good day.
John Cage

That being said, I think that Rebirth didn't go far enough in restoring the old status quo. I really think, even being a Kyle fan, that Kyle had to die. In the wake of this mini he hasn't really done much of note beyond being corrupted himself, becoming Ion (an idea that I feel is fairly ridiculous) and wandering the multiverse or whatever.

Really, it all feels like DC wanting to avoid a HEAT style backlash, so they keep Kyle in the DCU, but without any of the stuff that made people like me like the character. Honestly, I'd much rather have the character be dead and forgotten so that I wouldn't have all these two-bit new stories further reducing a character I liked.

It is a huge slap in the face of the people who read Green Lantern and put up with all the changes in the past few years. It is just a big eraser to the last decade.

Well yeah, that was the point - not enough people were reading the title, so they did a reboot on it to try and get more people to read it, and it worked.
It might be a slap to you guys, but DC was gambling that they would be able to cover it by getting more readers on, and it worked.
As someone with a passing knowledge of DCU/Green Lantern history, I'd heard of the big events referenced in Rebirth, but not knowing the intimate details, I didn't notice any contradictions.
And after picking it up, and enjoying the read, I went and got the first GL trade, and the first two GLC trades as well.

I'm glad DC was smart enough to keep Kyle around, though. Killing him off or removing him as a GL would've just given us the reverse of the HEAT situation - making the Hal fans happy at the expense of Kyle's. This way, we have Hal, we have Guy, we have John AND we have Kyle -- the best of all worlds.

Really this isn't that different from Johns' return of Hawkman (something that *did* have to be done)-- it's got the trappings of being continuity-heavy, but it's not really *continuous* with what came before. It just amounts to a giant "because I said so," with just a fig-leaf of continuity to cover the blatantly results-driven outcome. Frankly I feel the same way about his Top retcon of some of the Rogues' reformations in Flash-- things had to be the way they'd once been (or the way they would have been if the Bronze Age had had more decapitations), and so we'd get just a fig-leaf of an excuse to *make* them that way.

The prospect of the return of Barry Allen is making me realize how sick I am of the whole thing-- I've *liked* the post-Bronze Age plots and character developments in a lot of books, and don't really think that it all has to be thrown out in deference to the way things were in 1978. Kyle, Wally, and Connor made for an interesting set of changes and developments...