Hal Jordan

Green Lantern of Sector 2814

Hal Jordan

## Biography

### Early Life

Harold “Hal” Jordan was born on October 22nd, 1979, to Jessica and Martin Jordan, the middle child of a Jewish-Catholic family. They grew up just outside of an air force base in Nevada. As a child, he idolized his father, a test pilot for Ferris Aircraft. The whole family were daredevils, with his older brother Jack following their father in joining the Air Force. His mother was a Hollywood stunt woman and would often have to leave to head to Los Angeles for work. His childhood best friend was Carol Ferris, the heir to Ferris Aircraft.

At a very young age, Hal’s life was filled with tragedy. Shortly after his younger brother, Lawrence, was born, Hal had just turned eight years old and was in charge of babysitting Lawrence. On that same day, Los Angeles was ravaged by one of Adrian Veidt’s bombs, killing his mother who was away.

The family was left broken, with Jack discharged from the force to help take care of the family. He started working in the Defense Attorney’s office thanks to a recommendation from his C.O. to help make ends meet. Martin took up extra hours at Ferris Aircraft and volunteered for a special stockholder demonstration. During the demonstration, an overworked Martin missed his mark and crashed the plane, dying in the resulting explosion, leaving his three sons orphaned.

Hal found every possible way to help make ends meet, and Carol managed to get him a crappy maintenance job at Ferris Aircraft’s facilities. While the job sucked, Hal loved the benefits of getting to be close to the impressive planes and occasionally chat up the pilots and designers. Hal became a sponge for this type of thing, absorbing as much knowledge as he could about aviation.

Jack eventually got an offer to move to Coast City and work in the D.A’s office, so he packed up his brothers and hauled them off. In a bigger city, Hal got into his fair share of trouble. A military recruiter noticed Hal during a school visit and it didn’t take much convincing to get him to join the Air Force.

As a cadet, he was reunited with Carol and the two began a whirlwind romance, however Hal’s freewheeling party style he adopted didn’t jell with Carol, and the two broke up. Hal gained the nickname of Highball and was deployed to Afghanistan. He gained a reputation for unauthorized joyrides during this time. Eventually, his antics got him called back to his hometown in Nevada for some extra training.

While training at the base, he befriended cadet Jesse Waller. One day, the two were on the way to the local bar when they were called to respond to an emergency situation in the Mojave Desert. Upon arrival, the two were locked in a dogfight with a flying alien in a golden suit of armor. This alien turned out to be Arkillo of the Sinestro Corps, who downed Jesse’s plane and set his sights on Hal, who had his life saved when Abin Sur was knocked into the aircraft by his opponent - his former apprentice Thaal Sinestro.

Hal managed to eject in time and land safely under a rock formation, where he pulled the wounded Abin to safety. Abin was moments away from dying when he slid a green ring onto Hal’s finger before he passed away. As the fight subsided with the arrival of some members of the Justice League and Air Force reinforcements, Hal was suddenly jetted into the sky by the ring and whisked across the galaxy to the planet Oa.

### Green Lantern of Sector 2814

On Oa, he met Ganthet who gave him a brief history of the Green Lantern Corps and the electromagnetic emotional spectrum, before assigning him a trainer in the form of a gruff Bolovaxian named Kilowog. After a few months of training, Hal was returned to Earth, where he reunited with his brothers and Carol, to varying levels of pleasure in seeing him.

He moved to Coast City, where Ferris Aircraft had opened a new facility, and Hal became their premier test pilot. He also decided to utilize his Lantern Corps training for good and became Coast City’s premier hero and the Earth’s first (or second, kind of) Green Lantern. He was surprised after one particularly eventful night on the town to wake up and find Green Arrow and the Flash at his door, with an offer in hand to join the Justice League.

On the Justice League, he became drinking buddies with Oliver Queen, Dinah Lance, and Barry Allen. The three would hold an annual pub crawl for the “Hard Traveling Heroes” (as they labeled themselves) that few other Leaguers were brave enough to partake in. Rumors say that Ted Kord and Michael Jon Carter attempted to join one, but couldn’t last the whole night, partially due to the sheer number of drinks, and partially because they couldn’t stand hearing Hal and Ollie argue about politics.

Hal’s status as Earth’s only Green Lantern didn’t last long, as Earth’s unusually high extranormal occurrences caused Ganthet to dispatch a deputy for Hal in the form of John Stewart, who joined the Justice League soon after his arrival on Earth. While Hal and John butted heads at first, with Hal’s devil-may-care attitude clashing with John’s by-the-books nature, the two eventually found a stride that worked out.

Less than a year after John’s dispatch, they gained a third ally in the form of Guy Gardner, whom neither liked and did not want to train. However, when John’s wife, fellow Lantern Katma Tui, was murdered by Sinestro, John left Earth to hunt down the pink-skinned bastard, forcing Hal to take the reins of Guy’s training.

He somehow managed to whip Guy into shape, borrowing some techniques from the Air Force Academy, and some techniques that Batman had used on the Titans. Eventually, both were called away from Earth to help John track down the Sinestro Corps. Hal left Earth with a promise to Carol to return with a ring.

After spending six months in space fighting with the Sinestro Corps, Hal returned to Earth and kept true to his promise, with a sapphire ring he had been gifted while based on Zamaron. Hal was blissfully unaware that the gift had been from a woman trying to court him, and even more unaware that the ring was a power ring  - and he had inadvertently recruited Carol to the Star Sapphire Corps.

After a whole bunch of adventures with John and Guy, including freeing Carol from the Star Sapphires, fighting their robotic predecessors, preventing Sinestro from breaking out of intergalactic prison, and being exposed to the other corps of electromagnetic emotion, Hal decided to take a break and try to settle down with Carol.

The two didn’t get married, and instead broke up - again. To stop him from finding solace at the bottom of a bottle, John assigned him a new Earthbound trainee - Kyle Rayner. Hal took Kyle under his wing and when he felt Kyle was primed to take his Earthly duties, he struck off into space, deciding it was time to explore the rest of Sector 2814.

While exploring Sector 2814, Hal was captured by bagmen for crime lord Kanjar Ro and was stripped of his ring and sold to the alien Mongul to compete in his gladiator pit on War World. While there, Hal recognized the insignia on the contest’s Grandmaster, placing it as the symbol for the House of El on Earth. Hal managed to steal a spacecraft and escape from the satellite, but his ship was hijacked by an alien android, L-Ron, who docked Hal’s ship and turned Hal over to his master - Despero.

Hal was familiar with this guy, as he had been an adversary of the Justice League prior to his joining. A quick psychic scan of Hal’s mind showed Despero that he was a Green Lantern. Despero decided he could use him in a scheme to exact revenge on the League, and set about recruiting a small heist team to steal the ring from Kanjar Ro’s vault.

This special team included Lobo, Captain Comet, Darkfire, and Tanga. However, on the day of the heist, the team encountered a group of Red Lanterns, lead by none other than Kara Zor-El. During the scuffle, Hal was able to get his ring back and managed to send an energy blast into Kara’s face, phasing her long enough to get the ring off her finger. After getting her to an airlock, Kara revealed that she had left Earth after Jason Todd’s death and encountering her father again, and was found by a Red Lantern ring, so she joined up.

Hal and Kara decided to both confront their pasts and returned to Earth together. Upon their return, they learned Gotham had fallen into chaos and a group of supervillains were masquerading as the Justice League. Hal even discovered that a new Green Lantern, Simon Baz, had come to Earth to fill in for Hal during his absence, as the others had been called off-world.

Hal became acquainted with Simon when both were summoned to STAR Labs to free Jessica Cruz from the ring of Volthoom that had taken over her mind. When Jess was finally pulled back to consciousness, Hal assigned Simon to be her handler. Then, he returned to Coast City, where he mended fences with Carol. A few months later, Hal was one of the seven Justice League members mind-controlled by the Light and the Reach into instigating the Rann-Thanagar War. This lead Hal to go off-world again for nearly a year to stand trial on Ajuris-5. This time, Carol came with him and stood by his side until his innocence was proven.

Rumor has it that he and Carol are engaged (again), and he’s taken to going out to drinks with Kara in National City on the weekends to mull over life together. Hal and Carol recently left Earth with Kilowog to the edge of Green Lantern space to investigate a string of murders in an advanced power-battery powered spacecraft called the Interceptor, equipped with an A.I to help track the lost power rings.

## Trivia

* Hal is one of the few people who can stand to eat Oliver's famously spicy chili.
* Hal is a Republican.

## Notes

* Hal's cousin Joan Jordan is a character from the *Just Imagine* universe [coming soon to Earth 76].
* Hal's new assignment is taken from *Green Lantern the Animated Series*.
* In Earth 76, Sinestro is more of a nemesis to John and Kilowog than he is to Hal.