Honestly, I don't like Hal (and much of the DCU for that matter). Not because he's necessarily a bad character, but because he lacks (and you're probably going to scoff at this) any sort of realism. What I mean by this is that he always surpasses his limits by a huge margin whenever the story dictates that he needs to. It totally kills the suspense for me.
Believe it or not, there was actually a time when most comic characters had hard set limits.......look at Batman for a great example. There was a time when he couldn't fight herald level characters without prep and I was actually perfectly happy with that. It made those rare moments when he actually surpassed his limits all the more meaningful and impressive.
