Emerald Twilight: Loss, Compassion, and Indifference [90s Week]

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Once upon a time, a man with a magic ring fell from the stars. In his dying moments, he gave the ring to a brave young man. That young man would grow up to be one of the most twisted, frustrated, and bloodthirsty villains the DC Universe has ever seen. That’s not how we think of the Green Lantern Hal Jordan, though. But in 1994, after decades of Hal being a heroic protector of Earth, Ron Marz’s “Emerald Twilight” storyline changed everything. It took the righteous Green Lantern and had him face terrible loss. The question became “What happens when an upstanding hero is denied the happy ending they think they deserve?” Marz and company’s answer was chilling, and driven home by their use of true stakes.

The Set Up

Green Lantern #48 begins in a hole in the ground. During the DC Comics event “Reign of the Supermen”, Mongul and Cyborg Superman destroyed Hal Jordan’s hometown of Coast City in an effort to turn Earth into a new Warworld. And so Jordan’s family, friends, and home are left as a smoldering ditch. In the grander scheme of the DCU, Coast City’s destruction is a footnote that most of the other heroes seem to move on from in the face of a greater victory over their enemies. But for Hal Jordan there is no moving on.

Survivor’s Guilt

Our first shot of Hal sees him crouching in the rubble, looking at a half buried kid’s toy. The baby doll, with one eye missing and an innocent smile on its face, almost seems to be reaching up to Hal. Its little arm points up at him as though asking for help, or perhaps pointing in accusation. Next, the artists – Bill Willingham, Romeo Tanghal, and Robert Campanella work on this issue – pull us further back, showing the vast, smoking crater. Hal looks miniscule on this big page of empty wreckage. A man who is used to seeing interplanetary tyrants shaking in their boots is cowering in the evidence of his failures. When Hal looks at the ring on his finger, a device powered by his sheer force of will, his grief leads him to will Coast City back into existence.

The green tinged light construct he creates isn’t really his hometown. Unfortunately, Hal’s ring doesn’t have the power to bring back the dead. It can only project a version of Coast City that comes from his own mind. His ring is powered by his imagination and his willpower, but it can’t undo the past. Colorist Anthony Tollin occasionally gives these green panels a hint of yellow, making every panel look at once like a ring projection but also like gangrene or rot. This is Hal’s town as he remembers it, influenced by his shame over its death. As children play in the streets and birds fly through the air, they’re only brought to life by Hal’s troubled imagination. They’re extensions of his own restless psyche. This becomes evident as he starts to interact with his creations. His father, who died long before Coast City was vaporized, is distant and cruel. When Hal points out that he’s become a superhero and is worthy of his father’s respect now, his dad responds with a look of disgust. “Didn’t do much to save Coast City, did you?” Hal has no answer for the man whose approval he craves so dearly.

It’s unclear why Hal does any of this – why he entertains these conversations from people who are demanding that he did more for them – except that he’s giving voice to his own wrecked conscience. As he stumbles through his emerald tinted past, he talks to his mother, his high school sweetheart, and eventually his father again. But then everything fades out of view. He has run out of power and thus his disturbing guilt trip halts in its tracks. “Ring’s charge is gone. It’s not fair!” he says in frustration. Letterer Albert De Guzman writes that last exclamation in a big, bold font with a thick border around the word balloon. It’s emphasized as Hal screams it. Afterwards, Hal is alerted to the fact that this use of his powers was unsanctioned and one of the Guardians of the Universe – the blue gnome-like keepers of the Green Lantern Corps’ central power battery – tells him through a light construct that he must come to their base on the planet Oa for disciplinary action.

“I’ve Given Enough. Now I Want Something Back…”

Hal violently plunges his ring through the construct, sucking up its power, and begins making a twisted plan. “Oh, I’ll come back to Oa, alright…” he says to himself. “But you’re not going to like me when I get there.” Hal is wracked with survivor’s guilt. The unhappy ghosts of his past are swirling around in his head. But he’s also furious that the Guardians can look upon his loss with such unfeeling diplomacy. So, he decides the best thing to do to get them to understand how he feels is to make them feel his pain too.

As Hal rips through the ranks of Green Lanterns that have been sent out to stop him, many of them are his friends. “Hal Jordan… Why do you… fight those… who made you what you are…?” one of them gasps out. “Because what they made me is a slave…” is Hal’s response. “I’m through being a servant. I’ve given enough. Now I want something back…” Hal couldn’t put it any simpler than this. All of his years protecting Earth and space suddenly feel like a waste of time to him. Because those whom he helped weren’t there for him when he needed them. In some ways, he’s right, the people he served didn’t show him a single scrap of humanity when he was in his darkest moment, triggering his vengeful tirade. But Hal also seems to see his good deeds as though they’re on a scale. In his mind, he’s owed for his acts of heroism, and his years of serving in the Green Lantern Corps make him feel he’s entitled to do anything now to get what he wants for once.

Hal kills Lantern after Lantern, taking their rings as he does. Eventually, he overloads the central power battery, destroying all of Oa and taking its power for himself. As most of the Guardians die, they get to feel the same sense of loss Hal felt over Coast City. He has vengefully taught them a lesson – that losing your home is not something you can just move past. Hal lives on through the next few years as the villain Parallax.

What Marz does is he actually uses Hal’s years as a hero to fuel his villainy. He’s a villain because he was so good for so long. He helped so many people in their hour of need, but in his hour of need he was met with nothing but discipline and indifference. As evil as he gets, it’s hard not to feel for Hal a little too.

Conclusion

As time went on in the DCU, other writers explored Hal’s guilt and fury further. He spent time as an evil mastermind, a sacrificial lamb, and an avenging spirit. His trauma followed him everywhere, just as the Guardians’ lack of compassion led their sole survivor to try and rebuild a Lantern Corps with a more empathetic leadership. Marz took the entire lore of the Green Lanterns and blew it up to tell a deeply human story. Not only does this creative team remind us that tragedy can strike even the most righteous amongst us, but they remind us that when we’re in our darkest moments, the thing that makes all the difference is a little compassion.

Green Lantern: Emerald Twilight ran through Green Lantern (1990 series) #48-50. This has been collected in Green Lantern: Kyle Rayner Volume 1 and can be found at all good comic book shops, online retailers, eBay, Amazon/Kindle, and on the DC Infinite reading service.