Summer of Green Lantern, 2: Geoff Johns’ comic book



Friday’s casting of Ryan Reynolds as pilot Hal Jordan, better known as the alter ego of DC Comics’ Green Lantern, moves Martin Campbell’s film much, much closer to reality. The big movie deal should renew interest in the Green Lantern comic books — which is convenient, because the Green Lantern title is probably more interesting now than it’s ever been in the history of the character.

Green Lantern’s resurgence dates to 2004, when prolific comics writer Geoff Johns took over the character. Johns, who began his career as an assistant to Richard Donner (director of the first two Superman films), isn’t as “literary” a genre comic book writer as Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman in their heyday, so readers not disposed super-powered characters in odd outfits probably won’t be converted by Green Lantern. Nevertheless, it’s a wildly imaginative work of escapist entertainment that pushes a venerable character in delirious directions.

For the uninitiated seeking a “Green Lantern 101,” start with Secret Origins (available in a hardback collection), Johns’ recent, six-part retelling of how test pilot Hal Jordan came to be selected as the ring-bearing representative of the Green Lantern Corps for “Space Sector 2814” (which includes Earth). Though slow to start, the volume revisits essential elements of Green Lantern lore, including Jordan’s initial friendship with Sinestro, “the greatest of the Green Lanterns,” who would later wield a yellow power right as the Corps’ nemesis.

The Earthbound stories tend to combine the swaggering flyboy cliches of The Right Stuff or Top Gun with the “Area 51”-type mysteries of “The X-Files.” The interstellar plotlines, however, offer a better example of what makes Green Lantern the most spectacular space opera in comics.