Green Lantern
Green Lantern is the name of several superheroes appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. They fight evil with the aid of rings that grant them a variety of extraordinary powers, all of which come from imagination, fearlessness, and the electromagnetic spectrum of emotional willpower. The characters are typically depicted as members of the Green Lantern Corps, an intergalactic law enforcement agency.
The first Green Lantern character, Alan Scott, was created in 1940 by Martin Nodell with scripting or co-scripting of the first stories by Bill Finger during the Golden Age of Comic Books and usually fought common criminals in Capitol City with the aid of his magic ring. For the Silver Age of Comic Books, John Broome and Gil Kane reinvented the character as Hal Jordan in 1959 and introduced the Green Lantern Corps, shifting the nature of the character from fantasy to science fiction. During the Bronze Age of Comic Books, Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams introduced John Stewart, a new member of the Corps who was one of DC's first Black superheroes. Other notable Green Lanterns include Guy Gardner, Kyle Rayner, Simon Baz, Jessica Cruz and Jo Mullein.
The Green Lanterns are among DC Comics' longest lasting sets of characters. They have been adapted to television, video games, and motion pictures.
Publication history
Golden Age
created the first Green Lantern in collaboration with Bill Finger. He first appeared in the Golden Age of Comic Books in All-American Comics #16, published by All-American Publications, one of three companies that would eventually merge to form DC Comics.This Green Lantern's real name was Alan Scott, a railroad engineer who, after a railway crash, came into possession of a magic lantern which spoke to him and said it would bring power. From this, he crafted a magic ring that gave him a wide variety of powers. The limitations of the ring were that it had to be "charged" every 24 hours by touching it to the lantern for a time and that it could not directly affect objects made of wood. Alan Scott fought mostly ordinary human villains, but he did have a few paranormal ones such as the immortal Vandal Savage and the zombie Solomon Grundy. Most stories took place in New York. Green Lantern rings are made from magic.
As a popular character in the 1940s, the Green Lantern featured both in anthology books such as All-American Comics and Comic Cavalcade, as well as his own book, Green Lantern. He also appeared in All Star Comics as a member of the superhero team known as the Justice Society of America.
After World War II the popularity of superheroes in general declined. The Green Lantern comic book was cancelled with issue #38, and All Star Comics #57 was the character's last Golden Age appearance. When superheroes came back in fashion in later decades, the character Alan Scott was revived, but he was forever marginalized by the new Hal Jordan character who had been created to supplant him. Initially, he made guest appearances in other superheroes' books, but eventually got regular roles in books featuring the Justice Society. He never got another solo series, although he did star in individual stories and in the single-issue 2002 comic book Brightest Day, Blackest Night. Between 1995 and 2003, DC Comics changed Alan Scott's superhero codename to "Sentinel" in order to distinguish him from the newer and more popular science fictional Green Lanterns.
In 2011, the Alan Scott character was revamped. His costume was redesigned to be all green and the source of his powers was changed to that of the mystical power of nature.
Silver Age
In 1959, Julius Schwartz reinvented the Green Lantern character as a science fiction hero named Hal Jordan. Hal Jordan's powers were more or less the same as Alan Scott's, but otherwise this character was completely different from the Green Lantern character of the 1940s. He had a new name, a redesigned costume, and a rewritten origin story. Hal Jordan received his ring from a dying alien and was commissioned as an officer of the Green Lantern Corps, an interstellar law enforcement agency overseen by the Guardians of the Universe.Hal Jordan was introduced in Showcase #22. Gil Kane and Sid Greene were the art team most notable on the title in its early years, along with writer John Broome. His initial physical appearance, according to Kane, was patterned after his one-time neighbor, actor Paul Newman.
Later developments
With issue #76, the series made a radical stylistic departure. Editor Schwartz, in one of the company's earliest efforts to provide more than fantasy, worked with the writer-artist team of Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams to spark new interest in the comic book series and address a perceived need for social relevance. They added the character Green Arrow and had the pair travel through America encountering "real world" issues, to which they reacted in different ways — Green Lantern as fundamentally a lawman, Green Arrow as a liberal iconoclast. Additionally during this run, the groundbreaking "Snowbirds Don't Fly" story was published in which Green Arrow's teen sidekick Speedy developed a heroin addiction that he was forcibly made to quit. The stories were critically acclaimed, with publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek citing it as an example of how comic books were "growing up". However, the O'Neil/Adams run was not a commercial success, and the series was cancelled after only 14 issues, though an additional unpublished three installments were finally published as back-ups in The Flash #217–219.The title saw a number of revivals and cancellations. It changed to Green Lantern Corps at one point as the popularity rose and waned. During a time there were two regular titles, each with a Green Lantern, and a third member in the Justice League. A new character, Kyle Rayner, was created to become the feature while Hal Jordan first became the villain Parallax, then died and came back as the Spectre.
In the wake of The New Frontier, writer Geoff Johns returned Hal Jordan as Green Lantern in Green Lantern: Rebirth. Johns began to lay the groundwork for "Blackest Night" ), viewing it as the third part of the trilogy started by Rebirth. Expanding on the Green Lantern mythology in the second part, "Sinestro Corps War", Johns, with artist Ethan van Sciver, found wide critical acclaim and commercial success with the series, which promised the introduction of a spectrum of colored "lanterns".
Timeline
Awards
The series and its creators have received several awards over the years, including the 1961 Alley Award for Best Adventure Hero/Heroine with Own Book and the Academy of Comic Book Arts Shazam Award for Best Continuing Feature in 1970, for Best Individual Story, and in 1971 for Best Individual Story.Writer O'Neil received the Shazam Award for Best Writer in 1970 for his work on Green Lantern, Batman, Superman and other titles, while artist Adams received the Shazam for Best Artist in 1970 for his work on Green Lantern and Batman. Inker Dick Giordano received the Shazam Award for Best Inker for his work on Green Lantern and other titles.
In Judd Winick's first regular writing assignment on Green Lantern, he wrote a storyline in which an assistant of Kyle Rayner's emerged as a gay character in Green Lantern #137. In Green Lantern #154 the story entitled "Hate Crime" gained media recognition when his friend Terry Berg was brutally beaten in a homophobic attack. Winick was interviewed on Phil Donahue's show on MSNBC for that storyline on August 15, 2002 and received two GLAAD Media Awards for his Green Lantern work.
In May 2011, Green Lantern placed 7th on IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes of All Time.
Legal disputes
DC Comics has been involved in two disputes concerning Green Lantern trade marks before the United States Patent and Trade Mark Office, the first in 2012 and the second in 2016.Characters
Golden Age Green Lantern
- Alan Scott
Silver Age Green Lantern
- Hal Jordan
- Guy Gardner
Bronze Age Green Lanterns
- John Stewart
Modern Age Green Lanterns
- Kyle Rayner
- Simon Baz
- Jessica Cruz
- Keli Quintela
- Sojourner Mullein
Others who have headlined as Green Lantern in a Green Lantern comic book or related title
- Jade
- Sinestro
- Jediah Caul
- Tai Pham
Powers and abilities
Green Lantern Oath
In issue #9 of the original Alan Scott Green Lantern comic book, scriptwriter Alfred Bester, best known as a major science fiction novelist of the 1950s introduced the Green Lantern Oaths:This oath was revived for the Hal Jordan version of the character. Alan Moore and Geoff Johns introduced variants. Oftentimes "darkest night" is changed to "blackest night", which inspired the name of the crossover event Blackest Night. In reference to the oath, the sequel to Blackest Night was called Brightest Day.