If you are a DC Comics fan, you have to have been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks few decades to not hear about the ultimate fate of Hal Jordan, the greatest of all the Green Lanterns.

For the rest of us, even years later, it hit like a shot to the face.

A gunshot.

Like one from a pistol.

Held by your girlfriend.

Your stupid, stupid girlfriend.

Let’s rewind the clock to the 1990s. While it was a better time for music, politics, video games, and romantic relationships, Hal Jordan was having a tough decade. The Cyborg Superman had vaporized Hal’s hometown of Coast City during the fallout of The Death and Return of Superman arc; the psychological effects of which played out in Green Lantern issues 48-50, which were themselves titled Emerald Twilight (1994).

Under the weight of immense grief, Hal snapped like a glow stick (a green one, durr), leading him to unsuccessfully use his powers to resurrect Coast City, then successfully murder the entire Green Lantern Corps. (aka “Poozers”), Sinestro, and all but one of the Guardians of Oa. In doing so, Hal dropped the Green Lantern moniker and instead adopted the name Parallax and gave himself a needlessly over-rendered but still unexplainably cool green and silver outfit complete with an impractically large cape. A truly fitting guise for a cosmic supervillain of the ’90s.

After two years of terrorizing the new Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner) in the pages of the Green Lantern comics and the entire DC super hero universe in Zero Hour, DC Comics published its major crossover event titled The Final Night in 1996. Herein enters a deep cut from an old Legion of Super-Heroes issue in the form of the “Sun-Eater.” This Sun-Eater is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a giant cosmic entity with a solar appetite to snack on stars. It latched its astronomical lips on Earth’s sun and started sucking, slurping, guzzling, and of course, swallowing, as all good Sun-Eaters do.

The sun went out. The earth started to freeze (it’s Climate Change! Reeeee!). Superman’s solar-based powers went limp like an impotent nonagenarian. Every hero on the planet threw everything they had at this thing and accomplished nothing, because you can’t punch the cold. Or kick it. You can lick it, but your tongue will freeze to it if you aren’t careful. Even villains got in on the act, as Lex Luthor himself built a ship to go reignite the sun, then dramatically abandoned the mission the second he realized that the pilot’s seat was a one-way trip. A very Lex Luthor thing to do, amirite?

And then Parallax showed up, or rather Hal’s better nature did, and he said “Hold my ring” (figuratively, because I know you nerds know that Parallax didn’t wear a ring at this point. Nerds…). Hal flew straight into the dying sun, swallowed the entire Sun-Eater whole (as all good cosmic supervillains do), used all of the energy to reignite the star, all the while reciting the oath of the Green Lantern Corps. in dramatic fashion.

It killed him, obviously. Even the greatest Green Lantern of them all can’t eat a god-like star killer and walk it off. But the sun came back on, the ice started melting (it’s Global Warming! Reeeeeee!), and every hero left standing on the surface of the defrosting Earth watched the sky light up knowing that Hal Jordan had just saved every living thing on the planet in a single stroke.

And the best part is that it worked. The other DC heroes gave him a hero’s funeral in Green Lantern issue 81 (complete with a foil/embossed cover), and the sacrifice stuck as his redemption arc, at least until Hal became the Spectre a few years later, and then was resurrected in Green Lantern: Rebirth a few years after that.

Sure, dying is basically a hobby for comic book characters. Some heroes get a quiet exit. Some get a hero’s sendoff in a blaze of glory. Some get shot in the head by your girlfriend while having a heart-to-heart sitting on an empty set of football bleachers. Hal Jordan, the Silver Age super hero synonymous with courage, got to BE the sun. That one may take the cake. The yellow cake. Not the nuclear uranium stuff, but yummy, canary-colored, Yellow Lantern cake. He ate it. Whatever.

Pour one out, boys.

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