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DC Comics are relaunching The Green Lantern comic series this November with acclaimed writer Grant Morrison (Batman, All-Star Superman) and artist Liam Sharp (The Brave and the Bold: Batman and Wonder Woman) taking lead hero Hal Jordan back to his classic roots.
“Instead of the big, epic, 12-part stories, we’re focusing down on the everyday life of a space cop. Basically, it’s no more apocalypse-ending storylines,” Morrison told IGN over a phone interview along with Sharp. “The basic concept is that [Hal Jordan] is like a space cop that patrols a sector of the universe where anything can happen. We’ve made it more like a police procedural.”
A similar grounding tactic was taken after Geoff Johns rebooted the character back in 2005. We saw Hal simply fighting various villains while trying to keep Earth’s sector of the universe under control. In time, though, the storylines grew to become more vast and grand in scale, resulting in interstellar wars and enemies so mind-bendingly powerful that they threatened existence itself. That trend continued with Robert Venditti’s run that saw the Green Lantern Corps tasked with saving the universe from dying -- and that was just the first storyline. You can see why, then, that Morrison and Sharp are intent on keeping things more contained for the foreseeable future.
IGN is pleased to share an exclusive look inside The Green Lantern #1. Check it out by flipping through the slideshow below. Keep reading for details on the story.
“Instead of the big, epic, 12-part stories, we’re focusing down on the everyday life of a space cop. Basically, it’s no more apocalypse-ending storylines,” Morrison told IGN over a phone interview along with Sharp. “The basic concept is that [Hal Jordan] is like a space cop that patrols a sector of the universe where anything can happen. We’ve made it more like a police procedural.”
A similar grounding tactic was taken after Geoff Johns rebooted the character back in 2005. We saw Hal simply fighting various villains while trying to keep Earth’s sector of the universe under control. In time, though, the storylines grew to become more vast and grand in scale, resulting in interstellar wars and enemies so mind-bendingly powerful that they threatened existence itself. That trend continued with Robert Venditti’s run that saw the Green Lantern Corps tasked with saving the universe from dying -- and that was just the first storyline. You can see why, then, that Morrison and Sharp are intent on keeping things more contained for the foreseeable future.
IGN is pleased to share an exclusive look inside The Green Lantern #1. Check it out by flipping through the slideshow below. Keep reading for details on the story.
As you can see from the pages, Hal comes across the crashed ship of a fellow Corpsmen who is dying from his wounds -- not unlike Hal’s origin where he met the dying Abin Sur and was gifted the powerful Green Lantern ring. This scenario is a bit different, though. The unlucky crystalline Green Lantern crashed landed his transport on Earth, which turns out was a prison transport taking three of the universe’s greatest criminals to trial. With those criminals now loose on Earth, the first arc sees Hal hunting them down before they wreak too much havoc.
The Green Lantern Corps arms its officers with rings that are a source of great power and unlimited potential. As Morrison puts it, “It’s an intergalactic police force, but instead of guns they’ve got wishing rings that make their thoughts come true and turn into plasma.” And to that end, Sharp has been having a field day coming up with various constructs for Hal to use. Notoriously uncreative with his constructs, Hal often opts to use the most practical bludgeoning tool he can think of, yet in that simplicity lies his charm, according to Sharp. “I love this idea that he’s an idiot savant. In a way, he’s a genius. He can just turn up and kind of assess the situation really quickly, and then just smack it with a giant fist, and it’s all fixed,” he said.
Over the course of our conversation, Morrison and Sharp continued to profess their love for Hal’s early adventures in the comics and how they wanted to give their run a similar feel where things were new, unexpected, and fresh, so while the Green Lantern comics have grown to encompass a cast of hundreds, don’t expect to see many familiar faces. They’re opting to feature weird alien Green Lanterns who have been long forgotten or are completely new. Earth is home to five other human Green Lanterns, but this story is focused squarely on Hal. The Guardians of the Universe will be around as, essentially, police chiefs who run the Corps from the station. And even though there have been numerous other colored Lantern characters introduced over the years, this creative team is content focusing on just good old green.
With Hal’s MO squared away, that left Morrison to crack Hal’s character, which he did by comparing him to astronauts who come back from space feeling shell-shocked, freaked out, and unable to find a place for themselves in society. He sees Hal as a man blown by the wind from one job to the next, unable to be effective unless he’s doing the extraordinary up in space as a cosmic cop.
“He’s a loner and a drifter and he’s an unreconstructed man. It was nice to do that and to go a little bit old-fashioned with it. He doesn’t belong here at all, you know? He’s longing for the heavens, and to be back up as a Green Lantern,” Sharp said, with Morrison adding, “We’re doing Hal Jordan where, you know he’s a good cop, but is he really a good guy? And we’re looking into his relationships and how he deals with people. And also the fact that, if you’ve got a job as a space cop, it’s hard to be stuck on the planet Earth. He has other lives on other planets. We’re gonna be looking into a lot of things that I don’t think we’ve seen a lot with Hal Jordan before.”
The Green Lantern Corps arms its officers with rings that are a source of great power and unlimited potential. As Morrison puts it, “It’s an intergalactic police force, but instead of guns they’ve got wishing rings that make their thoughts come true and turn into plasma.” And to that end, Sharp has been having a field day coming up with various constructs for Hal to use. Notoriously uncreative with his constructs, Hal often opts to use the most practical bludgeoning tool he can think of, yet in that simplicity lies his charm, according to Sharp. “I love this idea that he’s an idiot savant. In a way, he’s a genius. He can just turn up and kind of assess the situation really quickly, and then just smack it with a giant fist, and it’s all fixed,” he said.
Over the course of our conversation, Morrison and Sharp continued to profess their love for Hal’s early adventures in the comics and how they wanted to give their run a similar feel where things were new, unexpected, and fresh, so while the Green Lantern comics have grown to encompass a cast of hundreds, don’t expect to see many familiar faces. They’re opting to feature weird alien Green Lanterns who have been long forgotten or are completely new. Earth is home to five other human Green Lanterns, but this story is focused squarely on Hal. The Guardians of the Universe will be around as, essentially, police chiefs who run the Corps from the station. And even though there have been numerous other colored Lantern characters introduced over the years, this creative team is content focusing on just good old green.
With Hal’s MO squared away, that left Morrison to crack Hal’s character, which he did by comparing him to astronauts who come back from space feeling shell-shocked, freaked out, and unable to find a place for themselves in society. He sees Hal as a man blown by the wind from one job to the next, unable to be effective unless he’s doing the extraordinary up in space as a cosmic cop.
“He’s a loner and a drifter and he’s an unreconstructed man. It was nice to do that and to go a little bit old-fashioned with it. He doesn’t belong here at all, you know? He’s longing for the heavens, and to be back up as a Green Lantern,” Sharp said, with Morrison adding, “We’re doing Hal Jordan where, you know he’s a good cop, but is he really a good guy? And we’re looking into his relationships and how he deals with people. And also the fact that, if you’ve got a job as a space cop, it’s hard to be stuck on the planet Earth. He has other lives on other planets. We’re gonna be looking into a lot of things that I don’t think we’ve seen a lot with Hal Jordan before.”
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