Robert Venditti is an interviewing machine. Obviously his best one was the detailed hour long conversation we had with him, but now he’s talking about his new Green Lantern villain Relic. Here’s what he had to say about the villain with Newsarama.

 

Venditti on the creation of Relic:

Relic is a character I’ve been working on in one form or another for nearly six months. He was born out of what I knew was going to happen before I came in as the new writer for the book.

 

While the goal is for issue #21 to be a clean jumping-on point for readers, we’re also very much picking up the story where Geoff and Doug are leaving it off. Relic is emblematic of what I see as the next logical step in the Green Lantern mythology.

Relic’s technology:

His enormous size gives him a proportionate level of strength, but he isn’t what I’d describe as being inherently super-powered. His weaponry and defenses are more technology oriented, and he’s coming after the Corps for a very specific reason. All his technology is geared toward fighting them.

Relic is mostly a Billy Tan design and he’s also a scientist:

I had input into the design, but Billy did most of the work there. The goal was to create a character who’d be visually imposing and compelling, but to also stay true to the character’s roots….

 

Before he was a villain, Relic was a scientist, and I think Billy did an amazing job melding those two things together.

Relic is a Corps villain, not just a Hal Jordan villain:

…as far as Green Lantern characters are concerned. Relic is such a huge threat, fighting him becomes an all-hands-on-deck scenario.

 

The Relic storyline will be very grand in scale. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: He’ll connect every Lantern of every Corps that has ever appeared in any comic book. Ever. We’re coming out of the gate with an ambitious, challenging arc, so we aren’t easing into anything.