The following are selected quotes from Professionals in the Comic Book Industry on Hal Jordan:
"I think there's something of Hal Jordan in all of us. The ring is a symbol of real freedom. And Hal, as its bearer and daredevil pilot, represented the triumph of the human spirit and its indomitable will to succeed and achieve. Personally, I find those qualities very compelling. Apparently, other people do too!" -- Ben Raab.
"Hal Jordan IS Green Lantern." -- Neal Adams.
"He's Hal Jordan, the best Green Lantern there ever was! He's the one who should be Green Lantern right now! They drove him insane, they killed him, they made him into the Spectre, for Pete's sake! And then, Mark calls me up and says, 'Hey, do you want to write a story about Hal?' I said, 'About the Spectre?' And he said, 'No, no, no. This is a Silver Age story.' I said, 'Of course I do!' I get to play with the stuff I like best, using classic Green Lantern characters and status quo. I will say that the big, overarching storyline that Mark came up with looks like it's going to be a ton of fun, and he and Dan Raspler have assembled a team of very enthusiastic creators, ranging from me doing my favorite DC superhero and Karl Kesel doing Challengers off the Unknown to Bob Haney doing The Brave and the Bold and Marv Wolfman doing the original Teen Titans. But what hooked me into it was: How many chances do I get to write Hal Jordan?" -- Kurt Busiek
"All it takes is a couple of years - a change in an editor here, and a change in a publisher there - and the next thing you know, it's 'We want Hal Jordan back as GL. He's the icon, he's the guy that we need.' " -- J. M. DeMatteis.
"Hal will always be the iconic Green Lantern." -- Alex Ross.
"I do believe, by the way, that you need to be true to each character. That's why all the changes made to either Hal Jordan or Peter Parker were completely wrong. You need to remain true to a successful characters core concepts. The further away from them you stray, the more you'll screw up the book." -- Marv Wolfman.
"Small sales didn't kill Hal Jordan, Small Minds did." -- John Byrne.
"Green Lantern is my favorite DC character. But I've rarely seen Hal really explored. I mean, he's a test pilot. He's a guy who gets into a machine thatmay not work and launches himself into the air, trusting himself that if something goes wrong he'll figure out a solution on the fly. That's not Batman--he always has a plan. That's not Superman--Superman is rarely in danger. Hal's the kind of guy who will jump off a cliff because he'll figure out something to do on the way down. That's a great character." -- Kurt Busiek
"I'm not sure where I weigh in on this issue. Although I've always disliked the poor use made of Hal Jordan and been thoroughly bored by the Kyle Rayner issues of Green Lantern, I'm not at all confident the current GL creative team is capable of pulling off such a return and exoneration. I'm not even sure I could do it, though I did give it a pretty good shot a couple of years ago." -- Tony Isabella