To many fans, the Green Lantern known as Hal Jordan is one of DC Comics’ greatest heroes. Hal has gone toe-to-toe with just about everything the DC Universe can throw at him and has always come out on top. But unfortunately for Hal, in the eyes of many readers, he remains a boring and generic character.

As the Silver Age Green Lantern, Hal Jordan has been around for quite a few decades. And while his publication history has seen him grow and evolve alongside the rest of the DC Universe, in some ways, Hal retains many traits of the Space Age era in which he was first created. For much of his publication history, Hal was portrayed as an establishment figure and a real stick in the mud, especially when compared to more outspoken Lanterns like John Stewart or Guy Gardner. However, this is exactly what makes Hal Jordan one of the greatest Green Lanterns of all.

The Silver Age Green Lantern Doesn’t Have Much Going On

Green Lantern Corps with Hal Jordan at Center

With fellow fan-favorite heroes like John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, Jessica Cruz, and most recently Jo Mullein filling out the ranks of the Green Lantern Corps, many readers understandably feel that Hal’s time in the spotlight has come and gone. In recent decades, especially since his return in Green Lantern: Rebirth by Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver, Hal has been given an almost Han Solo-inspired persona in which he frequently falls into the maverick role and plays by his own rules. However, while that portrayal has its fair share of fans, it does somewhat detract from one of Hal’s greatest strengths as a literary character: he's not simply boring, he's an actual loser.

Outside his role as Green Lantern, Hal doesn’t have a lot going on. He can never hold down a job, he’s terrible at maintaining personal relationships, and he’s so disconnected from Earth that he barely even registers as his home anymore. In every sense that matters, the Green Lantern persona is who Hal truly is, but the shape that persona takes on can vary from creator to creator, making him an incredibly flexible character that can fit into any variety of storytelling structure or outlandish situation. More so than most of his fellow Justice Leaguers, Hal Jordan’s time as a hero has been marked by dramatic changes both in his identity and within the tone of the stories he leads.

Hal Jordan Is The Most Versatile Green Lantern

Green Lantern Hal Jordan Parallax DC Comics

While he was for a long while considered to be the greatest Green Lantern of all, that didn’t stop him from becoming one of DC Comics’ greatest villains in the form of Parallax. And once that sinister status quo had run its course, he’d seek mystical redemption as the Spectre. Writer J. M. DeMatteis even textually experiments with Hal’s flexibility as a character in the pages of the Green Lantern: Willworld miniseries alongside Seth Fisher and Chris Chuckry, in a madcap story that explores Hal's own psyche and which would hardly work with any of the other more rigidly defined Green Lanterns. Meanwhile, Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp’s recent The Green Lantern leans into Jordan’s volatile nature – to both critical and audience acclaim – by painting him as something of an idiot savant while also placing him in the sort of myriad misadventures, both cosmic and macabre, that only work with a lead as flexibly generic as Hal Jordan himself.

More so than most other Corps members, Hal Jordan has some of the most critically beloved and longest-lasting runs as a lead character. And without a doubt, it’s his somewhat generic personality that lends itself to plugging the fan-favorite Green Lantern into whatever sort of story the creators want to tell. Ultimately, Hal Jordan is many things to many people, but his own publication history proves that from a storytelling perspective, he’s DC Comics’ most flexible Green Lantern.