Before the flurry of changes to the Green Lantern Corps and Red Lanterns titles yesterday, IGN spoke with the new head honcho of Green Lantern, writer Robert Venditti. He spoke on the next logical step for the series, Hal Jordan and big plans for September. As I said before, this interview was conducted before Joshua Hale Fialkov stepped away from the lantern books.

Venditti on the next logical step following Geoff Johns’ run:

 

We’ll be giving readers a clean jumping-on point, but we’re also building on the foundation Geoff laid down in his run. I think I’ve read something like 200 issues of Green Lantern since I was hired, and there are some things that occurred to me as the next logical steps for the series. To get there, we’ll need to drop the characters into new situations and have them face conflicts they haven’t faced before. After reading the September issue, readers will see the Green Lantern mythology in an entirely different light.

Venditti reiterates that Hal Jordan will be the star of Green Lantern:

Hal will be the focus. He’s one of the most iconic characters in all of comics, so how could I not want to write him? That’s not to say those other characters won’t show up from time to time, but Green Lantern is going to be Hal’s book. Given the events that will transpire by the end of Geoff’s run, Hal is the natural choice for what we want to do.

How his work on X-O Manowar helped with his Green Lantern writing:

Prior to X-O, I’d only done creator-owned mini-series and graphic novels, which is a completely different style of writing. Not just because the pacing is different, but because X-O was the first established character I’d worked on, too. A lot of people think that’d be confining creatively, but I’ve found it leads to another form of creativity. The constraints of an established character’s history and universe force you to think about a story differently than if you have a blank canvas.

Venditti praises artist Billy Tan:

Billy is great to work with. He’s nearly done with our first issue, and every time I see new pages I get excited about what we have coming down the line. He’s able to hit so many different emotional beats. One moment he’s nailing the humor of a visual gag, and the next he’s showing you a double-page spread of some of the most frenzied villains you’ve ever seen. His cover for our first issue perfectly captures one of the main conflicts driving our first arc. He’s an incredibly versatile artist.