Green Lantern
27 years ago - Kyle Rayner is born to a single mom in LA.
10 years ago -17-year-old Kyle becomes a professional cartoonist while attending graphic design classes at UCLA. He meets Alexander Nero in art school.
7 years ago - 20-year-old Kyle leaves school to focus on his art career. He meets fashion photographer Alex DeWitt, and they start dating.
5 years ago - 22-year-old Kyle is handed the last power ring by Gathet, the last remaining Guardian of Oa. Alex DeWit, who was on the verge of breaking up with him, encourages him to become a hero. They witness an attack by Bito Wladon who has escaped prison and attacked the Modoran royal heir in L.A. They try to help bystanders. Alex is injured but she insists that he keep fighting, sacrificing herself to allow him to do so. He becomes the new Green Lantern, moves to New York, and joins Arsenal's Teen Titans, where he meets Donna Troy. He is persued to earth by Yrra Cynril. To protect John Stewart from her, he leads her back out into space, and has to battle her without his ring, managing to barely survive. He unknowingly releases Arthur Light, who has internalized his powers.
4 years ago - 23-year-old Kyle becomes a Justice League reservist when he works with them to defeat Neil Emerson. Jennifer-Lynn Hayden moves to New York and becomes his roommate. He meets Deborah Camille Darnell, who has an apartment in his building. Alexander Nero is found by his anti-oan ring. He attacks Kyle, eventually having his ring removed and placed back in an asylum. He is confronted by Mongul in deep space and manages to defeat him on his own, handing him over to an interstellar prison. He battles Ira Billings alongside Donna Troy & Roy Harper. Rip Hunter shows him the Planetary Quantum Tesseract Hal Jordan is constructing, and together they assemble a group of heroes to stop him.
3 years ago - 24-year-old Kyle is attacked by Martyn Van Wyck and battles to a standstill until the Controllers collect him, leading Kyle into space. Bro'Dee discovers that he is still active and recruits him to stop Atrocitus from making the Red Lantern conversion permanent. Together they destroy the central Red Lantern battery. He steps up to join the Watchtower. The Star Sapphire symbiote attempts to bond with Jennifer-Lynn Hayden to feed off her connection to him, but she rejects it and forces it to find a new host in Deborah Camille Darnell who completely embraces her newfound power. He manages to suppress the symbiote before she escapes.
1 year ago - 26-year-old Kyle joins all the surviving Titans in space to save Donna Troy. While there he learns of Thaal Sinestro amassing army in Qwardian Pocket-Space. He asks John Stewart to take his place in the Watchtower as he assembles a group of former Lanterns to restart the Oan Power Battery and reform the Green Lantern Corp. His relationship with Soranik Natu becomes complicated.
now - 27-year-old Kyle returns to Earth, where he joins Nightwing's Watchtower. John Stewart takes his position on Oa.
For several years in the early to mid nineties, it became a trend to replace every major superhero with newer, younger characters. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman all had new heroes filling their roles, and Green Lantern was clearly the next in line. The was they got Hal Jordan out of the way was pretty epic, but soon we had a brand new Green Lantern in Kyle Rayner.
None of the other characters retained their role for long, but Kyle happened to stand out because he was really, really good. He had a youthful energy and approach to heroics that was reminiscent of early Spider-Man which always a good choice for a new superhero. For ten years, from 1994's Emerald Twilight to 2004's Green Lantern: Rebirth, Kyle was THE Green Lantern. His ongoing quest to discover just what it means to be a Green Lantern and to earn the right to call himself one made for excellent stories, and soon he had achieved a degree of mastery over his ring that left little question that he was one of the best heroes DC has to offer.
None of the other characters retained their role for long, but Kyle happened to stand out because he was really, really good. He had a youthful energy and approach to heroics that was reminiscent of early Spider-Man which always a good choice for a new superhero. For ten years, from 1994's Emerald Twilight to 2004's Green Lantern: Rebirth, Kyle was THE Green Lantern. His ongoing quest to discover just what it means to be a Green Lantern and to earn the right to call himself one made for excellent stories, and soon he had achieved a degree of mastery over his ring that left little question that he was one of the best heroes DC has to offer.
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Kyle's Comic HistoryKyle debuted after the downfall of Hal Jordan. Clark Kent had been killed, Bruce Wayne had had his back broken. Hal, meanwhile, became a genocidal maniac bent or rewriting time itself. It was a shocking change in his character, and having a young new character like Kyle take over as the new Green Lantern could have easily been a cliched misstep, but because he was written with such flourish and innovation the change played out as one of the best new stories in DC.
Kyle became a member of a small-run version of the Titans where he met Donna Troy, and then would step up as a member of Grant Morrison's Justice League. In the very first episode he commented on fighting alongside it's classic lineup, saying "I can't handle this, it's like playing with the Beatles." establishing his role as the newbie and the gateway into the team for the audience. It was here that he befriended Wally West and came into his own, all while having amazing stories of his own in his own book. The return of Hal Jordan left Kyle an outsider in the Green Lantern stories, as they often didn't seem to know what to do with him. The stories were gigantic, altering the very bedrock of the DC Universe, but ultimately, we all agreed, they simply weren't as good as the ones that were being told when Kyle was the main character of the book. Hal felt like the past, and Kyle felt like the future. Once the New 52 happened, more and more new Green Lanterns were added to the story, but the one we all feel was their BEST Lantern just didn't seem to have a home. |
Our Kyle Rayner StoryOne major misstep in the character's early story was the cold-blooded murder of his girlfriend Alex in a deliberate attempt to give him a motivation to be a hero. It is, more or less, his Uncle Ben moment, but it was also a pretty brutal example of a female character being killed specifically to advance a male character's story. In fact, this is the origin of the term 'fridging' for reasons we don't need to get into here. We've worked to make Alex's contribution to his evolution stand while removing the deliberate misogyny in that moment.
Otherwise, we've followed Kyle's comic story more or less identically. Being chosen by Ganthet, his attempt to be a hero in New York City, his stint with the Titans before his membership in the Justice League (which of course, in our story, is actually the Watchtower) The comics featured a lengthy period in which Kyle left Earth for a series of interstellar adventures, and we did the same, allowing Jon Stewart to take over his role in the Watchtower. In our story, this period is actually when Kyle assists in the relighting of the Oan power battery and the restarting of the Green Lantern Corps, a larger story arc we've built that incorporates many classic Green Lanterns from across the galaxy. This leads to a period of service within the new Corp, but ultimately this is a job better suited to Jon, leading to Kyle's return to Earth and his place within the newly rejuvenated Watchtower. |
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Kyle's CostumeKyle's actually been through a number of costumes over the years. Sometimes it's meant to represent his evolution as a hero, sometimes it's him taking on the role of "Ion", a character meant to be a single person wielding the power of the entire Green Lantern Corp. Other times it has more to do with his involvement with the entire "emotional spectrum", (a story arc that introduces several other Latern Corps which ultimately undermines the uniqueness of the Green Lanterns. We're not using it.)
If you're paying attention, however, you'll notice that this page features none of those costumes. We've stuck to the costume he wore when he was first introduced; a costume full of innovation, something that manages to avoid the usual pratfalls of 90's-era costume design and instead look completely unique, making him stand out from amongst all the other Green Lantern characters. A person could argue that part of the reason Kyle has so many costume redesigns is because he's an artist and he likes experimenting with his look, but if that was the case, the costumes would become MORE innovative, not less. We very much prefer Kyle in his original look. His artistic stylings show up more in the way he implements his powers: All the Lantern's light constructs look different, but Kyle's are far and away the most wildly imaginative, and that is a way better depiction of his talent then changing what is already a great costume. |
Kyle's FutureNot every character's future is defined by the people he's romantic with, but there is a very real sensation that Kyle's personal life is always going to depend on his love life. He was briefly dating Donna Troy, but eventually he became romantically involved with his roommate; daughter of the original Green Lantern and field leader of the Outsiders, Jade. This seemed to later take a back seat when he spent time away from Earth, and he would go on to become very intensely involved with fellow Green Lantern Soranik Natu. What does this tell us, beyond the fact that Kyle seems to have a thing for girls with non-standard skin colors? Kyle is a romantic, but he's not really monogamous. You don't get the sense that he would be keeping his romantic entanglements secret from each other. Rather, it feels more like something he would just experience openly. To me, at least, this feels like Kyle isn't a person to live in one place. He's one of several Green Lanterns of Earth, and he seems the one most likely to remain here... and yet he also feels like he will always be on the move.
His new membership of a younger, more dynamic Watchtower puts him among his comtemporaries in a way he's never experience before. These young heroes are a family in a lot of ways, and inviting Kyle among them is like asking him to join their family. It will be interesting to see how a character who in many ways is a consummate loner will respond to a newfound sense of belonging, and what sort of man he will be moving forward. |
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