Thursday, June 28, 2007

An Open Letter to Geoff Johns From Your Average Green Lantern Fan

Dear Sir,

I've been a Green Lantern fan, a "Fantern" to use the embarassing vernacular, since I was a teenager. For the past few years, with few exceptions, Green Lantern Fandom has been calm and peaceful by comparison to the 90s. Bringing back Hal while keeping Kyle active was a beautiful idea that made majority of fans I interacted with happy. Yes, there were problems with lateness and people worrying about their favorites and John not being used but on the whole the majority of the Fandom put aside their differences, their personal insults, their undying character loyalty and geeked out in reasonable harmony for several years.

Today I have been checking the message boards, the blogs, and the livejournal communities. There is obsequious praise for yesterday's Sinestro Corps special, as well as conspiracy theories, personal attacks, ancient grudges, whining, complaining, and creator-bashing creeping into the conversation as anxiety sets in. Increasingly, criticism of the book is met with dismissal and personal insults by the fans who enjoyed it. While it is still quite tame in comparison to how things erupted in the 90s, I perceive that a second Hal-Kyle Fan War is inevitable and the fandom risks returning to the dark ages of insanity and obsessiveness.

So far, the only drawback I can see to that is that last week I wanted to post a rant for Friday Night Fights which pointed out that all of the Green Lanterns were alive, well, and active, show a picture of Green Lantern punching out the Flash and end with "Eat it, Flash-fans!" I could not find a picture that captured the sentiment and so I put it off a week. Too late now.

Other than that, though, this is good. It was really getting boring around here. Everyone but the John fans were so fucking happy (and the John fans were generally fucking quiet) that it was like being in the Twilight Zone. Things were getting so sickeningly good-willed that I was afraid to enter a Green Lantern fansite for fear of encountering a truckload of nerds gathered around the Central Power Battery, holding hands and singing Kum Ba Fucking Yah.

Seriously, I can't deal with that sort of thing.

This most recent story is a step towards proper interfan relations, and I wish you luck in bringing us back to the fandom I knew and fell in love with as a punk-ass kid.

Thank you for working so hard to bring the true nature of Green Lantern fans to light, and please disregard the previous hate letter that I sent when I was afraid you'd fuck Kyle up badly. I was actually very impressed with how you handled the matter, and found that my sometimes favorite Lantern was treated well. Also, that letter isn't written in real blood anyway.

Sincerely yours,
A Rabid Kyle Rayner Fangirl

P.S.: Bring Back Katma Tui

P.P.S.: Now, motherfucker.

17 comments:

  1. I completely agree with you on this. I have never been called a Fantern, nor would I [i]ever[/i] let someone call me that and get away with it, but I have been a faithful reader for a long time.

    Sinestro Corps seems like a fresh idea, with so many possibilities, that I could see the Corps get back to the one I love and remember.

    All this infighting and snide remarks about Hal leave me a bit sick to my stomach, so I hope they make Hal a badass motherfucker again, so all these little punk ass Lantern noobs will learn some goddamn respect.

    And this made me laugh hard btw:

    "P.S.: Bring Back Katma Tui

    P.P.S.: Now, motherfucker."

    I couldn't say it better myself.

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  2. GRRRRR. FIRST my BART, then my KYLE!

    GRRRRR.

    Well, I do have to agree that doing it to Kyle at this point is less than what they did to Hal - I mean, we never get to think that Kyle is really like that.

    But still...

    Bring Back Kyle Rayner.

    Now, motherfucker.

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  3. For those of you who didn't realize this comment thread contains spoilers, I am about to reveal the entire fucking plot of the special, so avert your eyes.

    Sin, in that special, Kyle (feeling secure in his power and competence) was suddenly kidnapped from the safest place in the universe where he'd been surrounded by the men he trusts more than anyone else in the universe to the most hostile place in the known Multiverse, which was covered in corpses. There he was unable to contact help, but managed to go toe to toe with the entire Sinestro Corps, being shot simultaneously by all of them several times and holding his own well enough that he needed to be shot from the back. Oh, then he was grabbed by a scary lizard guy who put him into a hold and was obviously using it to hurt his chest and arms, and there was some slimy (probably smelly) thing with huge tentacles holding his legs still and coiling around his neck, tightening it at appropriate times (Check out his face during this part, it becomes obvious he's being squeezed and bruised) while the worst enemy the GLC has ever had comes up and cuts his fucking chest open. Then, that big enemy pulls his heart out, which is apparently some gigantic spacewhale parasite puppy that had been fused to his willpower for an extended period of time. He finds this out (knowing better than anyone who hadn't actually been possessed by the thing the horror of what had happened to Hal with Parallax) as that creature which is fused to his will and his soul is torn violently from him (quite possibly taking a few pieces of his psyche with it) leaving him completely human and completely helpless for the first time since the last time he met up with Sinestro. Up until this point, he's been the biggest baddest kid on the block, and now he's a helpless baby.

    He's not freaked out enough by all crap, and mouths off to the guy who is holding prisoner, and who has just torn out his heart. So Sinestro, having done all of that shit to him in the span of ten or twenty minutes, still had to drop the fucking bomb about his mother before Kyle got freaked out enough to be vulnerable to Parallax possession.

    Dude, we still have our Kyle, and he is awesome, and we will be treated to delicious angst and misery in the upcoming interaction between Kyle and Hal (I'll admit it, I was hoping for this plotline back in Infinite Crisis and was a bit disappointed not to see it. This has been rectified) as Kyle is forced to fight his friend and blames himself for his weakness in being taken over, and Hal has to find a way to fight Parallax without hurting Kyle.

    The entire fucking plot of this crossover is set up as Hal repays Kyle for Rebirth by helping him get the same giant yellow spacebug off his back that was after Hal before.

    Oh, and Wally West is the One True Flash.

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  4. and the John fans were generally fucking quiet

    Just like John! Hey yo!

    I love that Sinestro calls John Stewart "angry". It's like he hasn't read a Green Lantern comic in over twenty years. Seriously, when was the last time John actually got angry at anything?

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  5. Being a fan of Transformers, but not a "transfan," for all that term implies, I see the same thing going on with that fandom.

    The fandom has always been at each other's throats, especially since its revival with Beast Wars in the late 90's (sparking the "Trukk. Not. Munkey!" debates).

    Fans found every little thing to argue about (posability issues, G1 vs anything that came after it, which one, Frenzy or Rumble is red and which one is blue, are the Japanese toys really better than the US ones, etc.). The movie news added to it, with some people hating the new look and others embracing it. Michael Bay did his part, mouthing off against the old school fans every chance he could.

    But lately, with the movie premiering next week, things seemed to calm down. Everyone seemed to hold their breaths and hope for the best with the movie.

    Then, this past week, news of the new animated series broke, complete with pictures in the style of the Teen Titans. cartoon started appearing. The fans split again, and it was glorious.

    So it's not just confined to Green Lantern, it's basic human nature, when things get too lovey-dovey and calm, we need something to stir up a little shit now and again.

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  6. Well, that was nicely reasoned, and even polite. Sort of. It does indeed suck to be a Flash fan.

    And thank you for pointing out that Kyle did indeed go down kicking and screaming and fighting, to all the people who have been complaining that he was taken out too easily. Sheesh!

    John had a rather shining moment I thought, when he calmly took out Bedovian in the middle of the chaos. Such a "John" thing to do.

    And Sinestro, in his taunts to Kyle scoffs at John, Guy and Hal, which just goes to show that Sinestro isn't really quite as smart as he thinks he is.

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  7. What I want to know is why is Paralax/Kyle in green? Shouldn't he be in yellow? Will he be using green power blasts like Hal did, or yellow like the Sinestro Corps do?

    Sure, the whole costume is a play on the one that Jordan wore, but at that time, Jordan was still using the power of OA and not the yellow power.

    All in all, I'm most excited about the Cyborg Superman smashing Coast City again.

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  8. You now understand why it's a lot safer to follow the adventures of a 'dead' character (Jonah Hex). I mean, It's not like thet're gonna throw him into the future or anything, or have him team up with Booster [urp] Gold.

    Are they?





    ARE THEY?!?!?!?!?!

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  9. I really love the fact that, since Rebirth Johns has been constantly showing Kyle to be the best Green Lantern...period.
    The most powerful, the most respected..the most human.
    Yeah Hal gets all of the press, but Kyle is the one who gets the job done and sits at the right hand of the guardians.

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  10. Yeah, but who in their right mind wants to sit at the right hand of the Guardians?

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  11. I must be thick or something. I just don't get why you address Johns as "motherfucker" at the end of the letter, when the rest of the letter is praising his work, and he had nothing to do with the death of Katma Tui way back when. Is the whole thing just a send-up of the fickleness of fans and the inability to ever really please them? I've been mulling it over all da, but I just don't get it.

    I liked the rest of the letter, but calling him "motherfucker" just seemed wrong to me. (And I'll call a motherfucker "motherfucker" when he motherfucking deserves it, so it's not just the gutter talk.)

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  12. Rob -- It was a joke. Have you ever seen how fans address creators?

    OH MY GAWD YOU ARE THE BEST WRITER EVER BUT YOU HAD BETTER DO THIS OR ELSE!!!!!

    This was a humor post, Rob. Jokes about fans and open letters to writers, not an actual letter to Geoff Johns.

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  13. That's what I thought, but for some reason I had a hard time connecting with it. Like I said -- I must be thick.

    Thanks for clearing it up for me.

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  14. I keep getting to "fantern" and having to start over.

    I hesitate to ask, but did you just make that up or is it a real (relatively) term?

    Does that make me Spider-Fan? Flash is one of my favorite heroes... am I a Flan?

    The comedic potential is endless here.

    Flan. Ha!

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  15. Rob -- Sorry to snap at you. I just saw a livejournal post where people think they've caught Johns in an editorial mistake when its over something Sinestro said to demoralize Kyle.

    The idea the bad guy might just be lying doesn't seem to occur to them.

    Totally unrelated to what you said, but that's what put me in a snippy mood. :)

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  16. No sweat, Ragnell. I just took it as the natural frustration anyone feels about having to explain a joke. Grodd knows, I've had to do it enough...

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  17. Oh, dear.

    It is quite possible that I qualify as a...

    FLANTERN.

    *sigh*

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