After reading Green Lantern #46, one thought popped in my head: “Wow, it’s hard to believe that this character used to suck.”

Am I the only person thinking that these days?

I mean, I’ve been loving what Geoff Johns has been doing with GL since he relaunched the property in “Rebirth” a few years ago. Month-in and month-out, GL is the most consistently high-quality book published by DC Comics. (number 46 was awesome, by the way.) The current GL-centric “Blackest Night” limited series is a testament Johns success in turning around the entire GL mythology.

But, remember folks, this is a relatively new development. For most of GL’s long life, he was a pretty lame cat.

Yes, he’s always wielded the most powerful weapon in the universe and was a member of an intergalactic peace force, but, sadly, no one really knew what to do with the guy.

Go back down memory lane and reflect on all the corny constructs GL created with this “powerful weapon” — you know, the giant boxing gloves, mousetraps and crap like that. And think back to the lame-o villains they’d throw his way (Sinestro, for example, was just a dude with a big head and Black Hand used to be a cornball). Then, focus on how folks came to look at the members of the cool-as-all-get-out Green Lantern Corps as something that made Hal Jordan “redundant” — which ultimately led to them all getting assassinated back in the 1990s; folks just didn’t what to do with them.

It’s so bad that, when I was recently telling someone how cool the main GL series was, they said to me: “You mean that corny dude from the Superfriends?” Ouch.

Suffice to say, Johns has brought the green-leotard-clad do-gooder a mighty long way. If you’re not reading the book, you really are missing some incredible superhero stories.

Be sure to check out Carlton’s regular comics reviews on the Creative Loafing Comic Proportions blog as well!