Declaration of Bias?

When I was planning out Saturday's post, it occured to me I had a double standard. I completely accept that Ryoko was under someone else's influenece, and as such, I don't consider her responsible for those actions. But when Geoff Johns tried something similar with Hal Jordan, I screamed "Bullshit!" 'till everyone at the store looked at me like I was about to kill them. Why was that, I wondered? Here were my initial guesses:

1. Ryoko is a woman, Hal's a man. I'm guilty of a bias that says females are weaker, and thus it's more acceptable for them to be controlled. Except, I completely accepted it when it turned out Logan killed a Senator while under Weapon X influence in a Wolverine storyline about five years back.

2. Ok, well, it's because you like Ryoko, whereas you regard Hal Jordan as mostly preventing Kyle Rayner from taking the center stage he deserves. Except, I don't like Superman either. In fact, I think the DC Universe would be much more interesting without him (call it the "Kenshin/Goku Syndrome"). Yet, when they tell us he was being controlled by Max Lord, I say "Sure, I'll buy that".

Finally, I decided it's a matter of timing. With Ryoko, she appears in the first episode on the Tenchi OVA, Kagato shows up by about episode 5, and immediately takes control of her. That suggests it was planned that way all along, at least to me. From the moment Wolverine was accused of killing the Senator, he was plauged by doubts, because he had flashes of things, but couldn't recall all of it. All of which seems suspicious, and raised doubts as to why Logan would do it, if he did. And almost as soon as Superman had finished kicking Batman around, we find out he's under Lord's control.

With Hal, it's been years since he went 'round the bend and eventually tried to remake the universe. It was an established, if not beloved, part of the history of DC. But Johns comes along and decides his hero, Hal Jordan, can't go out like that. Oh no, Johns has to change it so that it wasn't Hal's fault. Maybe it's an arbitrary standard, but it seems like there is a difference between a creator making a character do horrible things with the idea the character is being controlled by an outside force right from the start, and one person deciding this character did these horrible things of their own accord, and THEN a decade later another writer comes along and changes it. Now if Johns could show me proof this was Ron Marz' plan all along? Well, I guess I would have to accept that.

I don't know, it's irrelevant I suppose. Hal's back, he's been absolved, he's not likely to die anytime soon, just have to deal with it.