I liked it a lot. It explores what being a gay man might have been like during the era. The book has Alan feeling very conflicted and feeling guilty and sinful for who he is. It doesn't negate his marriages as it takes place prior to them. Like many men of his era, his story will now be that he spent most of his life trying to live as a straight person. That doesn't discount his feelings for the women he loved--but, in the present he has come out presumably inspired by his son and that he is a widower so there there are no one's feelings to hurt.
Yeah, that's what I read about it. I think that's certainly a legitimate and powerful story to tell, but as someone who cared about the character and enjoyed him for what he was originally, I also think that the core of the characters and their written legacy should be respected, I don't think Alan Scott should ever have retconned for use in this story. The Earth 2 version was different enough that, story-wise, I felt DC was within their rights to re-interpret the character in the re-invention that was Earth 2. It was a pretty arbitrary change in that case with James Robinson essentially doing an Ultimates version of the JSA keeping some things and changing others. Robinson felt that since Scott's gay son Todd, Obsidian, was being removed from the DCU and that he was one of the few gay characters (at that time) that he could just make Alan Scott gay. It was pretty arbitrary but I guess Robinson also thought it would be an interesting change. Dan Didio signed off on it and Geoff Johns was called into the Warners office to explain that Hal Jordan wasn't the GL who was going to be a gay character.
The thing is, after Rebirth, writer James Tynion, I believe, wanted Didio to make the original Golden Age Alan Scott gay like his Earth 2 counterpart. The problem was that the Golden Age Alan Scott was never ever written as a gay character, expressing actual sexual love for his wife Molly Mayne. Furthermore, the man most responsible for the development of Alan's personal life, writer Roy Thomas, has said that Alan Scott was heterosexual and that he wrote him that way.
So DC has pretty much thrown the Thomas', and the other writers' depiction of Alan out because DC, I guess, didn't want to look like it was going backwards on diversity maybe? I dunno.
The thing is, there were other characters in the JSA at that time that didn't have well-developed personalities or personal lives. That is, that weren't married, didn't have any indications of women love interests, etc. In particular, people have mentioned Dr. Midnite, Johnny Thunder, and there could be others. Of course, none of these characters are as big a name as Green Lantern or the Flash. Geoff Johns has stated that you can't have the JSA without them (and I'd add in Wildcat who I really like too (got his action figure!)).
And, of course, the same thing was done to Robin Tim Drake too. The guy most responsible for his character development, Chuck Dixon, like Roy Thomas, wasn't happy with that either. Again, it doesn't jibe at all with the character's development and history.
I just think it's better to use either a character with a relatively blank slate or just to create a new character. I think DC has done a pretty good job of that. For example, I really liked Rucka's Batwoman Kate Kane and the Authority's Midnighter and Apollo. And now, of course there are so many LGBTQ+ characters, I guess I don't understand why DC insisted on drastically retconning Alan Scott and Tim Drake the way they did.
But, as Thomas and Dixon essentially said, they don't own the characters and DC can do what they want with them (although Roy Thomas thought that the retcon to Scott would hurt sales of that character's books and the like and would consequently hurt him financially, I don't think that has been the case).
