tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18829500.post115610895364078294..comments2023-10-11T10:40:48.712-04:00Comments on The Miserable Annals of the Earth: Another one bites the dustDoc Nebulahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13052810933464744998noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18829500.post-1156155639829722582006-08-21T06:20:00.000-04:002006-08-21T06:20:00.000-04:00Much of the ill feeling among us Silver Age fans t...Much of the ill feeling among us Silver Age fans towards Kyle Rayner doubtless stems from two factors that have little or nothing to do with the character of Kyle him/itself --<BR/><BR/>(a) Kevin Dooley's churlish, petulant, spiteful, utterly unprofessional attitude in lettercols towards Hal Jordan boosters. I had thought for a very long time that it was impossible to imagine an editor behaving more childishly, and showing his ass more prominently in public, than Mike Gold, but Kevin Dooley came along and proved me completely and utterly wrong.<BR/><BR/>(b) That same attitude, mirrored and amplified a thousand fold, by pretty much every Kyle Rayner fan in existence, towards anyone who advanced the heretical idea that he wasn't, perhaps, the most well conceived, designed, or executed character to wear a power ring ever.<BR/><BR/>Between those two, it wasn't likely Hal Jordan's fans were going to be willing to give Kyle anything like ' a fair chance', and honestly, why should we have been? To my mind, at least, Rayner was a pretty crappy character, just as Dooley is a shitty editor and Marz was and is a lousy writer.<BR/><BR/>Bonding Hal to the Spectre was idiotically contrived, as was the entire Parallax thing. As with Hank Pym losing his mind and punching the Wasp, it's now something that we fans of the characters can accept as part of their background; a dark and shameful chapter in their history that they've since resolved and redeemed themselves from. But at the time this stuff was happening, it was just straight up bad writing.<BR/><BR/>I honestly don't know or care whether Scipio really likes Hal or not. He obviously does really like Kyle, and his favorite era of JLA ever is that godawful Aquaman and the Outsiders period that all sane comics fans simply hold their noses and run past as fast as they possibly can, so clearly his judgement is badly, badly deficient in these areas. He's a smart guy, good writer, and very funny, but his taste in comic book characters seems to be in his ass.<BR/><BR/>As to posting a response to someone when you're angry, well, no, that tends not to work well. Coming after ME, especially on grounds of things like sentence structure, punctuation, and other stuff, when clearly the person attacking me hasn't mastered the basic rudiments of the written version of their native language, is a truly rotten idea.<BR/><BR/>I do get a lot of criticism on various boards about being a 'spelling Nazi'. Many people on these boards don't speak English as a native language, I'm told, and I can't hold them to the same standards as, say, my sixth grade English teacher held ME to when I was 10 years old. I sneer at that nonsense; Internet interaction is nearly entirely textual, and if you can't use the basic tools correctly, you don't belong out here.<BR/><BR/>Certainly, I have no compunction about turning such things around on an idiot who criticizes me (incorrectly) for my use of commas, in a sentence where he misuses a comma himself, and shows he doesn't know how to spell 'sentence'.<BR/><BR/>For all the earlier friction between you and I, which I recollect coming up at first during the long ago Ragnell spat, you at least know how to spell, punctuate, and put a sentence together correctly.Doc Nebulahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13052810933464744998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18829500.post-1156127256967545732006-08-20T22:27:00.000-04:002006-08-20T22:27:00.000-04:00Ah, Hal vs. Kyle, the neverending conflict. I've a...Ah, Hal vs. Kyle, the neverending conflict. I've always liked the Kyle I read (having not read Green Lantern, Waid and Kelly's runs on JLA are all I have to go on). He didn't think he belonged, and struggled to prove that he could carry his weight with the Icons, especially to himself. I thought it made him relatable. Heck, Morrison may have summed it up best when had Kyle say: 'I can't handle this, it's like playing with the Beatles.' <BR/><BR/>I'm pretty much neutral to Hal. I didn't think bonding him to the Spectre made sense (Hal needed to gain redemption, not vengeance), but him being alive and wielding the ring is OK by me. I especially liked that in the current Ion mini-series, Hal disobeyed the Guardians to go out and help Kyle, who had apparently gone nuts (it was actually someone else in disguise), because Kyle had him when nobody else did (the Rebirth mini-series). It was a nice touch.<BR/><BR/>As for Scipio and Hal, I'm going to propose what I call "The Willie McGee Theory". Cardinals fans love Willie McGee. We reminisce about all the great plays he made, and the World Series teams he was part of. But when we do that, we don't just talk about that game-winning home run he hit in '82, we talk about how the pitch before he swung at a ball over his head and just looked awful. Somehow, his foibles made him an even greater hero to us, because we got the sense he was struggling against himself, or maybe that he was pushing up against the extent of his talent level. The fact that Hal seemed to hit his head as often as he did only makes it more impressive that he was "The Greatest of the Green Lanterns!"<BR/><BR/>Of course, it's also possible Scipio doesn't really like/respect Hal Jordan, and this theory more accurately would explain ME liking Hal. It's just something I came up with, and wanted to throw out there.<BR/><BR/>As to the rest of the person's post, I've demonstrated at least a few times what happens when you let something a person said rile you up, and don't stop to consider whether it's worth getting steamed about someone else's opinion. Rarely does it lead to making a coherent argument.<BR/><BR/>Having read your "Crapping On The Shoulders of Giants" post, I also had to laugh that someone said you were John Byrne. Were it true, Byrne would possess more self-loathing than just about anyone I've ever heard of.CalvinPitthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11815632086057048846noreply@blogger.com