Comic Book Legends Revealed #185

This is the one-hundred and eighty-fifth in a series of examinations of comic book legends and whether they are true or false. Click here for an archive of the previous one-hundred and eighty-four.

In honor of the chat transcript going up later today between Mark Waid and myself, here is a special All-Waid edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed!!

Let's begin!

COMIC LEGEND: Waid and Alex Ross were forced to use Alan Scott instead of Hal Jordan in Kingdom Come.


A few people have asked me this question in various phrasings over the years, but reader Florian was the most recent AND the one who asked this specific variation on the question:

When Mark Waid and Alex Ross did Kingdom Come a few years ago, Ross refused the use of Kyle Rayner as Green Lantern in the story, rather wanting Hal Jordan in the role. DC didn't like the idea because Jordan was still used as the villainous Parallax at the time, so they ended up using Alan Scott as the only Green Lantern in the story.

By the way, Kingdom Come is over a dozen years old. That's hard for me to believe. Comic Book Resources actually started up as a Kingdom Come fan-site! Times surely have a-changed.

In any event, I asked Waid about this awhile back, and he said (note that Waid explicitly added that this is based on what he recalls from twelve years ago, and was not presuming to speak for Alex Ross) that, basically, yeah, they did not want to use Kyle Rayner in Kingdom Come.

However, Alan Scott was not forced upon them, but something they came up with on their own.

Alan is on the top right of this Absolute Kingdom Come cover (click to enlarge)....

Here is a recent action figure made of the Kingdom Come Alan Scott...

You could obviously argue that they came up with him on their own because they figured DC wouldn't let them use Hal, who was still Parallax at the time, if they DID want to use him, but in the end, it was their decision, not DC's.

In fact, Waid recalled only one thing being "forced" upon he and Ross, and that was that Superman would have to have long hair in the flashbacks, as he did in the comics at the time.

Note that Ross, in the flashbacks, makes a point to have it be a ponytail and not the mullet look of 1993-96.

Oddly enough, Superman cut his hair just a few short months after Kingdom Come ended.

So yeah, sorry, Kyle Rayner fans! The Kingdom Come guys weren't big fans! But at least DC did not force them to use Alan Scott!


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