10 Awful DC Superheroes Who Were Successfully Reinvented
8. Green Lantern
Why He Was Awful
When Green Lantern was originally printed, he was't a member of the Green Lantern Corps. He was simply a man that discovered a magical lantern and a ring, and donned a green cape over a red shirt.
The original version of the character was Alan Scott. The basics of the character will be familiar to modern Green Lantern fans, but he finds the lantern completely randomly after surviving a train crash, is not a space cop but rather a magical superhero, along the lines of Captain Marvel (Shazam). His power is also completely powerless against organic matter, meaning he can be defeated by wood. His popularity wained after War World II, as did other superheroes', and his title was cancelled.
He has come back in various incarnations, but is definitely the less known holder of the title.
How He Was Fixed
Hal Jordan was introduced in 1959 as the new, Science Fiction age Green Lantern. This is the far better known version of the character, known and portrayed for every adaptation of the character since.
Granted his ring by a dying space cop, the character became iconic, and a mainstay of the DC Universe. The decision to take the character in more of a sci-fi direction was made by editor Julius Schwartz, seeing the audiences' tastes going in that direction. Alan Scott's origin was later explained, with his lantern and ring having previously been owned by Yalan Gar, a previous protector of Earth. He was ultimately corrupted by the power given to him, and sought to rule Earth, causing the Guardians to introduce a flaw to his power - a weakness to wood.
This is how he was defeated, and why his ring still had the same weakness. The intelligence linking the lantern to the Guardians was severed, which is why Scott was able to use the ring without without their knowledge all that time. Now, Green Lantern is one of the biggest DC characters. He has been around since the forties. The Green Lantern Corps is one of the coolest elements of the DC universe.