Green Lantern is a 1990 relaunch of the DC Comics hero (with as its eponymous Lantern). The comic was launched after Crisis on Infinite Earths.
The first 50 issues primarily star Hal Jordan. Then in the mid-'90s the Emerald Twilight storyline occurs. Hal Jordan became a supervillain called "Parallax" due to witnessing the destruction of his hometown, Coast City.
After Parallax obliterated the entire Green Lantern Corps, a single new replacement was chosen in geeky graphic artist Kyle Rayner, who brought in a whole new generation of readers with his nerd-chic attitude and more imaginative use of his Green Lantern powers.
Green Lantern (1990) story arcs with their own pages include:
- "Green Lantern #48–50: Emerald Twilight."
- "Green Lantern #51-54: A New Dawn."
- "Green Lantern #55: Zero Hour: Crisis in Time!."
- "Green Lantern #81: The Final Night."
Green Lantern (1990) provides examples of:
- '90s Anti-Hero: Guy Gardner as Warrior, though that might have been a Stealth Parody.
- Back for the Dead: Sinestro's return during Emerald Twilight part 3. The character had not been seen for years, apart from an appearance as a spirit possessing John Stewart in Mosaic. Yet in what was meant to be Hal Jordan's final issue as Green Lantern, the Guardians seemingly resurrect Sinestro from his imprisonment inside the Central Power Battery in an attempt to stop Hal Jordan's rampage. It doesn't work, as Hal kills him by breaking his neck. Later stories would reveal that the Sinestro that died was a Parallax-created illusion to help break Hal Jordan's will, but at the time this was meant to be the final showdown between Hal and Sinestro.
- Camp Straight: During Judd Winick's run, Kyle Rayner works for an art director named Andre Choi who initially appears to be a gay stereotype, but when Kyle later asks him about his experiences "coming out" when trying to figure out how to help Terry Berg come to terms with his sexuality, Choi becomes indignant and makes it clear that he is straight, ranting on how annoyed he is that people assume he's gay just because he's thin, dresses well, wears earrings and is an art director.
- Cartwright Curse: Kyle. His first girlfriend was targeted to hurt him, and then... (Of course, Death Is Cheap and the superpowered ones came back, as Donna Troy and Jade can attest)
- Character Shilling: Widespread shilling for Kyle Rayner appeared when he replaced Hal Jordan.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Anya Savenlovich, a Russian woman chosen by Kyle to help form a new Green Lantern Corps during the 90s, only for it not to work, before disappearing off into space.
- Clark Kenting: Kyle Rayner attempted some form of this during his time as Green Lantern, except EVERYONE close to him figured it out in record time. A tiny little domino mask like that really isn't much of a disguise, you know! Guy Gardner and John Stewart don't even bother.
- Cynicism Catalyst: In issue #155, before Kyle Rayner leaves Earth after being traumatized by the brutal hate crime inflicted on his gay assistant Terry, he tells his then-girlfriend Jade (Jennifer-Lynn Hayden, daughter of the first Green Lantern) about his insights into the human psyche during his time as Ion, and what they revealed to him about man's inhumanity to man:
- Evil Counterpart:
- Nero for Kyle.
- Kyle's first evil counterpart was Effigy, a troubled youth who used the fire powers given him by the Controllers for his own pleasure. Writer Ron Marz said he was intended to be Kyle's "Sinestro" but not just "The guy with the yellow ring"... which Nero ended up being!
- Evil Uncle: The "Hard-Traveling Heroes" arc where the respective Green Lantern and Green Arrow are Kyle Rayner and Connor Hawke has Kyle's uncle Zachary serve as the villain, manipulating his nephew into assisting him in a domestic terrorism plot by pretending to be Kyle's missing father Aaron, never revealing the truth until his plan is thwarted and he's dying.
- Eye Scream: Kyle Rayner freaking LOVES this trope. During his first fight with Major Force he had no problem gouging out his eye with a thumb. When depowered and fighting a Cthulhuian horror, he slammed a sharpened bone into its eye. When he fought Major Force again he picked up a shard of glass and gouged his eye out AGAIN! When Parallax taunted him inside his own mind, he picked up a pencil and gouged out its eye. In a fight with Kyle Rayner he will go for the eyes.
- Ironically, Batman's plan against him should Kyle go rogue is to blind him. If Kyle can't see, he can't properly "draw" constructs.
- Family Relationship Switcheroo: The "Hard-Traveling Heroes" adventure between Kyle Rayner and Connor Hawke had the pair search for Kyle's missing father Aaron and run into a man claiming to be Aaron. The man manipulates Kyle into assisting him in a domestic terrorism plot. After the scheme is thwarted, he dies confessing that he's actually Kyle's uncle Zachary and was only pretending to be Kyle's father.
- Fanservice Model: By the time Kyle met her, Jade was a model and photographer. Because of her sensuous personality, she's more considerated as this instead of a Fashionmodel.
- God for a Day:
- When Kyle Rayner became Ion, a being with all the power of the entire Green Lantern Corps, he tried to use his new might to feed starving children in Africa, heal his friend's back-injury, restore his girlfriend Jade's powers, etc, until Superman advises him to back down because people around the world have started to worship him as a god. Soon after he sacrifices the power so that the Guardians of the Universe and the Corps can live again.
- Hal Jordan as Parallax tried to use his godlike power to destroy and remake the universe during the events of Zero Hour: Crisis in Time!.
- Jumped at the Call: Hal Jordan in issue #4. He's spent the previous three and a half issues wandering around, taking odd jobs and trying to find some purpose in life in the absence of the Green Lantern Corps, which didn't exist at the time. When he finds out that an insane Guardian is taking cities from all over the universe and relocating them to Oa, he mans up, recites the GL Oath, and heads out into space to deal with the problem.
- Last of His Kind: Kyle for awhile was the last remaining Green Lantern and Ganthet was the last Guardian.
- Loyal Phlebotinum: Kyle Rayner's ring only worked for him the vast majority of the time, so when someone would try to steal it, they were unable to make it work.
- Mistaken for Gay: During Judd Winick's run, Kyle Rayner finds out that his assistant Terry Berg is gay and having a hard time coming to terms with his sexuality, so he asks Andre Choi how he handled coming out. Andre snaps at Kyle for assuming he's gay.Andre Choi: Why does everyone think I'm gay?! I'm so sorry I'm thin, I'm sorry I dress well, that I have earrings, that I'm an art director. I don't like show tunes, disco does nothing for me and I'm attracted to women. Not. Gay.
- Must Make Amends: Hal Jordan completely loses his sanity and decide to fix his failure to save Coast City... by killing the Green Lantern Corps (They came back), killing Sinestro (He came back), and then killing the universe (it came back)... so he could remake reality "right".
- One-Gender Race: Averted, as Kyle Rayner, when resurrecting the Guardians, chooses to make half of them female in the process.
- The Only One: At one point things got so bad for the Green Lantern Corps that the last Guardian teleported to Earth and threw a ring at a random person. Eventually they got better.
- Pinned to the Ground: On the cover
of issue #112, Fatality pins down Jade with her foot raising her spear to deliver a Coup de Grâce. - Politically Incorrect Villain:
- Issue 93 had Deadman possess Kyle Rayner to take down a homophobic and misogynistic serial killer who was targeting lesbians.
- Judd Winick's run had a two-part story titled "Hate Crime", where Kyle's openly gay friend Terry Berg was severely beaten by a bunch of homophobic punks who saw him kissing his boyfriend David in public.
- Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: Kyle Rayner loses his powers when his confidence is shattered by Megaddon.
- Scenery Censor:
- The sixth annual has Kyle Rayner enter an Edgar Rice Burroughs-influenced fantasy world through a painting he bought. In there, he befriends a woman named Saria Amenthis, who at one point undresses in front of Kyle. She is viewed from the back and has a tree branch obscuring her buttocks while a flower covers up her breast.
- In issue #138, Kyle and Jade visit an alien planet and at one point spend time on a beach. Jade chooses to go topless, much to Kyle's dismay. During this scene, Jade's breasts are obscured by Kyle creating a construct of a censor bar as well as the wing of one of the bird constructs Jade creates to take the censor bar away.
- Shout-Out: During Kyle's tenure on the Green Lantern series, a lot of his constructions were shout outs to Anime, video games, and cartoons. He enjoyed making Mecha and on at least one occasion he made a Chun Li Expy. Apparently Kyle Rayner is a Humongous Mecha otaku.
- Lampshaded in JLA (vol. 2) #3:
Green Lantern: I'm your worst nightmare, pal. A manga nut with a power ring.- And this itself is probably in reference to Steve Gerber's infamous "Elf with a gun" subplot during his run on Defenders.
- Also, Eddie Murphy's "Nigger with a badge" line in Beverly Hills Cop.
- Star-Spangled Spandex: Kyle's second Ion costume.
- Story Reset:
- Targeted to Hurt the Hero: Major Force kills Kyle Rayner's girlfriend Alexandra DeWitt and leaves her remains in the fridge for the hero to find, as revenge for Kyle getting in his way.
- This Loser Is You: The whole point of removing Hal Jordan and replacing him with Kyle Rayner, a completely clueless novice without the faintest idea of how to be a superhero, was to write stories of this type.
- Troubled Fetal Position: Happened to Hal Jordan (as Parallax) in issue #62, after Ganthet allowed Hal to absorb him.
- The Unchosen One: Power rings will choose their successors when their wielder dies. However, Kyle Rayner managed to be a total exception to this rule, as his selection for being a ring bearer was totally random, and a simple case of being in the right place at the right time. Not that it mattered.
- Very Special Episode: Showed up during Judd Winick's run as writer in the Modern Age, though Winick's versions of said stories were widely panned for being way more
Anvilicious than the O'Neill/Adams stories, which used science fiction allegory for their stuff. - Walking the Earth: Hal Jordan during the first half of "The Road Back" storyline. Guy Gardner can't take the fact that Hal is doing this and keeps antagonizing him. Hal eventually snaps out of it.
