Was Hal Jordan Wearing a Villain's Ring During Emerald Twilight?

In Left Unresolved, I spotlight storylines that have been, well, left unresolved.

Today, we look at how Hal Jordan was running around with a villain's Green Lantern ring for years, including when he went nuts during Emerald Twilight!

In “Action Comics Weekly” #632 (by Jim Owsley, M.D. Bright and Romeo Tanghal), Hal Jordan was flying through space when he was suddenly pulled into another dimension. He didn't know where he was, until he was recognized by one of the people there as wearing the symbol of their master (who they presumed was Hal's master, as well). He was then brought in to meet the master, Lord Malvolio of the Green Flame!

So, yeah, Hal definitely did not like this guy. The next issue was spent on the run from Malvolio, and ultimately Hal discovered his history, that he was hundreds of years old (his father was an alien who had met an Earthwoman and fell in love and she gave birth to a son, and ultimately Malvolio turned against his father, killed him and took his ring) and had spent his life trying to become a master of Oan energy. This put Hal at a bit of a disadvantage against him…

However, in the third issue of the storyline, Hal finally stepped up his game and really took it to Malvolio hard, almost killed him. In the end, though, Hal decided to spare him, which turned out to be a mistake.

So Hal was now without a power ring, which was not a good spot to be against a powerful bad guy like Malvolio. Hal ran off and found an arsenal of weapons and took on Malvolio with them. Ultimately, it came down to whether Hal was willing to kill Malvolio to defeat him. Hal turned out to be willing to do so…

Hal now had Malvolio's power ring. Oh, but wait! Malvolio was not dead! This was all a trick!!

Yes, a trick, a plan by Malvolio that….has never been resolved.

And a few years later, Hal Jordan went nuts during Emerald Twilight and took on the Green Lantern Corps…all while still wearing Malvolio's ring!

Not only that, but at the end of Emerald Twilight, after Hal Jordan had become Parallax, he abandoned and stepped on the ring…

But then the Guardians fixed that ring…

and gave it to Kyle Rayner…

So that's still the Lord Mavolio ring, right? What the heck? I mean, we all know the real answer – DC just wasn't interested in the Lord Malvolio story, and when Geoff Johns did “Green Lantern: Rebirth”, he obviously didn't think it was worth revisiting an obscure, ignored story from nearly twenty years earlier just to come up with an explanation for why Hal Jordan went evil. But it's still fascinating to know that Hal was rocking a villain's ring during all that time and that Kyle kind of sort of was, too (you could argue that when the Guardians reformed it, it became, in effect, a new ring).

Okay, that's it for this installment! If you have a suggestion for a future installment, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!

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