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Glad to hear they have a few issues in the can already. And #1 isn't out for another 2 months.
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THE GREEN LANTERN #2
written by GRANT MORRISON
art and cover by LIAM SHARP
variant cover by FRANCESCO MATTINA
Someone is transporting a mysterious cargo out of the Great Void, and it spells trouble for the universe at large! Hal Jordan interrogates a member of the Spider Guild for answers and uses his pheremones as an interrogation tool, but can he extract the info in time?! Meanwhile, Volgar Ro makes a play for Earth while its emerald protector is off-world!
ON SALE 12.05.18
$3.99 US | 32 PAGES
FC | RATED T+
This issue will ship with two covers.
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Looks good. Glad to see we are visiting concwpts like the Spider Guild. I'm looking forward to Morrison's take on them.Comment
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Looks like the whole universe is still getting threatened all the time.Comment
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Why Grant Morrison’s Hal Jordan Comic Is Called ‘THE Green Lantern’
Over the course of almost a century of comics, DC’s Green Lantern concept has gone through a number of changes. There have been reboots, revamps, resurrections and, really, just about every kind of twist and tweak you can imagine. When Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp’s The Green Lantern arrives, it promises to offer readers a new take on the idea as well, reflecting not just on the man behind the ring, but the ring empowering the man and what it means to the universe.
During a recent press event at the DC Entertainment offices in Burbank, CA, Morrison elaborated on his idea of the general goodness of the Lanterns, and just why he’s calling the book calling The Green Lantern.
The Blue Lamp
One of the most immutable ideas behind DC’s Green Lantern Corps, and Hal Jordan in particular, is that they’re all essentially space cops. The Corps flies around the universe, doling out justice wherever they can. Previous incarnations of the character declared Hal the “greatest Green Lantern ever,” and treated him as the intergalactic equivalent of a hero cop. But that’s not why Morrison wanted to call the series The Green Lantern. Instead, it’s because he wanted to reflect the power the entire mythology has on the galaxy, using our collective understanding of what police are to build towards something bigger.
“The Green Lantern basically refers to the Green Lantern, the central power battery,” Morrison revealed. “It doesn’t necessarily refer to Hal at all… It actually came from a movie in Britain called The Blue Lamp. It was a police movie… and it gave rise to this sorta famous 1960’s police drama that ran for, like, two hundred years. It ran until the guy died on the job, basically.”
They had this character of Dixon of Dock Green, who was in the precinct, and the ‘blue lamp’ is the police lamp that hangs outside all the British police stations. So I just thought, ‘the blue lamp, the green lantern, it’s the same thing. It’s the science-fiction version of that concept.’… So it refers to the concept rather to the man.”
It’s interesting to consider that as the core of the concept. The sheer number of Green Lantern characters out there has always allowed creators to explore different personalities and ideas with the ever-changing cast, but by making this book more about what the Green Lanterns as a whole means to the universe, it allows Morrison and Sharp to really explore the cosmos and examine their interpretation of just how this corner of the DC Universe works. In short, the concept of “space cop” makes for a good jumping off point, but there’s a lot more to the Lanterns — and Morrison & Sharpe’s series — than that.
Guardians of the (DC) Galaxy
Another important aspect of the book Morrison addressed is his take on the Guardians. There have been many approaches to the enigmatic aliens over the years, ranging from treating them as outright good people, to well-meaning but difficult bureaucrats, all the way to a group of powerful beings actively hindering the progress of the universe. In The Green Lantern, the Guardians are more of a constant in the universe than they are self-appointed leaders of a group of space cops.
Morrison spoke about their role in the book, explaining, “I want to play the Guardians and the whole idea of the Green Lanterns as not law as we understand it…. the Guardians have often been played as out of touch, geriatric characters, but we want to play them actually as these beings that have been around since the dawn of the universe. They have an intrinsic understanding of what is right, in the sense of what leads to greater organization, more freedom, all those things they understand in ways that we don’t.”
“The Green Lanterns aren’t following some code drawn up by some guy, they’re following a code of law that follows the fundamental principals of how the universe was created. We kind of really want to go into that, I don’t think it’s been done before to show that there’s more to this than just a bunch of law enforcers who just arbitrarily decided that it was wrong to curse that guy or wrong to wear red one day or wrong to be this person.”
Comparing the Guardians’ understanding of the universe to the concept of Dharma, Morrison explained, “They know the rightness in things and the wrongness in things, and they’d like to try and correct it for the evolution of the universe. It’s very different. Yeah, it seems like a police force, and the more we get into the actual philosophy the more alien and weirder it becomes.”
In the end, this isn’t a series just about Hal Jordan, though his character and philosophy play heavily into the story. Rather,it’s a comic about the Green Latner Corps as an organization, and how something like that has to operate in the wild and untamed DC Universe. And, from the way Morrison described his and Sharpe’s ideas, it just might be the most interesting take on the concept in a long time.Comment
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I like the sound of that concept for the Guardians. I kind of reminds me of the concept (that I really liked) where we discovered that the Guardians, rather than just promoting law and order, were truly trying to preserve the universe by fighting entropy, because Krona's experiment had increased entropy in the universe, and threatened the cycle of death and rebirth that the universe had been going through forever. Basically the idea that the Guardians' views of what is important are on a much grander scale than we mere mortals know, or can truly comprehend, but are they are still wise and beneficent (just not always in ways we recognize).
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^Yeah, agreed, the GotU should have long plans beyond the comprehension of the GLs themselves.
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Yeah, the headline focuses on the title but I think his approach to the guardians is the bigger news.Comment
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Can you imagine a GL writer actually getting the Guardians of the Universe right? It's been decades since I have witnessed that!Comment
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That's a piece of cake. Just depict them the way they were originally. Keep them off-camera most of the time, and have them tend to make good decisions when you do show them.Originally posted by Big Daddy Dave Skywalker View Post
These are beings who are BILLIONS of years old. It's very unlikely that a 30-something test pilot from Earth would lead the GLC better than they would. They INVENTED the rings and the CPB, for God's sake.
Morrison sounds like he's going to do it pretty much the way I would, so I probably won't be bitching too much. But he needs to get away from that "space cop" thing and get Hal back on Earth. And lose Baz and Cruz.Last edited by Trey Strain; 10-03-2018, 08:30 PM.Comment
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^Even if most his adventures are on Earth, he's still a space cop. He was always the GL of the whole sector, even before he met living GLs or the GotU they made that clear.
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THE GREEN LANTERN CHALLENGES GRANT MORRISON TO FIND COMMON GROUND WITH HAL JORDAN
When DC Comics announced that the Earth-born Green Lantern team-up book, Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps, would be ending, readers bid farewell to the brotherhood and male bonding in that series. But there was no letdown for what would come next as Jordan would star in his own solo series again, The Green Lantern, set to debut this November 7, written by Grant Morrison (All-Star Superman, Happy) and drawn by Liam Sharp (Wonder Woman). The immediate question comes up, what is it about Hal Jordan that would interest Morrison? They have nothing in common, and that’s exactly what drew him to the project.
Morrison spoke to SYFY WIRE and other press last week as he revealed his plans for The Green Lantern, building on the knowledge that it will be looking at the space cop aspect. First, Morrison had to make sense of the most drastic changes and contradictions in Hal Jordan’s personality over the years, starting with his test pilot days. Jordan's creator John Broome was on a Jack Kerouac-type journey, and took Green Lantern on a similar trip.
“(Hal) suddenly goes from being a test pilot to an insurance investigator, then a toy salesman,” Morrison explained. “None of these things seem to relate to each other at all. I love that sense of disconnection and dislocation, and reading up some of the American astronauts, (like) Buzz Aldrin, (who) talked about having come back from space, finding it really difficult to deal with life on Earth. They'd seen this perspective, and that was only from the moon.”
“(Hal’s) been to the other end of the galaxy. He's seen planets, where it's a utopia where people live for thousands of years, the political system is perfect, where they don't use money, where capitalism is a distant memory, and he comes back to this–this mud hut, the Earth. You're trying your best, but, honestly, he's got a pair of shoes made of liquid quicksilver. How do you really integrate?”
In coming home to Earth, Morrison explained that Jordan may have accepted a diversity beyond anything we even have on planet Earth. He's beyond the squabbles humans have with each other. “When he comes back, we’re all one species (to him). He’s so far in another place dealing with other living, intelligent creatures that are nothing like us. I think that's an important aspect of him. For us he seems old-fashioned, when he's actually, wide open, you know?”
Morrison would go on to explain the next phase of Jordan’s evolution into the right-wing cop, paired with the liberal activist, Oliver Queen in Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ Green Lantern / Green Arrow team-ups in the 1970s.
“It was quite funny, because the guy who's portrayed as the bone-headed cop is actually wandering the earth trying to make sense of things. The other guy's a millionaire who just lost his fortune. There was a moment in his life where (Hal) thought he was this dumb cop, who had to try and justify his existence. So taking all of those contradictory aspects of the character, like with Batman, if you combine them as one person, it's like a real person, because all of us have these shades, these contradictions in us."
“I think the most effective characters are the ones who seem like, ‘Hal Jordan wouldn't do that.’ Oh, yeah, he kind of might, because he's reacting to something in a way that you didn't expect him to.’ I think in the first four issues (of The Green Lantern) particularly, people will be saying, ‘Hal Jordan wouldn't do that. Grant, you do not understand this character.’ Then, you'll see what we're aiming towards."
Some of the depths that Morrison is willing to explore with Hal Jordan come from the confidence he has in artist Liam Sharp. Once Morrison knew he was on board, it pushed him to think bigger.
“We wanted to bring a European influence to it, which is ideal, because Liam’s from England, but he was really influenced by French graphic novels and by British comics, as well. So, the first couple (issues), you'll see the influence of bande dessinée and 2000 A.D. in there, the works of Virgil Findlay and it gives the whole thing a different look. It almost takes it away from being a superhero comic, and it's very much a golden age sci-fi comic."
"So, it encouraged me to go even crazier with the locations and the planets and the alien creatures, because I know he can handle it. It's taken influences that suit the character, but haven't really been applied in that way before, and Liam's just been the perfect collaborator."
"The Green Lantern is a book all about light. So spectacle was an important part of what we wanted with big fantastic images, amazing worlds, stuff that only George Lucas could probably manage.”
Morrison and Sharp have mapped out a long course for The Green Lantern, 10 issues have been written and Morrison has already begun plotting out the “second season.” He revealed future stories include the exploration of the Guardians’ understanding of the way the universe works, the Controllers, an appearance of Commander Crack, and an exploration of Hal Jordan’s relationship with the Flash. In fact, many of his friends and lovers will be used as mirrors pointed at Hal. And yes, a much-anticipated reunion with Oliver Queen.
“I want to play with what was taken as the basis of their relationship back in the '70s, whereas, one guy's an unemployed toy salesman, and the other guy's a millionaire who just lost his money. I want to invert a lot of the things, where suddenly, maybe Hal's the left wing guy. You know? Maybe there's a bit of bull***t about Oliver Queen."
Fans of Morrison's work know the world building and high concept science-fiction was going to be easy, but the most challenging thing is proving to be Hal Jordan himself – a far departure from who Morrison is, and that challenge of writing Hal has been the draw.
“When I was younger, all the characters I wrote like The Doom Patrol, were misfits like me,” Morrison admitted. “(Hal Jordan) is a very complex, gnarly character, and I don't even think I've scratched the surface yet. We really only feel we start to get him at episode three. But, it's been a journey. It's been strange, fun, and that's what I like about it. He's unusual and just a weird guy.”Last edited by Hypo; 10-04-2018, 01:09 AM.Comment
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From today's DC Nation:
And coming up in next month's DC Nation:
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This "everything happened" approach is not good.
No matter how stupid and counterproductive it was, everything that every writer has ever written happened.
Why would you do that, besides to show off your arcane knowledge of DC lore that most readers either don't know about or don't like?
It's like never wiping your ass and being proud of it.Last edited by Trey Strain; 10-04-2018, 10:37 AM.Comment
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