Poor, prosaic, pitiable Hal Jordan. Is there a more shrug-worthy hero in the DC pantheon?
At their worse, the Green Lantern books were humorless affairs, Hal rushing off to save Coast City, then stymied when the missile was painted yellow. Here’s a guy whose primary antagonist is an emotion. Whose girlfriend goes so lovesick she tries to kill him in a purple catsuit. And don’t even mention that Ryan Reynolds movie.
The title’s been cancelled more than once, and writers have tried everything to shake things up, from having Green Lantern join Green Arrow for a cross-country roadtrip, to making Hal go mad, decimate the Corps and become a villain who battled the Justice League.
So it was a shock to fans like me, who always had a soft spot for straightlaced Hal, when Green Lantern not only became one of the pivotal titles in the DC universe, but the best.
That’s thanks to Geoff Johns, who took over in 2004. Johns brought Jordan back from his jaunt to the dark side, but more important, he understood what made Green Lantern work. Grand. Alien. Weird.
GL’s mythology is galactic in scale, centered around tiny blue megalomaniacs deluded enough to call themselves “Guardians of the Universe.” Johns’ great invention was giving them company. If green was the color of willpower, he reasoned, then wouldn’t other colors have power as well? He introduced a rainbow of lanterns, retrofitting in Sinestro’s yellow ring (fear) and Carol Ferris’ violet ring (love), along with corps of red (rage), indigo (compassion), blue (hope) and orange (greed).
The best Green Lantern stories were never about Hal, or at least not Hal alone. In this vast, diverse alien police force called the Green Lantern Corps, Jordan was the human heart — the reader’s ambassador, but also the group’s conscience. Sure, he’s still a bit two-dimensional, but there’s enough going on around him in this spectrum of plotlines that it works.
Now, after 100 or so issues, Johns is moving on. With issue No. 21, out this week, a new writer, Robert Venditti, takes over. No pressure or anything. Just the fate of a character and title that’s been brilliantly resurrected.
To his credit, Venditti has a good handle on Johns’ legacy. Asked to pick favorite moments from recent GL history, he selects two: In the Blackest Night arc, when rings attach themselves to famous DC villains, like Lex Luthor getting an orange ring, for greed. “It’s just a great, wonderful moment. You could tell he was thinking how cool this would be.”
The other: The perversity of having a special “Christmas” issue starring Larfleeze, a character driven by avarice, because he’s heard of an Earth creature called “Santa Claus” that gives you whatever you want. A pick that shows affection for GL’s newfound sense of humor.
Venditti admits he’s not a longtime GL reader. He didn’t get into comic books until he was 27 (he’s 39 today). Shortly after, he was hired to write The Surrogates, a Top Shelf title that became a 2009 Bruce Willis film. When he heard the Green Lantern job was opening up, he crammed.
“I read about 200-plus issues, and definitely became a fan,” Venditti says. “The wonder and spectacle of it, it’s the best of what comic books can do.”
He gave DC a year-long plan and was brought on board; he’s also be co-plotting the companion Green Lantern Corps title.
Johns provided his successor a clean slate. In GL 20, Hal and friends defeat the latest misguided plan from the Guardians — a plot to replace the Corps with a Third Army, powered by an imprisoned creation called the First Lantern.
In the end, the Guardians are wiped out (except for Ganthet, who survives everything, and his companion Sayd, who are secretly spirited away by Sinestro). They are replaced by “Templar” Guardians, who seem uncorrupted by the millennia. Mogo, the Green Lantern who is actually a planet, is back (hurrah!) and most of the big villains are locked up in Sciencells or teleported to parts unknown.
Each of the main human Green Lanterns is getting his own title: Marine John Stewart in Green Lantern Corps, punchy Guy Gardner in Red Lanterns and ’90s art student Kyle Rayner in The New Guardians. Simon Baz, the Arab-American Lantern introduced last year, has joined the Justice League of America.
Johns did throw a curveball, however. An epilogue in issue 20 shows a future of the characters in the Book of Oa: Hal and Carol married with kids, Stewart a politician, Kyle running some kind of hippie commune on an alien world, Guy in an alien biker bar, and Baz “training the first female Green Lantern of Earth, Jessica Cruz.”
So, Cruz coming soon?
“There’s a lot of latitude,” Venditti says. “There’s a whole lot of living between No. 20 and when that epilogue takes place. We’re not bound by it.”
Plus, the pages about Sinestro were also “torn out and burned.” Of Hal’s most enduring nemesis, Venditti says, “he’ll turn up in a way readers won’t expect.”
His first issue feels like a fresh start. There’s a new villain, not introduced but seen in the distance, one who could disturb the balance between the lantern corps. Four very young new lanterns appear. After a brief meeting with Carol, Hal is put in charge of the Green Lantern Corps, meaning most of the forthcoming adventures will take place in space. Keeping things alien, weird and fun.
“We’re doing some new things,” Venditti promises. “But I’m not going to stick dynamite into anything.”
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