Another thought: Kyle's dad

I was rereading the Power of Ion arc the other day and had a thought. See, apparently the creation of "Gabriel Vasquez" as Kyle's father was not the original plan, and now that Mr. Marz is writing Ion, it's become too complicated to address Kyle's dad at all.

Which is a shame, because I rather want to know what Mr. Marz intended.

However, when I was rereading the arc I realized something. One could very easily argue that "Gabriel Vasquez" never existed at all...withOUT a retcon.

See, Ion was all but omnipotent and naturally could track down his father with a thought. But what if what he found wasn't something his conscious mind was equipped to deal with, for whatever reason. We know from Circle of Fire that Kyle's subconscious can create living/sentient constructs on its own will. We also know from his discussion with Alan in 140 that by that point he could make constructs indistinguishable from normal people.

So what if Gabriel Vasquez was a creation of Kyle's subconscious to be exactly what he needed at the time. Gabe was a mostly tragic figure, a man involved in shady things in the past which became an outside force to seperate him from his wife and son. He himself was a reasonably good man, one who strongly regretted leaving and subsequently lived a solitary life. Basically he was a young man's fantasy of the kind of man that would leave his wife and infant and yet be sympathetic and understandible.

He even promises to stay in contact and as revealed after Kyle leaves to have an album with articles about both Kyle and the Lantern. Not only is his father an understandible/sympathetic man who left for the sake of his wife and son. He's a man who followed his son's progress into manhood and knows and is proud of even the secret aspect of his life.

Considering what Kyle was going through at this time: the Ion powers, Superman's rebuke on letting people live their own lives, Alan and Spectre-Hal's advice... Gabe was exactly what his son needed to see at that time.

He never shows up again (except in a script draft for Rebirth, but that's different), but is otherwise absolutely perfect.

Which means, maybe he's not real at all. Ion knew that his conscious mind wanted to find his father, but for whatever reason, the real one doesn't qualify. So the subconscious makes one that is exactly what Kyle Rayner needs before going to Oa to do what he has to do. It really works out splendidly.

Now the only problem is Kyle's conversation with his mother in 153.

One can imagine his mother was either somehow warned by Ion, is just playing along with her confused son's ramblings, or has had her memories altered. My vote is for the second, as with a son like Kyle, one is probably used to playing along with fantasy. Or I suppose, while I dislike retcons, it's better to get rid of 153, if it could make it all work. It was a bit dumb anyway. :-)

So yeah, that's my thought.

Edited to add: another advantage to the fantasy of Gabriel Vasquez is that now that his name isn't Rayner, the Zachary Rayner Kyle met during Emerald Allies has to be a fake. After all, if he really *were* Kyle's uncle, his name wouldn't be Rayner after all. I could see some part of Kyle creating that just to convince himself that he can't be related to that psycho.