#so much of him just does not make sense with how geoff johns characterises him and his relationships with his parents particularly the
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actually so evil how much of hal's internal world gets obliterated with the rewriting of his relationships with jessica and martin.
#hal jordan#empyrean posting#ok going in the tags because im not actually v confident in my understanding of his character. i read all of his 80s/90s stuff but forgot#90% of it but ANYWAY.#so much of him just does not make sense with how geoff johns characterises him and his relationships with his parents particularly the#parallax stuff simply because of how much his relationship with the guardians and their apathy/'betrayal' is influenced by hal's original#relationship with his dad. like at its heart it's pretty much the same dynamic in how hal blindly trusts and sort of idolises the guardians#despite their repeated infractions in hope of... something in return just as he had with his father and the abuse he suffered at martin's#hands. that's what makes his anger at the guardians make sense when it does show itself because the relationship parallel didn't stop there.#as with martin hal gets nothing for his devotion. he gets nothing for doing everything that's asked of him and more and it ends the same way#too: with a man in the sky burning like a newborn star. and you lose so much of that nuance and intrigue behind that if you just make#jessica the 'bad one' because!!! you cheapen it!!!!#the whole idea of hal is that he has his father's face but his mother's scars#(to me). in the sense that they both reacted to martin the same way with that cognisance of who he was as a man yet inability to pull away#because... love. both the love they had for him and the conviction that he did or could love them too. and jessica arguably did eventually#but also she didnt did she? because she held onto that notion of love till the very end. the few scraps she had she ballooned outwards until#they became the whole. but hal didnt have even that and he spent his whole life chasing it & running away from wanting it at the same time#like i think there's something so interesting to the fact that he had to be convinced that flying was what he wanted to do. how much of that#was touched by his father? the fear that he was already too much like him than he could bear to be? he already had his face now he had his#dreams and longing for the sky. how much more could he have before he began repeating the cycle?#and at the end he even had his father's death. burning in the clouds. like there's so much there and that's not even touching on how it#impacts his relationships with other heroes. not just in the sense of why did kyle clark and diana get to keep their close yet complex#relationships with their moms when hal had to lose his (although yeah why did they) but also just how he lets himself come across to them.#because it's on purpose right? that he lets them think his reflection of his father is born out of unadulterated love for a man worthy of it#? he has his father's job he wears his father's jacket he smiles his father's smile. what else are they supposed to think.#and isnt that interesting!!! that this man who is so committed to being good & just can lie so casually to people he thinks of as friends!!!#can you see how that might be his mother through and through!!! in how she might have glossed over the abuse to other people and herself!!!#can you see how in spite of it all he might want to be perceived as his father that paragon of masculinity and resent that he is not!!!#do you understand how everything he loves has been poisoned!!! im thinking of that scene where he tells bruce about watching martin die &#wouldnt it have been so much more interesting through this lens. how he is both revealing & obfuscating at once. i hate the change sm
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Quick question about how you decide what comics to care about? When it comes to characterization?
I know there’s comics that are generally considered ooc and no one really incorporates them into their characterizations. (Eg: I skimmed All Star Batman and Robin for fun. I now understand why people call him Crazy Steve, and I’m obviously not going to be taking this particular iteration of Batman and Robin into account when characterizing them.) But other than these really obvious instances, how do you deal with it? Like, I know fans of pre-N52 comics avoided a lot of stuff during that time? But now that we’re in Rebirth? I know that characterization in comic fandoms is always a bit thorny because of comic books as a medium, with all those different writers, timeline resets, etc… But you seem to have a really good handle on that, cause whenever I read any of your stuff and then read a comic, I’m usually like, yeah, same person here. Which I think is a feat! So, do you sort on vibes? Writers? Another metric? Case by case? TLDR: How do you deal when a character canonically says/does something that makes you go, “he would not fucking say that?”
Love your blog! And your writing!!!! Thank you!!!!!
ahh, crazy steve. what a guy (derogatory)
hmmmmmm for me personally if im writing a character i generally identify a “core” comic, regardless of retcons or conflicting characterisation, and then go off that. im reading a lot of bart allen atm so i focused on mark waid and todd dezago and completely ignored everything geoff johns has done with the character. for dick, scott snyder and judd winick are kinda the benchpoint for me, and then i kinda pick and choose (from wolfman, dixon, higgins, etc) what i think fits with that character. jason is easy cause he’s only had two comics worth anyone’s time. weirdly, some of roys best comics are written by devin grayson. so on and so forth.
wrt “he wouldn’t fucking say that” disease of which i am a chronic sufferer, I look back on dick (as an example) and his legacy characterisation, and whether or not it would make sense. not all legacy characterisation is good, mind!! but it’s generally easier to get a good benchmark if u go off a period when writers weren’t terminally on twitter. a lot of it is case by case, and i just map that in my brain
idk like SO much of it is just vibes and trying to create some internal consistency. like u said — there is so much conflicting characterisation and plotting and events that it can be very difficult so u just kinda have to trust ur own intuition. when i first posted persephone and got positive feedback for how i wrote dick I was kinda surprised — cause how i write him tends to clash with his popular depiction in both fandom and many modern comics. ig my real advice if ur writing (or reading) about these characters is to not fear complexity, and be conscious of exactly how racist most comic writers are.
#so sweet!!! but yeah comics can be whack#never fear conflicting characterisation !!! pick ur own adventure!!#Dick grayson#nightwing#dc comics#Batman#the ask and the answer
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