#and only insofar as his history through the early '90s is a whole litany of traumatic brain injuries

[cantsayidont]

Honestly, my biggest objection to Hal Jordan becoming a supervillain in "Emerald Twilight" in the '90s was that it was accompanied by another of DC's periodic foolish attempts to eliminate the Green Lantern Corps and its attendant mythology in favor of a single solitary Green Lantern. They'd done that before, more or less, in 1988, when they blew up the Power Battery and de-powered most of the Corps except Hal so that he could become the flagship character of the terrible, short-lived ACTION COMICS WEEKLY anthology.

This didn't take for long — Guy Gardner and G'Nort (!) were exempted from the de-powering because of their popularity in JUSTICE LEAGUE, and Christopher Priest subsequently wrangled a pass for John Stewart (whom DC put through the wringer for no good reason). After ACTION COMICS WEEKLY collapsed, it wasn't that long before DC reversed course and restored the whole Corps.

With "Emerald Twilight," they went further, even de-powering Guy and John in a pointless effort to promote Kyle Rayner, and they stuck with it for longer — although even then, Judd "I Only Have a Career Because I Was on TV With a Poz Guy That One Time" Winick eventually found an excuse to give John Stewart his ring back. By 2002, they had again restored the Corps, which to me was much more significant than whether or not they brought back Hal.

The unavoidable fact is that the main thing, if not the ONLY thing, that makes the modern Green Lantern interesting is that it's a job rather than just a secret identity. Neither Hal Jordan nor Kyle Rayner nor any of the other flagship Green Lanterns have ever been terribly compelling individually. The coolest thing about Hal Jordan, by far, is that his first work friend was a humanoid parrot from another star system …

… and his other work colleagues include sentient geodes, rutabaga, and grasshoppers:

I mean …