The fans were outraged. They howled for years. They didn’t buy the Hal Jordan/Spectre comic books and the series was cancelled. The universe was without Hal/Green Lantern/Spectre. Then writers started going back in time and meeting the young Hal/Green Lantern. They found excuses to do this. They even brought young Hal/Green Lantern to the present for a while.

Now matter how much Hal Jordan got killed or had his body thrown into the sun to save the world and redeem himself, he wouldn’t go away. Fandom remembered him much too vividly. Then the DC archives started getting published and a lot of people started asking, Where’s this Hal Jordan/Green Lantern?

The decision was made to bring Hal Jordan back and make him Green Lantern again. Wailing and the gnashing of teeth was heard throughout fandom. I was one of the worst.

Even when I heard Geoff Johns was going to be doing the comic book, I wasn’t happy. After everything that had been done, I figured that this was one save, one retcon (one of the most hated words among comic book fans -- except when a character or a storyline was so badly butchered nothing else could be done -- and don’t even get me started on the “Spider-Man: One More Day” nonsense) no one could pull off.

I snorted in derision. I stamped my feet in annoyance. I bellowed my displeasure for all to hear.

The comics came out and I blew them off. Wasn’t going to read them. I was too busy to read comics at that time anyway.

Then the graphic novel containing the five issues of Green Lantern: Rebirth came out. I was curious, but I resisted. After all, wasn’t I inordinately busy? And then there was that whole doubting thing.

The fans, however, loved what Geoff Johns did. And I have to admit, after reading the graphic novel, I totally have to agree. Geoff Johns is one of the most brilliant writers I know. He pulled a hero out of the burning building that had been made of Hal Jordan’s life. From the tattered fabric of the Green Lantern Corps history, Johns saved the best part of the mythos and made it stronger by making it more detailed and complete.

The writing in the graphic novel is intensely introspective not only for Jordan, but for several other major characters as well. Johns reforged views on Kyle Rayner, the newest Green Lantern who some of the old guard hated from the time he took over Hal’s magazine, Guy Gardner, and even Sinestro, a long time villain of Hal’s who had at one time trained him. Everyone was a part of what had happened to Hal Jordan, and we get to see how Parallax came about.

Johns figured out why the Green Lantern’s rings were vulnerable to yellow, and he told all of us. He was the first among us to notice it when Hal first started to lose it, and why. When we thought Hal had killed Sinestro, Johns knew the true story. He even knew about the deal Sinestro struck with the being known as Parallax while Sinestro was imprisoned within the Power Battery on Oa, the planet of the Guardians.