PARALLAX by Georges Jeanty
I never thought of Hal Jordan’s post-Emerald Twilight persona as a villain in the strict sense of the term. To my mind, he was an adversary or an anti-hero. The best “villains” always believe themselves to be the heroes of their own stories. Hal was convinced of the righteousness of his cause, which I thought made the Parallax persona a pretty complex, interesting character. The most obvious parallel was for him was Magneto. His goals might have brought him into conflict with his heroic counterparts, but there was a certain nobility to his cause.
There’s an adage that Marvel villains want to conquer the world, DC villains rob banks. Kyle Rayner was very much a “Marvel-style” hero in terms of the Everyman archetype. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Parallax was a “Marvel-style” villain. The notion was to add a cosmic-level antagonist the DC’s pantheon, somebody other than Darkseid. Special thanks to my GL artist Darryl Banks for coming up with the Parallax name.
Cheers,
Ron
THE J-FILES are a series of images created by Georges Jeanty (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/DarkHorse) for my first pass at having a website.
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May 19th, 2010 on 7:56 am
Ah, Parallax before he was retconned as a giant space bug (and thus, making his name meaningless). Gotta love that amazing armor design! I only wish we could’ve seen more of him.
February 23rd, 2021 on 7:29 pm
Grew up on GL and loved that he went this path. The cockroach story line was Geoff Johns trying to be Stan Lee for DC. Taking all their characters and modifying their histories and then rebooting over and over.