Original Green Lantern concept created by Martin Nodell and Bill Finger.
Hal Jordan created by John Broome and Gil Kane.
"In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape by sight! Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power in a different light!" - Last thoughts of Hal Jordan.
Personal Details
Codename: Green Lantern, Parallax
Overview
For millennia the Guardians of the Universe had from the planet Oa at the centre of the known universe controlled a 3600 strong army of agents called the Green Lantern Corps. The passing of a member of the Corps was noted but life went on. That was until the death of Abin Sur unleashed his replacement into the unsuspecting universe. Hal Jordan had arrived.
Hal Jordan rose to become the greatest of the Green Lanterns faithfully surviving his masters the Guardians. Initially a cocky but natural Green Lantern, he soon found his place in the forefront of the Corps and as a founding member of the JLA. However over the years his career as GL slowly destroyed his personal life and his relationship with Carol Ferris, this forced Hal to mature and to begin questioning his position in the universe.
Hal was the only GL to know the true reasons that the GLC was set up and grew to see the arrogance of the Guardians whom time and time again reined him in over differing styles. Never full happy with authority and responsibility Hal nevertheless obeyed the Guardians until the day of the destruction of Coast City. In was then that Hal accepted his responsibility fully and fought an open war with the distant Guardians transforming himself into Parallax.
Many saw Parallax as a radical departure for Jordan and as a villain, it was merely the style of the man. To go against the stream, to rewrite the rule book and to succeed where all others had failed. And that is how he died saving the Earth from a threat when all others as failed. He died as he lived: A Hero!
Background
To fly and to soar higher than the rest is part of the Jordan family genes. Hal like his father was a test pilot, a former member of the USAF and a graduate in Aerospace Engineering working for Ferris Aircraft in Coast City, California. As a test pilot he had to endure the shadow of his father who also worked for Ferris and had to balance the professional and private parts of his romance with Carol Ferris, the daughter of the company owner.
Hal would have remained a normal test pilot if it had not been for the calling of the dying alien Abin Sur (a member of the Green Lantern Corps) who transported Hal to his downed craft and passed on his ring to Hal. In an instance the universe opened to Hal Jordan as he fought the alien called Legion that had killed Sur. Using his ring to learn about the Corps he tracked down fellow Green Lantern Tomer-Re of Xudar that introduced him to the planet Oa just in time to watch the Guardians of the Universe emerge from a period of meditation/suspended animation.
Jordan was assigned to Kilowog of Bolovax Vik who pushed the rookie Hal Jordan through his basic training. It was during this period that Hal Jordan proved himself to the Guardians and first displayed the questioning innovative streak that would characterise his experiences with the corps as he charged his power ring from the central power battery (a feat that was thought impossible) and single-handedly defeated the monster Legion.
Jordan returned to Earth shortly afterwards to serve a 90 day drink driving charge. During his period inside prison he received further training from Sinestro of Korugar and was instrumental in exposing Sinestro as the dictatorial ruler of Korugar. Once Hal was freed from prison he began a full career as Green Lantern of Sector 2814. During those early years Hal fought such villains as Hector Hammond, the rouge Sinestro and the various forces of Qward. Enjoying the fame that being a GL brought he became a founding member of the Justice League and often operated as the spokesperson for the group. It was with the JLA that Hal first met and became friends with the original Green Arrow.
The stress of being a Green Lantern put a rift between Hal and Carol and she left him for a man called Jason Belmore. Ultimately she would end her engagement to Belmore to return to Hal only for him to reveal to her that she was actually the villainess Star Sapphire. During this time Hal had left Ferris Aircraft and had worked variously selling both toys and insurance. Hal remained much as he had always been fairly easy going and suppressing his urge to question things until he got tangled up with Green Arrow's more liberal out look in Star City.
Green Lantern and Green Arrow found themselves on different sides of a tenancy dispute between a local landlord and his tenants. This experienced opened Hal's eyes to the real world of Earth, he had spent so long amongst the stars that he had lost touch with what it meant to live on mother Earth. With Green Arrow and Appa Ali Apsa (one of the Guardians of the Universe, challenged by Green Arrow to come to Earth and observe), Hal travelled around the north American continent. During this process seeds of doubt were sowed in Hal's head and he started again to ask questions to analyse his own actions.
After the journey had ended Hal returned to Carol and set up his own truck firm. When Hal's designated backup Guy Gardner suffered an accident Hal had to recruit John Stewart to be his new back up. When Guy recovered Hal handed over a duplicate ring to him because Hal needed to go and have his ring checked out by the Guardians. It was revealed that it was actually the Power Battery that was faulty, it exploded shortly afterwards seriously injuring Gardner who suffered brain damage while fighting the forces of Qward.
Amidst confusion at Ferris Aircraft Hal was sentenced by the Guardians to send a year in exile from Earth as punishment for arguing with them over his choice of assignments. After his year long punishment he returned to Earth to find that a individual called Jason Bloch was plotting to destroy Ferris and Hal was forced to fight the Demolition Team. He nearly did not stop them because of off world commitments the Guardians forced him to accept. Hal Jordan had had enough of the interfering of the Guardians and resigned from the GLC. He had left the Corps for Carol but fate separated them when Carol fully merged with the Star Sapphire persona to become the queen of the Zamerons. Hal rejected the being that she had become and she departed hating him.
Without Carol as a link outside of the Corps Hal eventually returned to duty during the Crisis on Infinite Earth's when a rouge Guardians gave him a power ring with an alternative power source so that he could aid the aggressive and disturbed Gardner attack the Anti-Monitor's base. John revealed to Hal that this would actually strengthen their enemy, Hal managed to stop Guy. After the Crisis had passed he was reinstated as a fully member of the Green Lantern Corps just in time to see the Guardians and the Zamerons leave this dimension in order to continue their genetic line.
Sector boundaries were erased and Hal became the leader of a group of Green Lanterns based on the planet Earth including Kilowog, Arisia, John, Katma and Salaak. The group set up itself during a large media frenzy and for sometime aided the superhumans of Earth. Trouble started brewing when the young Arisia infatuated with Hal used her power ring to age herself into a young woman so that Hal would take notice of her. Shortly after the creation of the New Guardians Sinestro returned.
Sinestro battled the GLC and was captured after a fierce battle. The assembled GLC decided to execute Sinestro for his actions. However as they used they rings to kill him the Main Power Battery exploded. The reason was due to a pact that the Oans had made with the Zamerons aeons ago when the females had left the males to their meditations and had taken up with the males of the Korugar as a sign of good will the Guardians built into the battery a self destruction system should its energies ever be used to kill a Korugarian. Hal with Appa entered the power battery to stop the chain reaction destroying the universe, in the process he battled Sinestro's spirit resulting in all Green Lantern rings everywhere being destroyed except for his, Ch'ps and Guy's.
Hal returned to Earth and continued as Green Lantern, trying to be the hero despite the roller coaster life that he followed. Hal decided to drop out of sight and took a string of manual jobs across the country. He was pulled back into the mainstream by the situation on Oa. Appa had gone mad taking cities and sections of hundreds of planets and depositing them on Oa creating a mosaic world. It took the return of the Guardians of the Universe and the combined efforts of Hal and Gardner to defeat Appa.
Once again Hal was pulled into the duty of the reformed Corps, a few old GL's survived including the humans and Kilowog plus a few others but numbers were severally depleted. Much to Hal's annoyance the Guardians made Guy Gardner Green Lantern of Earth and forced Hal to roam the universe being the chief scout and trainer for a new generation of the Green Lantern Corps. As the corps grew in numbers Hal was able to convince the Guardians the perhaps he should take back his old job from Gardner, but the Guardians decided that they two men must settle it themselves.
Hal Jordan tried talking sense to Guy but was attacked for his actions. The entire situation resulted in a old fashioned fist fight of Guy's prompting (Hal always let him get under his skin) as the assembled GLC and JLI watched on, the winner got to be the Green Lantern of Earth, the looser would quit the corps and give in his ring. Guy had the upper hand for the majority of the fight but Hal knew that he could not let Guy loose with the power of the GL ring and eventually managed to defeat Gardner. Hal Jordan was back as Green Lantern of the Earth sector. Hal would remain in this position for a brief few months even becoming leader of Justice League Europe for a time until the combing of Mongul.
In the wake of the death of Superman, the Cyborg and the alien tyrant Mongul had teamed up to turn Earth into a new Warworld. The first phase was to create two massive engines to propel the planet out of it's orbit, located on the sites of Metropolis and Coast City. While Superboy managed to save Metropolis - Coast City and it's seven million inhabitants were destroyed. It took the combined efforts of Hal and the resurrected Superman to stop the deadly duo but in the aftermath everything that Hal cared for, all his family, school friends and dreams had died with the destruction of Coast City.
Hal attended the ceremony to dedicate a memorial flame to the dead but he could not let go, he used his ring to create an emerald dome over the site of Coast City. He tried to recreate the city as an emerald image, in grief he brought forth past dreams, trying to let the dead live once more, to try and live up to what he saw as his failed responsibility to the deceased. The Guardians watched on and concluded that Hal was not acting as a hero but was acting for personal benefit in trying to ease his grief. Their inflexibility and rigid holding to their tenet's put the final wedge between them and the person who had once been their most faithful champion. Needing more power to rebuild Coast City Hal rampaged his way to Oa in the process battling the new GLC that he had helped build up, he defeated long time friends.
The Guardians grew desperate and resurrected Sinestro to battle Hal. Hal killed Sinestro and Kilowog in his path to the Main Power Battery. He crossed the line and knew that there was no going back. He absorbed the power of the main battery and in the process destroyed all but one of the Guardians. A new being emerged from the battery, Hal Jordan was Green Lantern no more, he was Parallax an entity with the power that he needed to recreate Coast City. The last Guardian Ganthet (who had often spoken up for Hal in the past) reformed the ring that had once belonged to both Abin Sur and Jordan and passed it onto a young artist Kyle Rayner to become the last of the Green Lanterns.
Hal Jordan as Parallax followed the Cyborg across the universe gathering more and more power at each stage until he reached the level where he had the power to not just rebuilt Coast City but to restart the universe, reforming it in his own image so that Coast City was never destroyed. He used entropy fissures to wipe out existence at both ends of the timestream and to slowly destroy the universe so that he could start a new. Ultimately it was his replacement Kyle Rayner and his former ally Oliver Queen that defeated Hal.
Vastly depowered by the event Hal eventually managed to return and tried to take back his ring from Kyle. He was forced to battle the assembled Justice League and a powerless Kyle who made him realise that there really was no going back. He departed to search out the Cyborg whom he followed half way across the universe to the massive wall of promethium giants that surround the Source. There he battled the Cyborg who was apparently killed by imagedsof the seven million inhabitants of Coast City. At the sametime as this was happening a creature called the Sun Eater had attached itself to the surface of Earth's Sun cutting off all live giving light from Earth. The planet was slowly freezing to death.
All attempts to remove it had failed, even Superman was powerless as the source of his powers the Sun itself was cut off to him. Kyle Rayner tracked down Hal as a last resort and asked him to help. Hal teleported Kyle back to Earth and decided to take a look for himself. After talking briefly with his former allies and healing John Stewart he finally met up with Carol. He offered to take them both somewhere far away and to spare her the destruction of Earth. But she told him that he knew that wasn't right and that he really knew what he had to do, as he did all along. With that Hal vanished from her life, she knew that it would be the last time that she would see him.
After the meeting with Carol there was little else to do, he met with the assembled heroes and told them of his plan, some welcomed him back, others like the Batman could not forgive him his actions - this made no difference to Hal he was about to do what he had to do. Even Ganthet offering him a GL ring to return to the old ways could not put Hal off course. The Sun Eater needed to be destroyed to save Earth and there was only one person with enough power to accomplish that - Parallax. He used emerald light to drive back the Sun Eater at one side and absorbed into in to himself of the other, it took all his gathered power to destroy the Sun Eater seemingly killing him in the process.
Hal Jordan was born into a family of heroes and he died a hero, at the last he was true to his nature as a Emerald Champion!
Powers and Abilities
The Green Lantern Power Ring has rightly been called the most powerful weapon in the universe, yet it is far more than a simple weapon. Created by the now defunct Guardians of the Universe it is powered by their unique mental energies channelled via a large central power battery located on the planet Oa.
The Ring has the ability to shape a form of emerald energy to form physical constructs such as force bubbles, giant sized fists, body armour, etc. These forms are limited via the imagination and will power of the user. The ring can also provide life support to the wear in hostile environments and any other persons the wielder chooses. The rings can propel the Lantern through space at many times the speed of light and have been observed opening up space warps in the past.
Another function of the ring is as a database, language translator and communications device for the Green Lantern Corps. While primarily a scientific device the rings' abilities are truly limited only by the mind of the wielder, they have in the past been observed to produce effects that border on the verge of magic, these cases are normally dismissed by most observers. All the original power rings wielded by the GLC had to be charged from miniature power batteries once every 24 hours, the Guardians also placed an impurity into the energy supply so that the rings' energies would not effect anything yellow.
The powers of Hal Jordan after he became Parallax are best described as god like, he could absorb massive amounts of energy and expend that energy in a form reminiscent of the Green Lantern Ring except vastly more powerful.
Recommened Reading
Parallax - Rare - Gil Kane
Beware My Power - Very Rare - Gil Kane
Allies
Appa Ali Apsa - A Guardian of the Universe who was reduced to a mortal level as punishment for his inaction while travelling with Hal and Ollie. Later went insane.
Arisia of Graxos IV - A young member of the GLC who was infatuated with Hal. Used her ring to make her appear older so that he would notice her. Later worked at Warriors before being murdered.
Carol Ferris - The split side of Star Sapphire and the owner of Ferris Aircraft. She was Hal's long standing girlfriend was out of Coast City while it was destroyed.
Ganthet - The last of the Guardians of the Universe revealed to Hal the truth about the origins of the Oans.
Green Arrow I - Hal's best friend in the JLA, they travelled across the US in a landmark series of stories.
Guy Gardner - Hal's rival in the GLC for the position of Green Lantern of Earth. Initially unstable he has matured since he left the corps and is now owner of the Warriors bar.
John Stewart - Hal's replacement when Guy was injured. He has served in both the GLC and the Darkstars. He now runs an architecture firm in New York.
Katma Tui of Korugar - The wife of John, she was murdered by Sinestro.
Kilowog of Bolovax Vik - A large warthog like alien that put Hal through basic training.
Tom Kalmaku - An aerospace mechanic that worked with Hal over the years at Ferris. Is currently working on a book about the legacy of Green Lantern.
Major Enemies
Demolition Team - A supervillian team that raged a war against Ferris Aerospace.
Doctor Polaris - Basically a good man with the ability to control magnetic fields. His good side has been expunged by Neron.
Ecilpso - The ancient god of vengeance and forerunner of the Spectre.
Goldface - A villain clad all in yellow to defeat the yellow impurity in the GL ring.
Hector Hammond - A super brained genius with a massive head and mental powers.
Sinestro - A former member of the GLC and at one stage Hal's trainer. He was responsible for the death of Katma Tui and when finally executed by the Corps his spirit possessed the central battery. The Guardians called him back to stop Hal but he was killed in the process.
Star Sapphire - Queen of the Zamerons and the dark split side of Carol Ferris.
Tattooed Man - A man who could make real items and effects appear by touching one of his special magical tattoos.
Weaponers of Qward - Inhabitants of the planet Qward in the anti-matter universe.
Alter Ego: Harold (Hal) Jordan
Occupation: Former test-pilot and Green Lantern.
Known Relatives: Martin (father), Jim and Jack (brothers), Jeremiah (uncle), Lawrence (cousin), Hal (cousin), Jason (nephew), Jennifer and Jan (nieces)
Group Affiliation: Formally the Green Lantern Corps and a founding member of the Justice League of America.
Base of Operations: Mobile
First Appearance: SHOWCASE #22 (September-October, 1959)
Height: 6' 0"
Weight: 186 lb.
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Brown
Overpower Cards
Energy: 7 Fighting: 6 Strength: 3 Intellect: 5
Heroic Redemption - Uncommon - Gil Kane
In Blackest Night - Uncommon - Gil Kane
In Brightest Day - Common - Gil Kane
Zero Hour - Very Rare - Gil Kane
JLA, Related Icons and images are copyright DC Comics or their original creators/artists and are used without premission. This site is non-profit making and in no way exists to defraud the original artist/writers of the discussed material - it is a work in homage and it is hoped that it is seen as such. All questions please address to Jason Kirk.
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