This guy . . . he's been called a "lucky stiff", "unworthy", and a hundred
other names by other characters and fans alike. Even I didn't like him, for
the longest time, calling him a "good idea for a character". Who am I
talking about? None other than Kyle Rayner, the Green Lantern.
After Hal Jordan went mad (for unconvincing reasons) and destroyed the Main
Power Battery on Oa, source of the Green Lantern Corps' power and home of
the Guardians of the Universe, one Guardian, Ganthet sought out a new man to
carry on the traditions of the Green Lantern. His short-lived quest landed
him in an alley behind a bar, where a tipsy young artist had gone to get
some fresh air. Ganthet handed Kyle the ring and informed him that he was
the new Green Lantern. Kyle was underwhelmed, as you might expect. Still,
there was no denying that it was a power ring as Kyle quickly learned to
operate the thing. By default, the ring gave him a standard GL uniform.
As a character, Kyle was different enough from any previous GL. Different
from most other heroes, for that matter. He didn't have a "power job," he
wasn't a billionaire playboy and he wasn't even driven by some need to right
wrongs. He was simply the guy who was in the right place at the right time.
This is where the writer, Ron Marz screwed up, in my opinion. Heroes need
some kind of "driving force." It doesn't have to be an obsession, as with
Batman, it can simply be the desire for adventure or thrillseeking, but
nothing like that was evident in Kyle. It was also funny that Kyle, the
artist, supposedly the imaginative one, didn't come up with the idea for a
new costume on his own. His girlfriend, Alexandra suggested it. She did a
lot of that, in her short time in print. In those early issues of GL, she
seemed to have to do a lot of prodding to get Kyle to do things. My guess is
this was part of a ham-handed attempt to show us that Kyle is, at heart, a
slacker. At any rate, Alex was Kyle's driving force.
Except for that mask, I like Kyle's costume. Usually, I prefer symmertrical
designs, but I like this one. Primarily for it's divergence from the
traditional pattern of the GL uniform. I also like Daryl Banks' redesign of
the GL emblem. I've heard that he designed it to embody the Green Lantern
oath's contrasting statements, "In brightest day, in blackest night . . ."
Whatever his reasoning, it's an excellent piece of design work.
At first, Kyle's career seemed to be going pretty smoothly.
Enter the Feds. In an unusual move, federal agents attempted to hijack the
power ring. When Ganthet found Kyle in the alley, he left behind a glob of
green-glowing material. The Feds had found this stuff and were studying it.
They sent Major Force to get the ring from Kyle. I remember Major Force from
the 80s Captain Atom series, he was a convicted killer who escaped execution
by volunteering for the same experiment that created Captain Atom. In his
case, the scientists encased him in more of the UFO material than they had
used for Captain Atom and so his powers were quite different. Major Force
came out of the experiment bigger, stronger and meaner than he went in, and
he was a violent, bigoted asshole, to begin with. He sent Kyle a "message,"
by killing Alexandra and stuffing her in their refrigerator. The
repercussions of this storyline were enough to inspire Kyle to action, as a
hero and a person. It also inspired commentary outside the comics
themselves. If you're interested, check out the WIR site, that discusses the
propensity for the girlfriends and wives of heroes to be victimized at an
unbelievable rate:
Kyle moved to New York City from the west coast and set himself up as a
freelance artist. He seemed to take the hero game more seriously. He took
some time off to travel around and get "hero advice" from Superman, Wonder
Woman and even Captain Marvel. The only trouble is, Kyle never seemed to
learn from his mistakes. I've lost count of the number of times he's taken a
bullet in a fight where he should have shielded himself a lot sooner. Also,
where Hal Jordan's "gimmick" was to be the best GL there ever was, Kyle's
was to use the ring in the most unusual ways, they said he'd never use it to
create the same "image" twice. Extra work for the artist, to be sure. No
giant boxing gloves to smash villains, or enormous oscillating fans to blow
out fires. Kyle had to create a wicked armored knight on horseback to smash
one guy, an elaborate battering ram, the next time, etc. Like I said, a LOT
of work for the artist. Why does that bug me, besides working the poor,
under-appreciated artist to death? Well, my reasons are practical, rather
than selfish (for once!). As an artist, let me assure you that pictures and
designs rarely spring, fully-formed from an artist's head. The level of
concentration that it would take to create those lifelike images AND fight
would get the guy killed. Maybe that's what kept Kyle from reaching Hal's
level. When Hal fought, his mind was on the fight, Kyle was busy dreaming up
the next unique creation.
Here's where I go into rant mode. As I said earlier, I always considered
Kyle to be a good idea for a character. The problem was, the writer for most
of the series, Ron Marz, never seemed to want to let Kyle grow. He never
learned from those bullet wounds that, "hey, maybe if I wrapped myself in a
forcefield as I fly into battle, I wouldn't have to spend so much money on
bandages and blood transfusions!" or, "hey, I've got a lightspeed weapon,
here, maybe I don't have to get within nut-crunching range to fight
Fatality!"
That last bit carries over to other comics, as well as TV and movies and I
first caught mention of it in something written by John Byrne. It goes like
this, if someone shoots you with an ordinary gun, there's a very slim chance
for you to react quickly enough to dodge out of the path of the bullet.
But, if someone shoots at you with a laser, or any other lightspeed weapon,
power, whatever . . . unless you have had intimate relations with the Speed
Force, you cannot possibly dodge it. I don't care if you have true lightning
reflexes, lightning, next to light, is a snail racing a greyhound! Byrne
pointed this out in the X-Men movie, where Sabertooth dodges Cyclops' optic
blasts. He says he stopped the tape and didn't watch any more than that. The
same thing routinely happens in Sci-Fi movies and TV shows. Want to test
this? Get a laser pointer and have your friends try to dodge you.
Okay, ending rant-mode.
Things went on like this for several years, well, maybe three or four
months of DC-time, but 5 or 6 years worth of comics! The funny thing is,
when Kyle appeared in other books, JLA, and others, he seemed a lot smarter
than in his own title. It made me wonder why Marz couldn't see the problem.
Then, there was a changing of the guard. Judd Winick came over to DC, fresh
from writing the funniest comic I have ever read, "Barry Ween: Boy Genius,"
among other things.
Winick came in and made changes. He brought Jade back into the series, for
one thing. Kyle was suddenly smarter, savvier, he began to take his rightful
place in the pantheon of DC's major heroes. For once, I could see Kyle as
belonging in the same team as Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. For me, the
crowning moment was when, during the fight with Nero, with the JLA beside
him, Kyle suggested that they may have to kill Nero. When Kyle said, holding
up his hand to show the ring and said, "you know, I can split atoms with
this thing," I knew that Winick understood. After that, Kyle was never a
second-rate GL, again. If you haven't read it, go back and get Winick's run
on GL, it's a great read.
More recently, Kyle fought Nero again, for possession of the remaining
energy left behind when Hal Jordan restarted the sun, at the end of the
Final Night. Taking in all that energy, Kyle was no longer Green Lantern, he
became more than just a hero, he was verging on godhood. Able to create
duplicates of himself to handle problems anywhere in the world, anywhere in
the universe, really. That's when he became Ion.
The Ion costume fits my own personal aesthetic, in a lot of ways. I like
white in a costume and I like the long vertical lines. The Ion stories were
excellent for, among other things, the fact that for once, a hero was given
godlike power but did not go mad. In the end, however, Kyle decided that
being a god wasn't what he wanted, so he took all that power to Oa and
recharged the Main Power Battery and ressurected the Guardians. It was quite
a sight to see the Guardians come toddling out of the green flame, little
blue children for Ganthet to rear. There's a lot of potential there. Kyle
gave himself one perk, his ring never has to recharge now.
At this point, he also gets a new costume, one I don't like and it's NOT
growing on me.
As Drew Edwards over at Halloweenman.com said, "it's too aggressive," it
doesn't seem to fit Kyle's personality or the aesthetic established for the
character. I'm told it was designed be Jim Lee, which doesn't surprise me.
Lee's a great artist, but as a costume designer, I've always thought he
lacked something. He seems well suited for designing "uniforms", but for
individualistic costumes, his designs aren't so good. This design looks a
lot more like what a young hellraiser GL should wear, rather than the guy
who restored the power battery and the Guardians. If Guy Gardner was in his
20s, and becoming a GL, I could see him in something like this.
So, of course, that leads back to me. You know by now why we're here.
One of the things I liked about Daryl Banks' costume was that green was not
the dominant color in the design. That made it different from all those that
came before (except Alan Scott's, but that's a whole different story). One
thing I like from the current GL costume is the boots. My drawing of that
costume cuts off the boots, because I excerpted it from a group pic I did
for someone, recently, but there are plenty of images online, if you want to
see. I've ranted before, about the need for proper footwear.
Taking some of the lines of the classic GL costume and the Ion costume, and
adding Kyle's own GL emblem, I worked on a design with white being the
dominant color, shaded pale gray-green, so it's not stark white. I designed
a mask that mimics the shape of his old mask, but simplified. I also made
sure that Kyle had white goves, like the Silver Age GLs, as a bit of homage
to that era. Likewise the green boots.
I resisted using Kyle in this column for a long time, because I like his
old costume so much. With the recent change, I felt like it was finally time
to play around with the character.
In the near future, I'm looking at stepping outside traditional comics for
a column or two. It's something I want to work on, and I want to make more
people aware of these stories and characters that have given me a lot of
enjoyment.
