DC Comics has built plenty of great characters over the years, but sometimes, those same characters lose their popularity. This happened to some of DC’s Silver Age greats. Characters like Hal Jordan and Barry Allen helped define what DC could be in a new era, but as the ’80s and ’90s rolled around, both characters fell from grace. Allen was replaced in 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, and Wally West has since become the greatest Flash. Jordan would hang on until the mid ’90s, but eventually DC replaced him as well with Kyle Rayner. Rayner was the perfect Green Lantern for the ’90s, and Rayner’s tenure as the star of Green Lantern brought the book back to the top of the DC Universe.
Rayner joined the ranks of the best Green Lanterns, but much like Hal Jordan before him, it wasn’t to last. ’00s saw the company trying to rebuild its Silver/Bronze Age greats, and Hal Jordan was resurrected. Since then, Rayner has been on a downward spiral. While Rayner has been important to evolving the Green Lantern mythos, DC has left him in the lurch, pushing the classic Green Lanterns over Rayner. Kyle Rayner had all the potential in the world, and DC wasted it.
Kyle Rayner Was a Breath of Fresh Air
It’s been about 20 years since Hal Jordan and the original Green Lantern Corps came back to prominence, and a lot of fans don’t really remember much about Rayner’s time as Green Lantern. Hal Jordan in the ’90s wasn’t the character we have today. Jordan, much like Barry Allen, was a refugee from the Silver Age in the modern age. The character just didn’t work anymore, because creators had forgotten to evolve him. Jordan felt old, and Rayner was exactly what the doctor ordered. Rayner was a quintessentially ’90s character, and he fit like a glove. There was an energy to Rayner’s story; instead of big green boxing gloves, Rayner created intricate anime-inspired mecha. The Green Lantern ring is often called the greatest weapon in the universe, and it was Kyle who showed readers just what could be done. The loss of the Green Lantern Corps also helped Rayner shine because he was the only one out there. It made him more important, overall, to the DC Universe. On top of that, it was great seeing this new guy join the pantheon of the DC Universe, and watching how his relationships developed. Reading him and Wally West hanging out in Morrison’s JLA was great, because it showed us a new type of relationship between the Flash and the Green Lantern. Green Lantern was exciting again.
Let’s be real — the best part about Rayner was that he was shiny and new. Seeing him find his place in the universe was a huge part of the fun, and seeing the way his relationships were different from Hal’s and how he was different gave readers something new. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where DC went wrong with Kyle. Most people point at the return of Hal Jordan, but before that Rayner had been losing popularity. The return of Jordan definitely put the nail in the coffin, but it was just the last straw. I’ve always thought that one of the problems with Rayner was that he didn’t really evolve very much as a character. DC sort of kept him in the same place — the guy out there saving the universe and the brash young guy in JLA — and never really allowed him to become the elder statesmen he should have become. However, even that might not have been a problem if DC actually focused more on Rayner in the post-Green Lantern Rebirth DC Multiverse, instead of making characters like Guy Gardner and John Stewart the main non-Hal Jordan Green Lantern. DC still tried to push Rayner, but their idea of pushing him was just giving him new powers. DC could have made Rayner important again, but instead they decided to push the old Lanterns, while creating replacements for Rayner.
Is There Any Fixing Kyle Rayner?
The biggest problem with Kyle Rayner over the years has been character evolution. He was the perfect Lantern for the ’90s, but as DC started to focus more on bringing back classic elements of DC, Kyle got pushed to back of the line. The publisher stopped moving the character forward in any way beyond his powers, and that hurt the character. White Lantern Kyle Rayner was a great idea, but DC didn’t actually build him into a better character, they just gave him new powers.
At this point, it’s going to be very hard to fix Kyle. He’s no longer the new Green Lantern on the block, but DC also doesn’t want to put him in the Guy Gardner role, as one of the Lantern’s biggest guns. Characters like Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz, and Jo Mullein have replaced Kyle as secondary Lanterns in the eyes of fans. There’s no reason to push Kyle anymore. The only way to fix the character would be to push him back to the top of the Lantern pecking order, and that isn’t going to happen. DC has been able to build characters to great heights, but at this point, it’s much too late to do that for Rayner without a major re-evaluation of what the Green Lanterns can be.
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