John wasn't even in the conversation.
I'm aware, I was there for that conversation.
Hal has evolved and continued stay relevant in today's world all the while continuously maintaining a strong following among comic "readers!"
I would argue that that's mostly because of the Silver Age revival we've seen in comic books over the last ten years. Guys who read Hal when they were kids are now the old farts who write comic books, so out with the new and in with the old. Plus the renaissance of comics is bringing in new fans, who generally speaking tend to be hardcore origintalists. Pair that with the finicky and particularly nostalgic comic fanbase, and boom, you can explain Hal Jordan's popularity pretty easily. It also helps that he, you know, had the biggest Hal Jordan fanboy of all time who just so happens to be an amazing writer utilize him in the pinnacle role in the War of Light, which is undoubtedly the most epic Green Lantern narrative ever told. It's a moot point because it's impossible to argue what if's, but there's really very little in Geoff John's mega-narrative that strictly needed Hal, aside from the Parallax retcon. Yeah, he has some cool feats ,but in that same time, Kyle, John, and guy have had a similar number of impressive feats without being the titular character. Hell, Kyle has had as much character growth and interpersonal turmoil while only having had a third, if you're being generous, the page time. The emotional spectrum stuff doesn't rely on Hal, and that's what has been the bread and butter of the series for the last ten years. Yeah, Hal's been in the pilot's seat, but that's mostly just because of Geoff Johns' personal love of the character.
Whenever you make any person the leading role in a book for years at a time and push them as the guy, fans take hold of it. It's marketing. They've pushed Hal for the last ten years, so lo and behold, most of the people who started reading Green Lantern in the last ten years, the only time Green Lantern was doing anything strong enough to pull in more casual because of the aforementioned epic worldbuilding, are fans of Hal. They're fans of Hal because that's the only Green Lantern they know, and now have nostalgia for it.
Kyle is definitely my favorite, but it's not because of any objective superiority, it's because he was my Lantern. I grew up with him, and his narratives were the first I experienced so he holds a special place in my heart. That's what's going on with most of the recent Green Lantern fans. It's not because Hal is some objectively better character, it's because he's who they've marketed for the last ten years.
Like Geoff Johns' personalnostalgia has driven a ton of his narratives, he has even created characters and resurrected long dead ones just so that he could relive his childhood favorites. He has been very upfront about this in interviews several times over the years. He was on a tear to bring Hal back and make him the main guy way before he ever wrote the book. Just like Johns is responsible for making the Green Lantern mythos so epic, I don't think you can undervalue just how important his contribution is in making Hal popular. Just like you said, he could have used any other Lantern, even John to tell the story he did. But he chose Hal. And you think that doesn't have anything to do with Hal's popularity?
** If Hal was as boring as you claim him to be, then this franchise would never have reached the steady rise in popularity it has over the past decade and more.**
I would argue that this has more to do with the central epic that has been the center of the DC universe for the past ten years before the New 52 than it has to do with anything else. I don't think it's because Hal Jordan is by far and away the best character ever, I think it's because every single book in the DC line was built upon the metaphysic that Johns was building in Green Lantern. We didn't have one, not two, not three, but FOUR, four LINE-WIDE events that were steeped in that metaphysic. And all four of them were driven by the concept of the War of light and the emotional spectrum.
I mean, shit dude, just look at the merchandising. The other color spectrums do as well as Green, particularly Blue and Red. I think that has more to do with the rise in Green Lantern's popularity than anything about Hal.
That's why when you get into the nitty gritty of the fanbase, yeah, Hal is the most popular (likely for the reasons I outlined above), but Kyle, Guy, and John all come in pretty close. Even if you want to disregard the reasons that's the case, they really, really do. I'd argue that on whole, Guy is probably the least liked and favortied Lantern, because he's seldom been the main character and has had almost zero general media exposure. Kyle has had a fraction of the time as the lead of the book as Hal, and his fanbase is almost as large. Hal isn't that far and away popular and awesome, and you want to discount the casual fans who loved John in JLU, but their money talks just as much as ours, and there's a whole lot more of them.
I honestly cant believe that you can call Hal Jordan of this generations comics, a STOIC and BORING character when he has arguably been one of the most entertaining (especially since Johns' revival)
How does Hal resolve issues with Carol Ferris? Oh, right, by eating his feelings and freezing her out. What about his stuff with his family? Oh, he eats his feelings and freezes them out. How does he deal with the stress of running the Corps? He eats his feelings and freezes out his friends. Mourn Kyle? He eats his feelings and freezes his friends out. I think the only time I've seen Hal do anything but get angry and willpower through something or go all stoic is in the flashbacks of his father's death or when he relives the guilt of Parallax. That's literally no different than the two albatrosses that haunt the stoic John Stewart in the death of his wife and the death of Xanshi.
you are blatantly ignoring what his character has done for this franchise over the past 25+ years (including his Parallax run, which i guess Rayner can also be heavily credited for)
25 years? Dude, for most of volume 3 he was a shadow for Kyle, a reluctant hero to measure himself against. He was a personality-less symbol to give impetus to Kyle. And you guess? Before Johns was on the book, Kyle kept the torch burning both in the series and in terms of sales. Before Johns, Hal's best sales numbers never came even close to what Kyle was pulling in. Since 1994, it's been 10 years or so that Hal has been at all important as an actual character and not just a plot point. And even then, he's just the straight man lens for readers to place themselves in the seat of to experience the ultra epic that is the War of Light. Hal's character work isn't what drove those sales, it was the big epic sci-fi narrative PEWPEWBANG that Johns was developing and making central to the entire DCU.
even though NG, Red Lanterns and GL Corps are being axed.
It's not because of lagging sales numbers, it's because they're retooling the Green Lantern line out of Convergence. A whole new status-quo that may bring back New Earth and pre-Crisis stuff into the fold. After that narrative is done, it may be possible that the GL line will be unrecognizable to the narrative that Johns told for the last ten years.