[Dr Kain]

Let’s take a trip to the 90’s where oddities were happening in the DC universe. Superman was dying, then resurrecting and four random people (three with dumb origins) arrive claiming to be Superman. Bruce has his back broken and is out of action so Azrael can for some reason replace him instead of Dick. Then we have Hal Jordan with white sideburns in his hair killing off Green Lanterns. WHAT?! That is dumb!! However, if it weren’t for that, we would not have my next favorite hero of the DC Universe:



I was there for the first issue of Kyle Rayner. I got it, I read it, I loved it. I read it several more times. And then you had Kyle and his worst enemy ever, the refrigerator!! Such a tragedy, but it was one that really advanced his character. I was a big Kyle fan. Yes, I did not know too much about Hal Jordan, as I never really got into the Green Lantern stuff until Kyle was the lead character, but I liked what I read. In fact, to this day, I am still buying individual issues of Kyle’s run because I either lost a bunch of them or because they don’t seem to be collecting them in paperbacks, and at this point, they probably never will. They are too busy collecting the “Adventures of Character Assassinations” with the New 52 than they are with the stuff that made Kyle a hero.

I know many people hated him, but that was the same reason people hated Rodimus Prime, he was replacing their favorite lead character. The best thing about Kyle was his inexperience. He was not afraid to be afraid. He did what he could to the best of his abilities. It also helped that he was an artist, so he had far more imaginable than Hal did when it came to making constructs out of his ring. Of course, it did not help that he seems to get into bad relationships whether it be with Donna Troy or Jade (who died).

Next to the refrigerator, Kyle’s villains pretty much just carried over from other series. He had Mongul to contend with, obviously he had Major Force, but I cannot really think of anyone brand new for him to battle off hand.

Unfortunately, after DC brought Hal Jordan back in the mid-2000s, it seemed like they were not sure what to do with Kyle. They tried to make him into a new hero named Ion, which was just stupid and failed. The aspect of him being possessed by Parallax in the Sinestro Corp War was kind of interesting, but this also took away from the concept that he is unaffected by yellow because he can feel fear, and instead, made it that the rings were just no longer affected by yellow at that time. It kind of ruined his character a little.

And now, I really do not know anymore, as I stopped reading “New Guardians” after about 5 issues because I really hated where they were going with him. Nevertheless, Kyle Rayner remains to be my favorite lantern character over Hal, even though Hal is high up there because of his adventures with Green Arrow in the 70s and for most of the stuff from Rebirth until Brightest Day. I have nothing against Hal, he is a great character, but Kyle is vastly superior to him in every aspect be it personality wise or creativity.