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Ever since relaunching the Green Lantern comic book series in 2023, writer Jeremy Adams has made life significantly more complicated for Hal Jordan and his place in the Green Lantern Corps.
As the Corps contends with the United Planets, Hal's Green Lantern Power Ring has been modified to keep him within Earth's atmosphere as the other Earth-based Green Lanterns face threats across the cosmos. Green Lantern #8 puts the spotlight on Kyle Rayner, with the character's co-creator Ron Marz returning to write a backup story in the issue starring Kyle as he faces his own crossroads in his life.
In an exclusive interview with Newsarama, Green Lantern #8 writers Jeremy Adams and Ron Marz talk about the current state of affairs for Hal Jordan and Kyle Rayner, and reflect on Green Lantern's place in the wider DC Universe and the loves and enemies they face.
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Newsarama: Jeremy, how does it feel working on Green Lantern at the moment, eight issues in?
Jeremy Adams: It's really exciting because, not only is Phillip Kennedy Johnson on Green Lantern: War Journal doing some really cool stuff with John Stewart, but being able to do the main story while having luminaries like Ron doing the backups that are going to feed directly into what is happening with the overarching story, I think that's a cool way to do it. I don't want somebody to pick up the book and go "I hate or love the main story" or "I hate or love the backup story," but not having them connected in any way or give us a glimpse at what's happening in the overarching universe would be terrible, especially for the price point. [laughs] I wanted people to go "This was worth it!"
Ron, correct me if I'm wrong, but is this the first time you've done interiors with Dale Eaglesham? How was it working with him?
Ron Marz: It's actually not the first time I've done interiors with Dale. I did a What If…? issue in, like, 1993 with Dale, which is nuts.
Adams: What was the What If…?
Marz: It was "What If Barbara Ketch Had Become Ghost Rider?" It's not like that's anybody's favorite What If…? issue, but it's just odd that that's the first time that Dale and I worked together, but our paths did not cross on Green Lantern. I've known Dale for years. He was actually at CrossGen Studios not that long before everything started to funnel down the drain. We worked in the same building for a while, so we've known each other for a long time, but never got to do this before, so that was very cool and unexpected.
Jeremy, you've been working with Amancay Nahuelpan after launching the series with Xermánico last year. How has it been working with Amancay on this arc?
Adams: It's great! The thing with Xermánico is that his art is so good and detailed, you just want to manacle him to a drawing table and go "No, you can never take a break!" [laughs] I think he and I work really well together and he does great interiors.
It's been a thrill to do Green Lantern and Hal, but of course, there's the Kyle of it all... Now that I'm on Green Lantern and it's Hal-centric, everybody wants Kyle. Obviously, there's that '90s nostalgia. It's really exciting to see him back in the fold because Geoff Thorne's run focused primarily on John Stewart and Jo Mullein. It was this cool, sweeping sci-fi thing, but it's been a long time in terms of continuity with Green Lantern.
Being able to check-in on these characters and see what's going on in the universe is fun because my first Hal arc was definitely Earth-centric. Now, with the backups, we're beginning to see what's happening in space and that's cool. I didn't realize writing Green Lantern, that the pull towards space was so drastic as a writer. It's such a natural tendency, so trying to keep Hal on Earth has been somewhat difficult!
Ron, with the Kyle Rayner backup story, you deliver the bombastic cosmic action, but it really is a vulnerable look at Kyle and the things that haunt him. As someone who's checked in on Kyle over the years, what did you want to say about him and his psyche with this story?
Marz: Paul Kaminski actually got in touch while I was sitting in the airport lounge at JFK waiting to board a flight to Paris. He was like "Do you want to do a Green Lantern story?" and I was like "Yeah, but I can't do it this week!" [laughs] Anytime you get to go back and play with those toys is great. I tend to approach short stories as a different kind of a fish than a 20-page story. It's got to be a gem. You've got to make your point, get in, and get out, and hopefully leave the readers feeling like they got a complete meal, even though you're dealing with a shorter number of pages.
In my book, it's always a question of "Did I do something to make the readers care? Did I do something to pull on your emotions?" because, if I didn't, I didn't do my job. For this story, I wanted to check-in on Kyle to see where he was and see where his head was at, but also give a little bit '90s style action. We open with a flashback and that's one of the tools we writers pull out of our toolboxes, to open in the middle of a fight scene so that you get something cool right up front and then dig into more of the emotional stuff.
In a lot of ways, the story harkens back to my first Green Lantern issue, #48, which was Hal Jordan experiencing stuff, kicking over a tragedy in his life. In some ways, that's the same thing Kyle does here, which is not coincidental. It's definitely what was in my head when I sat down to do it.
Adams: Is it easy for you to slip into the voice of Kyle? It sounded exactly like you picked it right back up, even though Kyle has been through all this crazy stuff.
Marz: Yeah! It's not like you can pick which one of your children is your favorite, but you know their voices and how to slide back into them pretty easily. Honestly, I thought it might take a few pages for me to get comfy, but it didn't, thankfully. It's like putting on a hoodie that fits just right.
Not everything we do in our careers is a fit. Sometimes you play with stuff and you go "Shit, that's not the right thing!" When you have something that really meshes with your sensibilities as a writer and even your sensibilities as a reader, I think it's really easy to slide back into it.
I feel like the worst thing that you can do to a pilot is ground them and that's what's happened to Hal and his Power Ring. Where's Hal's head during all of this?
Adams: I think that's the thing, since the start of the series, that Hal has been struggling with. Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi really filled every corner of the Green Lantern universe with a lot of really big mythology that becomes incredibly hard to navigate as a writer, at least for me. Trying to shrink it down and have it be about a guy who has $13 in his bank account, the girl he loves is moving on, and there aren't pilots anymore because of drones, it focuses Hal into "Who am I?" when you take away these things.
But we realized very quickly about who he is, that he's still a hero even if he's schlubby in his personal life. He's always going to answer the call to action about what's happening, but I think it's frustrating for him too because he is grounded. His ring won't let him leave the atmosphere and those mysteries are unraveling at a rapid pace. We really slow-rolled it, in terms of talking about Carol, Hal and his job, and where they are.
As DC continuity as a whole has been focused on the legacy characters, it's been fun to pivot back on this book and see where these older characters' heads have been at. That's been really interesting and people have been really responding to it. But the mystery and the mounting pressure of what's happening with the United Planets, what's happening with the United Planets Lanterns, and what's being unveiled I hope people will want to follow us into the fall where bigger things are going to take place.
The preview reveals Jo Mullein playing a larger role in the series moving forward. After she was created by N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell in Far Sector, what do you think she brings to the Green Lantern mythos?
Adams: For me, I love this very detective approach to things and her design is really cool too. I like that, where Hal might be a little impulsive, Jo is more of a skilled professional, like the difference between a detective and a beat cop, in a way. I like that aspect of her.
Marz: I think her backstory is terrific and it's a different backstory than any other Green Lantern. Just in an overall sense, I think that the coolest thing about Green Lantern as a franchise, way back to when I was doing it regularly and all the years since - and even before, when Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams introduced John Stewart - you get to pick your flavor; it's a multiple-choice process. When you're reading about Batman, you're pretty much going to read about Bruce Wayne, except for, once in a while, when we take him away and give him back to you.
For Green Lantern, it's a franchise like no other in that you get to pick your favorite and your favorite is going to show up somewhere somehow before too long. You also get to pick what sort of stories, whether it's on Earth being a superhero or being part of the Justice League, or out in space having Star Wars adventures. I think it's probably the most flexible franchise in comics because there are so many different characters and things you can do with it. I think most other comics, DC or Marvel, don't offer you that kind of flexibility.
We'd be remiss if we didn't talk about the villains. Sinestro's shadow has been hovering over the series since he walked into that diner at the start and, of course, Ron, you killed Sinestro back in Emerald Twilight...
Marz: Yeah, but apparently it didn't take, though!
Adams: It never does!
What do you think it is that makes Sinestro stand out so much from the other Green Lantern villains?
Marz: I think it's personal. I think there's such a connection between the characters. It started out as "Hey, here's a guy with a green ring and that guy has a yellow ring, so they must be enemies!" in the sweet innocence of the Silver Age. Since then, the character has been built very much into Hal's opposite number. There are a lot of similarities between the characters, especially where they started out, with him being a mentor and all that. Then, they go into completely separate directions.
The power set is still very similar, which is cool, but just the fact that they are characters who were once friends and partners, I think those are the people who become your bitterest enemies if things don't go well. In terms of the sheer spectacle, it's just cool when they fight each other. I rode the Green Lantern ride at Warner Bros World in Abu Dhabi and it was great.
Adams: Did you go to the Hall of Justice too?
Marz: Hell yes! I did all that stuff, in fact, I did all that stuff multiple times because we went over a two-day span and did everything. I rode the Green Lantern ride, which is seriously the best one there, three times. There's this Sinestro big battle and it really puts you in the middle of it. It's a great display of why those two characters work so well as arch-enemies.
Adams: The way that I always look at it, especially when I was writing him - and I haven't written comics for that long, but I've read comics for my entire life - trying to figure out what the voice I was going to use. I kept thinking of Pacino and De Niro in Heat. With Sinestro and Hal, I think there's a very thin line between them in terms of morality.
The way that Sinestro has been built out, you can totally understand his [stance of] "If I really need to crack down on people and cause a little fear to keep them safe" you can understand that. There's an authoritarian impulse that some people tend to gravitate towards to feel safe and give up everything to do it. I think Hal is slightly over there going, "No, that's too far. Paramount is freedom of choice."
Those two philosophical differences can react really well to each other for interesting stories. There's this begrudging respect in the way they've been written in the past. They get each other's point-of-view, they just disagree with it, and then it boils over into this place where people will potentially die and Hal has to stop it.
I will now hear Sinestro as De Niro and Hal as Pacino.
Adams: Literally, when I wrote the scene in the diner, I was like "I just want to do a Heat scene" where they're just talking to each other with nuclear weapons on their fingers. It's very cool, the tension and the strength of those two characters.
Jeremy, what else can you tease about the future of Green Lantern?
Adams: Within the next two issues, we're going to find out a huge number of things. We're really going to discover some stuff about the ring, why Hal is stuck on Earth, and a lot about why there are so many 2814 Lanterns. A lot of that stuff is going to roll into the next part, which is going to be cosmic for a little bit and lead to some events that are going to be really cool and give us a greater glimpse, not just of Hal, but Carol, and that's been a joy too.
When I started writing The Flash and Wally West, it was really fun to explore Linda as a character too, and try to make her a character of consequence, at least for me. Somebody is letting me play with the action figures, so it's really fun for me to add to the toy box a little bit and do what I want to do with them.
Marz: That's our job basically. We get to dig into the toy box, root around, see what we want to play with and then, to a greater or lesser extent, we put them back on the shelves for the next person. Once in a while, not that often, we get to break the toys and those are the really fun gigs!
Green Lantern #8 is published by DC on February 13.
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