Geoff Johns Discusses His Green Lantern Run and Challenges (Video)

The folks at Comic Book Resources have got the video below embedded online now, giving fans a chance to see the Q&A session Geoff Johns conducted at the Greenest Night CBLDF benefit in his honor.Among other thing, Johns talked about the challenges presented by Green Lantern which, like most of his other titles, wasn’t a guaranteed hit when he signed on the line for it. Here’s a sampling:

But back then, bringing back Hal Jordan was considered a risky move. It sounds a bit weird now. People were like, “Why are you going to do that?” I’d heard the same thing when I did “Teen Titans” a year earlier with Mike McKone, people were like, “It’s going to get cancelled in six months. Why are you going to waste your time on ‘Teen Titans?’ Why are you going to waste your time on ‘JSA?’ Why are you going to waste your time on ‘Hawkman?’ Why are you going to waste your time on ‘Booster Gold?’” I think I’ve heard that most of my career, but I really was excited about Green Lantern. At that panel, I don’t remember a whole lot, except, “Oh, I can finally talk about it.” “Green Lantern” was selling 25,000, maybe. There was one book. It was Kyle and Kyle was fine. Hal Jordan had been gone for 10 years, so I think there were just a lot of questions: “Is this going to work? How are they going to do this?” I like skepticism. I like when people are like, “Why are they going to launch a ‘Booster Gold’ book or a ‘Teen Titans’ book or an ‘Aquaman?’” — I thrive off of challenges like that.