User blog comment:MilitaryBrat/Hal Jordan vs Darth Vader/@comment-1683193-20131028175901/@comment-143604-20131029185516

1.) The potential level of power for a warrior is not their actual power. Just because the Green Lantern Ring is a weapon of infinite possibilities, doesn't make it such in practice. Hal Jordan's most iconic character flaw is that he lacks originality- while men like Kyle Rayner and John Stewart make intricate mechs, whole sustainable planets and entire armies with their rings, Hal is content to do little other than make punching gloves and brick walls with it.

2.) The durability and "he can hurt X" argument falls apart with super heroes and comic characters quite quickly, as they all exist of a sliding scale. Men like Bane and Deathstroke have also successfully staggered Superman in the past- yet frequently lose to men like Batman in hand to hand combat. Throwing out a statement like "Green Lantern can stagger Superman, Superman can take nukes, Hal Jordan hits like a nuke" would imply the entire DC Universe hits with the force of a nuke. Working with hypothetical statements like that are great, but the 70+ year publication history of these characters have exaggerated and drastically warped their power levels in both ways to points of ridiculousness. Sometimes Hal Jordan is capable of containing an exploding star with nothing but his willpower. Sometimes Hal Jordan's willpower is incapable of holding back a rocket or concentrated small arms fire. This is a unique problem to comic book characters, due to the wide range of authors, eras, tones and characterizations presented over one long period of canonical time, but it makes things like this problematic. One cannot simply cite occasional occurrences of a character at their power's peak and pretend it represents them as a whole.

3.) Hal Jordan would not likely want to fly into space and shoot projectiles at Vader, anymore than he would want to destroy a planet. That's not his style- and like established earlier- the potential to do something is not equivalent to actually doing it in practice. Hal Jordan is hot-headed, brash and a little bit of a dunce. He charges in and wants to punch things with melee constructs, more than anything. Sure, he changes things up from time to time, but the vast majority of his portrayals, across his loooong history of characterizations, follow this rule. Hal gets in close and gets scrappy with his constructs. That's his style. It's not the best he could do with his powers, but it is how he chooses to use it. This isn't a battle against Kyle, or Guy, or John, or what a Green Lantern /could/ do, it's a battle against Hal Jordan, and what he usually does.

Ultimately I agree with you that Hal crushes Vader, but no so easily its an unfair battle, and certainly not in the way you present your argument.