Green Lantern's changing origin

I recently picked up the Green Lantern Super Spectacular comic at the grocery store and gave it a good read. I can't afford comic books much anymore. For that matter, I have to stick with a limit of vices for budget sake. So my comic junkie fix is Heroclix. First of all, it's not that spectacular. It's full of short stories that come across as teasers more than anything with little in the way of good ol Green Lantern action. The only story really worth the read is the origin story. Now for the meat of this blog article.

Just how many ways are they going to choose for Abin Sur to die? Yes, it's always a crash landing in a spacecraft. What's always changing it the cause of that crash. Never mind the need of a spacecraft when you have a power ring that allows for space travel, no, forget that. There's been some weird explanations for that one. They pile it on heavily with an excuse in this newest story. Actually, it might be one of the best excuses they've come up with so far. Abin Sur loses faith in his ring to protect him because of some fortune telling prophecy. His will must have been waning badly in the first place for that to work. So the ring would eventually fail because of that weakness. So who caused the crash of the ship that Abin shouldn't have been in? The second cause of him using that ship, namely...

That's Atrocitus. If you've been paying attention to current storylines (and I try to) and Heroclix, you know this guy is the leader of the Red Lanterns. He doesn't have a power ring yet in this story, but he's on Abin's ship for another really silly reason. Apparently Abin needs him to show where the darkness is coming from. Uh, okay. Anyway, Atrocitus breaks free and attacks Abin... cue crash. But that's not who originally did this according to origins written.. last time I read the story of Hal's origin in a special called Emerald Dawn, it was this guy...

That's Legion. Legion is a whole alien race living inside of yellow armor. Note the color.... yellow. The weakness of a power ring at the time was the color yellow. In the current story, that weakness is mentioned again and declared to be still be accurate. Funny no? According to that 90's storyline, Legion fought Abin to the point of nearly killing him and a spacecraft was his only hope of escape, having drained his ring with no safe place to recharge. So he fled with Legion right on his heels. Legion pursues him into Earth's atmosphere and causes the crash.

Of course, that's not the only way the story has been told, even still. You can check out all those versions in one handy place HERE.

It seems to me that Abin Sur's fate keeps getting tweaked with what ever villain is popular at the time. To me, this makes the continuity of it all a total joke. I've seen origins get tweaked in movies a bit, but this is ridiculous. If I understand correctly, in the movie it may even be different still, with the darkness itself causing the crash... we'll see. At least Hal still keeps getting the ring from ol Abin. That hasn't changed... yet.