The recent movie stirred my memories…as a kid, I read Batman and Superman comics. Green Lantern was a pretty minor character-I didn’t find him very interesting.
It was always my impression that most kids didn’t care much for him.
So, was the character a big seller? Or was he like Aquaman or the archer guy (what was his name)?
Oh, and the GL’s sidekick (“pieface”?) come on…
He was my second or third favorite back in the silver age, before all the heroes became drug addicts or worse. I thought having a ring which could do all that stuff was very cool.
“Superman and Green Lantern ain’t got nuthin’ on me…”
You don’t get classed with Supes if you aren’t fairly awesome on your own.
Since their reintroduction at the beginning of the Silver Age, the Green Lanterns have been one of DC’s flagship characters/groups. There has been at least one, usually two, or even three*, books headlined by a GL, almost continually (barring brief hiatuses around big events like Crisis). There is also almost always a Green Lantern in the Justice League (IIRC, the Detroit and current teams are the only ones without one), and Justice Society.
- Titles include Green Lantern (pretty much always), Green Lantern Corps (frequent), Green Lantern Quarterly (80s and 90s), Green Lantern: Mosaic (90s), Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors (current), Green Lantern: New Guardians (post-relaunch), Action Comics (during its weekly run in the 80s), Green Lantern/Green Arrow (70s, after GA was cancelled, known as the Hard Travelling Heroes era)…
Oh, and nobody’s called Tom Kamalaku ‘Pieface’ since the 80s. Except in a few flashbacks where the person who says it learns better.
The DC Comics Lantern Universe (IMO) is so messed up right now it’s barely worth following. The didn’t just tinker with the GL Universe over the past few years, they put them all in blender and set it on frappe.
Green Lantern was always kind of an interesting character in that with the ring what he could create was only limited by his imagination. He effectively was (or could have been) the most powerful human hero in the silver age DC universe as the ring virtually gave him the powers of a God. This was never really acknowledged so far as I know.
As a side question when did the rings become semi-sentient computers that could be quizzed for anwers?
He was never one of DC’s “big three,” but for as long as I’ve been collecting (since 1973), the character has been continuously in print–in his own title most years, as a back-up in The Flash or in the Action Comics Weekly anthology when his own title was on hiatus, as a character in Justice League, etc. For a couple of years in the late 80s/early 90s, GL was so popular that he had multiple spinoff titles, much like the present day. For a while, they made him a villain, killed him off and had him act as the Spectre (It’s real easy for a comic book writer to write himself into a corner and have an editor pull the plug and try to clean the mess up). He’s as important a character to DC as Iron Man is to Marvel.
Green Lantern was probably about fifth in the DC lineup after Superman, Batman, Flash, and Wonder Woman. The Silver Age revival series went under in 1972 (despite wide critical acclaim, though it probably would have failed sooner without the Denny O’Neal/Neal Adams makeover), though the character continued as a back-up feature in Flash. It relaunched in 1976 and made a decent run, though Neal Adams had moved elsewhere.
The silver age run was hampered by having to deal with GL’s powers. The weakness to yellow made the plots somewhat repetitive (not that that ever hurt Spider-Man, which used the same plot in just about every issue in the 60s*).
*Villain shows up. Spidey fights and loses. Returned to being Peter Parker and has shit dumped on him. Spidey finds villain and wins.
Probably the reason that there is now a Green Lantern movie is that Geoff John’s Green Lantern: Rebirth in 2004 really rekindled the books for DC. Prior to that the GL characters had languished, but following Johns’ reimaging/retconning the GL brand has been able to carry several monthly books, and several crossover series. Johns’ stuff definitely got mixed reactions from longtime fans, but undeniably improved GL sales.
Green Lantern #10, if memory serves.
My dad just found out about the upcoming movie a week or so ago. He’s been all super-geeky excited about it, because Green Lantern was his favorite comic growing up.
It’s adorable. I think I should get him a t-shirt.
I’m far from a comic book expert, but I guess almost every superhero is somebody’s favorite. Even Aquaman.
Re: sales, my impression was that Green Lantern was never all that big a seller. They’ve been getting a good push from the company over the last few years that have revitalized the title but before that I think it may have been in the top 20 monthly titles DC published in terms of sales.
Unrelated, but how do all these Black, Blue, Red and White lanterns relate to Green lanterns? And is all that stuff available in a compilation?
FTR, Green Lantern was always my favourite hero. Green Arrow and Flash are up there as well probably because I grew up in the 1970s.
This is a good summary. He’s not up there with Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman, but certainly not a “minor character”. The comparison to Iron Man sounds about right.
Now someone like Blade, that’s a minor (Marvel) character. Who nevertheless managed to get a movie series somehow.
The coloured Lanterns (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet), are all powered by primordial entities, who control the ‘emotional’ spectrum (how many of the colours actually map to emotions is arguable, but that’s their word) - The Butcher (Red, Rage), The Ophidian (Orange, Avarice), Parallax (Yellow, Fear), Ion (Green, Will), Adara (Blue, Hope), the Proselyte (Indigo, Compassion), and the Predator (Violet, Love*).
Black represents Death, and has no true entity, White is Life, and its entity is simply called The Entity.
And the whole gigantic thing (multiple arcs) is collected…into a LOT of books - Sinestro War (2 volumes), Tales of the Sinestro Corps, Rage of the Red Lanterns, Agent Orange, Blackest Night, Blackest Night: Green Lantern, Blackest Night: GLC, Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps, BN: Rise of the Black Lanterns, Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps (2 volumes). And at least one volume Brightest Day, which was a standalone story that spun out of the events of Blackest Night, is out. It’s still a major aspect of things, and will continue to be post-relaunch.
- It’s…inconsistent what kind of love the Violet energy actually represents. Nominally it’s all love - romantic, filial, etc - but most of what’s shown is romantic, only one or two cases of other kinds.
That sounds about right. In the big superhero movie thread a couple months ago, people were asking how “major” a character GL is, and I did some poking around regarding length of “continuous publication”. For DC characters, GL was indeed 4th or 5th. Superman and Batman are obviously #1 and #2, both being continuously published, without interruption since 1938 (Action Comics #1) and 1939 (Detective Comics #27), respectively. Wonder Woman is very close behind at #3, first appearing in 1941 and seeing only a few brief interruptions since then.
While Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash first appeared in 1940, the Silver Age’s Barry Allen is probably better known. He first appeared in 1956, in Showcase Comics #4. He died some time in the 1980s and Wally West, Barrys former sidekick “Speedy”, took over the identity, but now Barry Allen is back in the red suit. Very few interruptions in publication.
Original Green Lantern also first appeared in 1940, and was replaced in 1959 by Hal Jordan (Showcase Comics #22), and like The Flash has been published continuously since, with a few brief interruptions.
No other DC character comes close to those five, AFAIK.
I never heard of Green Lantern until this movie came out. :::shrug:::
D’OH! Missed the edit window:
“Speedy” was Green Arrow’s sidekick. The Flash’s sidekick, Wally West, was “Kid Flash”.
Depends on what you consider ‘continuously published’.
Aquaman and Green Arrow continued more or less uninterrupted between the Golden and Silver Ages - they didn’t headline books, but appeared relatively regularly in backup stories in Adventure and the like. It’s why they, like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman didn’t get new versions in the Silver Age, like Flash, GL, or Hawkman.
Yes, there was a time when Aquaman was one of DC’s top 5 superheroes.
Mostly because there hadn’t yet been a Superfriends cartoon to make people who’ve never read the books think he sucks.
I neglected to include the “headlining their own title” qualifier, which I did include when I first posted that stuff in the other thread 
I liked Green Lantern when I was a kid. Hal Jordan, the test pilot who finds himself wielding a ring of great power, always fascinated me. I read him up until the 70s when DC decided to give Green Arrow a beard, made him all preachy, and teamed him up with GL. Then they lost me with all the other Green Lanterns, Guy Gardner, Kyle Raynor, and John Stewart all popping up.