Green Lantern

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Green Lantern is not one hero but a long succession of them, all published by DC Comics, and each wears a ring that answers to the mind of its owner. The ring draws on imagination, fearlessness and what the stories call the electromagnetic spectrum of emotional willpower. Most of the wearers belong to the Green Lantern Corps, an intergalactic law enforcement agency. Yet the very first one carried no badge and patrolled no galaxy. How did a lantern with magical origins become the emblem of a cosmic police force? What happened when the series tried to take on real-world problems? And why do political scientists borrow the hero's name to talk about presidents?

  42836

• 2. A Lantern on the Rails

  ›

  Martin Nodell, working at first under the pen-name Mart Dellon, created the first Green Lantern in collaboration with Bill Finger. The character debuted in All-American Comics #16, dated July 1940. His publisher, All-American Publications, was one of three companies that would eventually merge to form DC Comics.

  This first Green Lantern was Alan Scott, a railroad engineer. After a railway crash, a magic lantern came into his possession. It spoke to him and said it would bring him power. From the lantern he crafted a ring that gave him a wide variety of abilities.

  The ring came with rules. It had to be charged every 24 hours by touching it to the lantern for a time. It could not directly affect objects made of wood. Alan Scott mostly fought ordinary human villains, though he met a few paranormal ones, such as the immortal Vandal Savage and the zombie Solomon Grundy.

  In the 1940s he was popular enough to appear in anthology books such as All-American Comics and Comic Cavalcade, and to headline his own book, Green Lantern. He also joined the superhero team called the Justice Society of America in All Star Comics.

  The good years ended with the decline of superheroes after World War II. The Green Lantern comic book was cancelled with issue #38, dated May-June 1949. All Star Comics #57, from 1951, was his last Golden Age appearance.

  When superheroes returned to fashion, Alan Scott was revived, but a newer character had been created to supplant him, and he stayed in the shadows. He made guest appearances in other heroes' books and eventually won regular roles in books about the Justice Society. He never earned another solo series, though he starred in individual stories and in the single-issue 2002 comic Brightest Day, Blackest Night.

  From 1995 to 2003, DC Comics gave him the codename Sentinel to set him apart from the newer and more popular science fiction Lanterns. In 2011 he was revamped with an all-green costume and a new power source, the mystical force of nature that the stories call the Green. The character who had pushed him aside had arrived in 1959.

  1231213

• 3. Science Fiction Reboot

  ›

  Julius Schwartz, an editor at DC, reinvented Green Lantern in 1959 as a science fiction hero named Hal Jordan. His first appearance came in Showcase #22, dated September-October 1959. The new character kept powers that were more or less the same as Alan Scott's, but almost everything else changed.

  Hal Jordan had a new name, a redesigned costume and a rewritten origin story. He received his ring from a dying alien. He was then commissioned as an officer of the Green Lantern Corps, an interstellar law enforcement agency overseen by the Guardians of the Universe.

  Writer John Broome and artist Gil Kane introduced the Corps, and in doing so shifted the character from fantasy toward science fiction. Kane and Sid Greene were the art team most associated with the title in its early years, working alongside Broome.

  Kane later gave a detail about the hero's face. According to him, Hal Jordan's initial appearance was patterned after his one-time neighbor, the actor Paul Newman.

  A decade later, the series would be asked to leave space behind and travel across America.

  4041153

• 4. Road Trip Into Reality

  ›

  With issue #76, dated April 1970, the series made a radical stylistic departure. Schwartz worked with the writer-artist team of Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams to spark new interest in the book. They also wanted to answer a perceived need for social relevance, in one of the company's earliest efforts to offer more than fantasy.

  They added the hero Green Arrow to the title. The cover was retitled Green Lantern Co-Starring Green Arrow, though the official name did not change. The pair traveled through America meeting real-world issues and reacting to them differently. Green Lantern behaved as fundamentally a lawman, while Green Arrow was a liberal iconoclast.

  The run produced the groundbreaking story "Snowbirds Don't Fly" in issues #85-86. In it, Speedy, Green Arrow's teenage sidekick, developed a heroin addiction and was forcibly made to quit. Publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek cited the story as proof that comic books were "growing up".

  The same creative team brought in John Stewart, a new member of the Corps and one of DC's first Black superheroes.

  Critical praise did not translate into sales. The O'Neil and Adams run was not a commercial success, and the series was cancelled after only 14 issues. Three finished installments were still unpublished, and they finally appeared as back-up stories in The Flash #217-219.

  174116740

• 5. Many Hands, One Ring

  ›

  Guy Gardner, Kyle Rayner, Simon Baz, Jessica Cruz and Jo Mullein are among the best-known Lanterns after the original pair and John Stewart. Others have headlined a Green Lantern book or related title, including Jade, Sinestro, Jediah Caul, Tai Pham and Jong Li. Keli Quintela and Sojourner Mullein also appear on the character roster.

  The series itself went through repeated revivals and cancellations. At one point it was renamed Green Lantern Corps as its popularity rose and waned. For a time there were two regular titles, each starring a Green Lantern, and a third Lantern sat on the Justice League.

  Then DC made a drastic choice about its lead. Kyle Rayner was created to become the featured Lantern. Meanwhile, Hal Jordan first turned into the villain Parallax, then died and came back as the Spectre.

  After The New Frontier, writer Geoff Johns returned Hal Jordan to the title in Green Lantern: Rebirth, published in 2004-05. Johns viewed it as the first part of a trilogy. The second part was "Sinestro Corps War" in 2007, which he created with artist Ethan Van Sciver. It found wide critical acclaim and commercial success, and it promised a whole spectrum of colored lanterns.

  The trilogy closed with "Blackest Night", released on the 13th of July 2010. Its title traces back to a rhyme written for the original Alan Scott comic.

  85101118

• 6. The Ring and Its Oath

  ›

  The stories have never rigorously defined the full extent of the ring's abilities. Two traits stay consistent. The ring grants the power of flight, and every effect it produces is accompanied by a green light.

  In issue #9 of the original Alan Scott comic, scriptwriter Alfred Bester introduced the Green Lantern oaths. Bester is best known as a major science fiction novelist of the 1950s, and he had included rhymed couplets in his novels.

  The oath was revived for the Hal Jordan version of the character. Alan Moore and Geoff Johns later introduced variants of their own. Often the phrase "darkest night" is changed to "blackest night", and that change inspired the name of the crossover event Blackest Night.

  The event's sequel took its name from the same verse. It was called Brightest Day.

  13151836

• 7. Honors and Hard Stories

  ›

  The 1961 Alley Award for Best Adventure Hero/Heroine with Own Book went to the series. In 1970 it earned the Academy of Comic Book Arts Shazam Award for Best Continuing Feature. The Shazam for Best Individual Story that year went to "No Evil Shall Escape My Sight", from Green Lantern (vol. 2) #76 by Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams.

  In 1971 the same award went to "Snowbirds Don't Fly", from Green Lantern (vol. 2) #85, again by O'Neil and Adams.

  Individual creators were honored too. O'Neil won the 1970 Shazam for Best Writer (Dramatic Division), for his work on Green Lantern, Batman, Superman and other titles. Adams won Best Artist (Dramatic Division) that year for Green Lantern and Batman. Inker Dick Giordano won Best Inker (Dramatic Division) for Green Lantern and other titles.

  The writer Judd Winick brought a different kind of story to the book in his first regular writing assignment on it. In Green Lantern (vol. 3) #137, dated June 2001, an assistant of Kyle Rayner's emerged as a gay character.

  Issue #154, dated November 2001, carried the story "Hate Crime". In it Rayner's friend Terry Berg was brutally beaten in a homophobic attack. The story gained media recognition, and Winick was interviewed about it on Phil Donahue's show on MSNBC on the 15th of August 2002. He received two GLAAD Media Awards for his Green Lantern work.

  In May 2011, the character placed 7th on IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes of All Time.

  1920212324

• 8. Lanterns on Screen

  ›

  Ryan Reynolds portrayed Hal Jordan in the 2011 film Green Lantern, the character's live-action debut. The studio meant it to launch a new DC Comics cinematic franchise, with a sequel and an untitled Flash film. The film failed, and nothing moved forward.

  Wayne T. Carr was scheduled to play John Stewart in Zack Snyder's director's cut of Justice League. Warner Bros. asked for the scene to be reworked, and it was redone with Martian Manhunter, played by Harry Lennix.

  On television, the live-action series Stargirl showed Alan Scott's power battery in a flashback. The Injustice Society attacked the Justice Society's headquarters, and Pat Dugan hid the battery in his basement. In the second season, Alan Scott's daughter Jennie-Lynn Scott finds it and activates it. She absorbs its energy and breaks it, then leaves Blue Valley to look for her missing brother Todd Rice.

  A longer saga played out at HBO Max. A live-action series was announced featuring the Alan Scott, Guy Gardner, Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz versions of the hero, plus a new character named Bree Jarta. Finn Wittrock and Jeremy Irvine were cast as Gardner and Scott. The series was planned to span multiple time periods, with a separate story for each Lantern.

  In October 2022, it was announced that the project had been redeveloped into a solo series about John Stewart. In December 2022, sources claimed it was scrapped, but James Gunn said it was still in production. Its title was revealed as Lanterns in January 2023.

  The earlier version was confirmed cancelled. The new series focuses on Stewart and Hal Jordan as part of DC Studios' new DC Universe. In October 2024, Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre were cast as Jordan and Stewart. The show is planned to air on HBO in 2026.

  Twice, in 2012 and again in 2016, DC Comics found itself in disputes over Green Lantern trade marks before the United States Patent and Trade Mark Office. The name had become valuable enough to defend.

  The name has also escaped comics entirely. Some political pundits and academic political scientists use the phrase "Green Lanternism", or "political Green Lanternism". It describes a common tendency to demand perfection or omnipotence from political leaders.

  Those who use the term say the habit also blames unsolvable or inevitable problems on a leader's supposed weakness or malice. The assumption is that an office-holder's powers are limited only by personal strength of will. In that borrowed image, the ring's one stated limit becomes the whole accusation.

  4344475154