Hal Jordan rejoins his brothers to celebrate Christmas.
Wait a minute! I thought Hal Jordan was Jewish! In 2016, it was revealed that Hal's dad was Catholic and mom was Jewish. This issue took place in 1993. So technically, when Hal was converted in the pages of Justice League: The Darkseid War: Green Lantern #1, nothing altered the possibility that the Jordan family could have celebrated both Christmas and Hanukkah. It's possible that that year's Festival of Lights had ended days prior and so when Hal was able to come home, it was for Christmas festivities only.
This issue has a lot of other things going on that I wasn't really aware of. For one thing, Doctor Light had at one point died and as a sort of passive aggressive punishment, was turned into a wave of light by a demon. Then for some reason, Hal Jordan no longer works for Ferris Air and has become a taxi pilot. Now Hal has always been flighty when it comes to working at Ferris as he keeps leaving and returning. But now Carol Ferris is no longer with the company and is instead working for Hal's small business. That sort of career move doesn't make any sense to me. Obviously, a lot transpired in the issues prior.
That's a real problem with holiday issues that occur in the pages of a regular non-humor series. There always seems to be a lot of talk about past problems that had transpired in the last couple of issues. And if you aren't a regular reader of those books, you're often in the dark trying to understand what happened.
This sort of thing doesn't deter me from wanting to own holiday themed comics. But it does move me to lower my rating as I feel that books that take place during Christmas, Halloween or even St. Swithin's Day, should be self-contained because these type of issues have generally been the introductory pieces for comic collectors. I can't tell you the number of posts I see on social media of fans pointing to a holiday themed book being what got them into reading and collecting comics. Sure, this issue is nearly 30 years old and there's nothing that can be done to fix it. However, this is definitely a lesson that all comic book publishers should learn from going forward.
Festive. Adventuresome. But full of drama that really doesn't help move the story along very much without confusing the casual reader.
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment