Yeah, I’ve been on a bit of a tear of late with the super-hero novels. Actually, I’ve been reading other stuff, too, just nothing to completion (or nothing previously unread).
Green Lantern: Hero’s Quest by Dennis O’Neil (2005)
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This is yet another in a series of DC Comics JLA novels. Like many of the others, this one is written by an old, experienced hand at the comics biz, Denny O’Neil. Like many of the others, it’s a mixed bag. It was finished in 2003, interestingly, but never made it to print until 2005.
Story: First off, this is a Kyle Raynor GL tale. That should be okay, unless you are a huge Hal Jordan fan. O’Neil was part of the group that brainstormed Kyle, so it should work, right? Except … it’s not really a Kyle Raynor tale, but a sort of parallel world Kyle Raynor tale. It goes over his origin at GL, his early challenges, his saving the universe (literally), and becoming, in his own mind, a hero. But some of the particulars are different — not just
a few trivial continuity-boy particulars, but major chunks of Kyle’s backstory, his experiences, the whole basis of the Green Lantern Corps, Hal Jordan’s fate, the origins of the JLA — I mean, profoundly different “This couldn’t be done in the DC Universe” sort of stuff.
And it’s not necessarily better. I mean, yeah, we can avoid some of the clutter of DCU continuity, but what comes back is kind of dry and sterile. There’s a brief, taunting nod to that original continuity — the refrigerator scene, in particular — but then it’s gone and rejected.
Weird.
That said, the story, in and of itself, isn’t bad. We see Kyle progressing from a slacker to a hero, facing tremendous challenges, and coming out triumphant. The best parts of the book are in the first third or so, as Kyle tries to learn how to use the ring. How do you find your way home from orbit, for example. For that matter, how do you keep from suffocating in space? That early discovery period is where the book shines.
But from there, it goes downhill, with more dialog than action, and more Cosmic Stuff than “real” experiences. The cosmic stuff gets more than a bit much — and since that’s two-thirds of the book, that’s a problem. We really don’t need to have Kyle talk about how he can’t quite grasp the weird stuff happening, words fail him, etc., all the time, or over and over.
But all that said, the story hung together pretty decently, had a few twists, a few deus ex machina and Bobby Ewing in the Shower moments, but overall … not bad.
Characters: Kyle’s character (within the bounds described above) is done okay, even pretty well. Problem is, everyone else is a cardboard cut-out. We get only sketchy involvement with the rest of the JLA (who Mysteriously Vanish early on), Ganthet the Oan is a cipher in a red nightshirt, the other aliens are utterly inscruitable, Hal Jordan is both out of character and not all that interesting, and we don’t learn enough of Hal’s companion to build an opinion.
Re-readability: I could imagine rereading this, someday. It’s not written badly, and the story doesn’t depend on solving the puzzle or finding the McGuffin. I just don’t know that I ever will.
Overall: I’m not sure why O’Neil wrote something so unnecessarily non-canon, without even taking a few obvious outs to make it so. He has long experience with GL (both modern versions) and with the DCU, so it wouldn’t be beyond him. He just … doesn’t. And, honestly, the book is less interesting and less rich for all that. Not bad — just disappointingly not good.