Weird Green Lantern thought #446.743

I was thinking about Green Lanterns and I've come to a strange realization.

I can't remember a single time that John Stewart and Guy Gardner have ever really socialized with each other that didn't involve Hal or Kyle.

(I'm not counting the time when Guy was batshit crazy as well, he was crazy and pretty much clashed with everyone. I'm thinking solely of the past ten years or so that he's been sane.)

It's weird, because John and Kyle have interacted a lot, I know, from the time when John was a darkstar and then when he was using the wheelchair. Guy and Kyle interacted more in superheroic team-ups, but they were still seen hanging out a lot.

There were those times John, Guy, Kyle and Alan would all get together to tell the kid old stories and reminisce. But I can't think of anything that was just John and Guy.

After Hal's come back, he's had significant casual interaction with Kyle (you've never flown with me, indeed,), Guy and John.

But still, I can't think of anything that was JUST Guy and John that wasn't, say, a temporary team-up in a fight scene. Even their interaction at the beginning of Rebirth was just waiting for Hal to show up.

There was, as I recall, one storyline in Warrior that involved the two of them, in which Neron uses promise of bringing back Guy's mean dad, evil brother, and Tora back if he kills John Stewart. But ultimately, their interaction consisted of maybe a page which paraphrased went: "You almost killed me!" "Yeah, almost. Here's a bunch of ex-Lanterns, lend me a ship, I wanna go home."

It's strange really, since I think there are a lot of elements to make for some really interesting interactions. I mean, for one thing, think about how testy Guy gets that Hal was chosen first.

Then consider that John was Guy's replacement. The only reason John got the position the first time was because Guy had the bus accident, and after that there was the whole exploding-battery-on-the-first-mission debacle. However, at the same time John actually got to do Lantern-y stuff early on and got to keep doing it while Guy was out of commission. There's really no doubt of the two of them, which is the more experienced Lantern.

That's got to rankle!

And considering that John probably, to an outside observer, seems almost as teflon as Hal. Nothing sticks to him! Guy's one of those characters who gets an unfair share of bad shit happen to him and all he can really do is push through and try to deal with it. John, like Hal, tends toward a loftier demeanor. While we, the audience, know it's not true, it's really easy to see where a colleague would consider them frustratingly untouchable.

Not to mention John's both got far less screw-ups on his record and as well, his big black mark (Xanshi) is so massively big and looming that...well...it's so inconceivable that you can't even blame the guy for it. There's no bitching someone out for that kind of tragic mistake.

Also, while Hal tends to be fairly patronizing toward Kyle and even Guy, he tends to treat John more like an equal partner.

I wonder if there wouldn't be something of a class element as well. To me, John reads very middle class/upper middle class suburban. This is mostly due to my over-generalizing based on career choice (architect), attitude, intellectualized/academic approach to radicalism, and what we've seen of his family life. It's not concrete, of course, but that's how I see him. I think it's kind of interesting that there's a distinct class difference regarding the 2814 Lanterns. Hal (as a military officer's brat) and John on one end and Guy (struggling factory worker's kid) and Kyle (son of divorced immigrant cleaning woman). I'm not sure exactly what that means, but it could add an interesting subconscious level to their dynamic.

John's side is interesting too of course. Because he's in a distinctly different position from Hal or Kyle. Hal knew Guy originally and had spent time getting to know the man before Sinestro got ahold of him. Kyle in turn only knew Guy after the Vuldarian thing kicked in, fixing his brain back up.

John's really the only one of the three whose primary formative experiences with Guy involved the man either being a crazed maniac, an angry brat, or an utter moron. And even if they've all gone out together for drinks and reminiscence to help the kid out or just hang around all "Four Musketeers" (I always did like Porthos best) that underlying perspective will still be there.

I dunno, it seems like there's a lot there to make their interaction fairly interesting, so it's so weird that I can't think of a single time those two were forced to interact without one of the other two involved. Maybe I'm just missing a storyline.

It's pretty weird though...