Flashpoint: Hal Jordan #2 – Review

By: Adam Schlagman (writer), Cliff Richards (artist), Allen Passalaqua (colorist)

The Story: Snakes and planes!

The Review: Last issue churned out so little noteworthy material that it produced my shortest review on record.  I’m usually never at a loss of what to say, but when the story gives so much plot and scenery that’s been done before without a new take on it, talking about it seems a waste of time.  Even to the final panel of the issue, Schlagman gave us a tale that bore no reflection on the changes of Flashpoint, and could simply have been a watered-down Hal Jordan origin story.

This time around, Schlagman strives to be a little more true to the new reality, but not in a very coherent way.  While Ferris Aircraft has traditionally had a major role with the US military, it doesn’t make any sense they’d have full access to Abin Sur’s spacecraft to reverse engineer its tech with their own aircrafts, especially considering the ultra-secrecy with which the military has taken with other extraterrestrials (see Flashpoint: Project Superman #2).

But logical holes abound this issue.  Hector Hammond raves about Hal’s friendship with Abin, “We can’t trust that freakish extraterrestrial…!  Who knows what secrets he’s stealing from us.”  The fact he can say this with a straight face and absolute sincerity at the same time he takes Abin’s ship apart for its advanced systems is nonsense enough, but you also have to wonder what possible secrets can prove to be of any value to a race several dozen degrees superior to our own.

Flashpoint: Hal Jordan #1 – Review

By: Adam Schlagman (writer), Ben Oliver (artist), Allen Passalqua (colorist)

The Story: It’s Hal Jordan’s life—we just live in it.

The Review: With Hal Jordan, it’s easy to get a grasp on the man under the ring: a daredevil pilot with cockiness coming through the wazoo, but somewhat redeemed by his hopelessly devoted yet constantly resisted love for boss Carol Ferris.  He’s stayed pretty true to this characterization even through a couple origin rewrites, although now he also comes with some lingering daddy issues (which seem quite the rage among male heroes nowadays).

All of these elements get played up rather shallowly in the Green Lantern film, and here Schlagman offers a rendition of Hal’s early days that actually stays very close to the movie’s portrayal in almost every way.  He even includes a scene of Carol and the other employees of Ferris Air berating Hal for destroying their state-of-the-art aircraft and thus losing government funding, which seems a petty concern considering he does it to save his and Carol’s lives.

In fact, the story plays out so close to the bone of Hal’s original continuity that the whole issue, without exception, could work as a typical Green Lantern origin story.  The closest thing you get to a Flashpoint tidbit is a scene where some telepathic, King-Shark-type character latches onto Hal’s plane and vows to chomp on some air-breathers in the name of Atlantis, or something.  But since Hal dispatches of the creature quickly in spectacular fashion, nothing ever comes of it.