John Stewart, We Hardly Know You

Ragnell the Foul wrote, the other day, wanting to know who John Stewart is. (This is the Green Lantern, not the comedian or the Earl of Mar.)

Here's most of my response:

John Stewart is a builder.

He became an architect because he wanted to build things. He's not satisfied with just designing buildings, though, he likes to get in and actually be part of the building process. He likes to know that he helped to put the forms together so the foundation could be laid. He likes to be able to point to a wall and say that he put the drywall up. And he likes to visit the places he designed and help build to see them being used by people. He designs offices and superhero headquarters, but his real love is designing something families will live in, whether it's a house or an apartment building, or a tenement.

After Hal "quit" the Corps, John saw the Corps as a place to build a brotherhood, so to speak. These people weren't quite a family, but they were all united with a cause of protecting the galaxy. Here were, at the time, 3600 people, each a member of different species, who could work together toward a common goal. This was something that John was always looking for.

Katma Tui was his chance to build a family, the thing he values more than anything else. With her, John could bring new life into the universe and teach that life to value all other life and to bring people together because individuals working as a community are much stronger than individuals working toward their own goals.

The Mosaic World was where John's values were really put to the test. He built a strong community out of groups whose differences were far more than just skin deep as he rebuilt himself. He proved that he can't allow himself to quit.

John's the type of man who can't just do something and then move on. He has to see the consequences of his actions and then attempt to fix them, which was why the death of his wife and the destruction of Fatality's home world hit him so hard; he blamed himself and he couldn't see a way to correct his mistakes. He's the kind of man who knows that upkeep is as important as the initial building.

Honestly, my knowledge of John Stewart isn't that great, compared too many people out there. What I wrote about him is, I think, more the way I want him to be in the comics than he actually is. I know him from his appearances in the early issues of Green Lantern vol. 3, his short stint in the JLA, and the few issues of Green Lantern: Mosaic my brother bought.

My brother was the Green Lantern fan, not me. So, when he decided not to buy Green Lantern: Mosaic, there wasn't much I could do about it. (We were both on very limited budgets.) He did, however, buy a few issues and there's one that convinced me that John Stewart is one of the greatest characters yet to come out of the DCU.

In the issue, Hal Jordan (considered by too many people out there to be the "greatest" Green Lantern) confronts John about what's happening to the humans (Hal sort of ignores that there are about a dozen other species there, too) on Mosaic World. Hal's especially concerned with a woman named Rose, who Hal had (or nearly had, I can't remember) a fling with back in the days he was trying to "find himself" before the Guardians came back, but now she's with John and Hal doesn't like it. He want's to take her back to Earth. John wants to talk with Hal over coffee. They get the coffee and Hal tells John he's gone nuts (which isn't a leap, since John had essentially been raped by the insane Guardian who created Mosaic World). John says he's fine and Hal decides to do a mind scan. John blocks it. Hal picks a fight. So, they fight. I think it was a mental thing. Hal splits himself into dozens of identical copies and advances on John. John splits himself into dozens of different aspects of himself. Where Hal revels in the order and unity, John thrives on knowing that he's more than just one thing. John's a little kid. He's a gang banger. He's a woman. He's a giant fat man (who sounds like Louis Armstrong to me, for some reason). He's a pimp. He's a cop. He's hundreds of different things all in one body. And John's variety beats Hal's uniformity.

(The issue's spectacular. It's science fiction and action and psychology in 22 pages of pictures and word. I wish I owned it. I wish I swiped it from my brother's collection. I didn't though. I guess I'll have to keep looking at shops that are old enough to have back issues from the early 90s.)

I don't follow the newest volume of Green Lantern religiously, but I'll buy it for certain characters. (So far, I bought the one with Batman, the ones with the Cyborg Superman (my favorite Green Lantern villain), the ones where the new Global Guardians appeared. I'll probably buy the Sinestro Corps issues, too.) John appeared in one issue, for about eight panels and that's all I know about it. And what was he doing? He had gone undercover to protect Hal. (Who put a price on Hal's head? How about every women he screwed and then never called the next day? So, that's, what, hundreds of people on Earth and probably thousands more spread across the galaxy.) Then what?

Where's John?

Has he made any appearances since then?

Not that I know of.

Can I give a suggestion to DC about what John should be doing?

How about having him leading a team of Lanterns who are helping to rebuild the civilizations that were hurt during the Rann/Thanagar war? I mean, the Green Lantern Corps does more than just police, right? After being gone for so long, it seems to me that the Corps could use some good will in the galaxy. And then... Well, I don't want to write too much more about what I think should happen, but I know that there's plenty of conflict to be had out there for John and his team.

And I thought that I wrote too much for Ragnell's blog. Jeez. I promise not to write about comic stuff tomorrow, okay?