If You Love Lanterns, You’ll Love This Hal Jordan Run From Two of Comics’ Greatest Creators

Lanterns has been hitting that superhero TV sweet spot that the DCU has been doing so well (they’re 1-for-2 with movies, but 3-for-3 for TV shows). Many were reticent about the series from the images first shown, fearing that it wouldn’t be able to bring the Green Lantern mythos to life. You would hear complaints about the lack of the color green or that it wasn’t going to be sci-fi enough or any number of other things. However, Lanterns has done a fantastic job with its comic accuracy, able to capture the feel of characters like Hal Jordan as well as sell the concept of the Green Lantern Corps and how it interacts with the various law agencies of Earth. It’s a show that works as much because it takes the mythos in different directions as it does for its deft grasp of characters and concepts.

Lanterns has renewed interesting in Green Lantern, with many new fans picking up the Geoff Johns run on the character. Johns’s time on Green Lantern Vols. 4 and 5 are some of the finest moments in Green Lantern history, and numerous aspects from Johns’s run have been folded into the show. However, if you really want to read a Green Lantern comic that is spiritually similar to Lanterns, the Johns run is the wrong place to go. Instead, a better choice would the brilliant Green Lantern run from writer Grant Morrison and artist Liam Sharp. Morrison and Sharp decided to go in a similar direction as Lanterns, taking another look at what the Green Lantern Corps is. While it has its differences from the HBO hit, it’s perfect for fans who want more Lanterns-style storytelling.

Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp Did Lanterns Before It Was Cool

Grant Morrison is widely considered one of the greatest creators in DC history. The Scottish scribe came to America during the late ’80s DC British Invasion, spurred by the success of creators from the British Isles like Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and Brian Bolland. They quickly became one of the most beloved creators ever, working on the Justice League, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, and various lower-level characters. Meanwhile, Liam Sharp started his comics journey with Marvel UK, his detailed style making a huge splash on the Hulk and Man-Thing. Sharp is one of the most underrated artists ever, a visionary creator who has one of the most adaptable styles in comics, able to do superheroes, sci-fi, and fantasy with aplomb.

The two of them had rarely worked together, making The Green Lantern into a must-read for fans of both of them. Since the return of Hal Jordan, we’d mostly gotten big superhero sci-fi Green Lantern, something that Morrison and Sharp are both amazing at. However, they deicded that they wanted to focus on something beside the sci-fi spectacle. Their run played into the Green Lantern Corps as a law enforcement agency, sending Jordan on various cases. It was basically Green Lantern stories by way of a police procedural, something that fans of Lanterns will be familiar with.

Lanterns is very much a grounded Green Lantern story, which is completely different from the Morrison/Sharp run. Their entire run takes place in space, with their first 12 issues focusing on the threat of the Blackstars (with the three-issue Green Lantern: Blackstars finishing out the story) and the second – titled The Green Lantern: Season Two – leading into the Ultrawar, a massive universe-shaking conflict. Both series kick off with a series of one and done stories, focusing on Hal going on different cases, with subplots running through them that build up to the last half of both books. In a lot of ways, it’s similar to the first few episodes of Lanterns, which focused more on building the story of its characters, with the main plot happening around these stories.

Lanterns works so well because it take the things you expect from the Green Lantern mythos and puts them in a new environment. While Morrison and Sharp’s run on the book is more run of the mill, at least when it comes to setting, it also takes what you expect from a Green Lantern story and turn it on its ear. For years, we had been told that the Green Lantern Corps were basically the police of the DC Universe, but we mostly just saw them as superheroes, flying around and battling evil. We didn’t see them investigate space crime all that often, or at least not in the same way we’d see it in, for instance, a Batman book.

On top of that, it does an amazing job of digging into the history of the character, much like Lanterns has. Barry Allen and Oliver Queen both appear, and Morrison brings back characters and ideas from the Silver and Bronze Age of comics, brings in Sinestro, and digs into how Hal feels about his job as Green Lantern. It works just as well for new fans as it does old ones, much like Lanterns. There are a lot of great Green Lantern stories for Lanterns fans to choose from, but they’ll find the Morrison and Sharp run to be just what they’re looking for.

The Green Lantern Paved the Way for Lanterns

While there are a lot of fans who complained about Lanterns and its grounded story, it was honestly the best way to introduce the Green Lantern Corps to the DCU. Sure, we all want to see the Corps at war with the Sinestro Corps or something like that, but that can wait. Lanterns is able to establish the groundwork for new fans in a way that makes the Corps into something they can understand – in this case, a police force – getting them ready for the madness of the future.

The Green Lantern and The Green Lantern Season Two is basically Lanterns set in space. It’s a book that focuses on the policework at the core of the Corps, all while introducing readers to various important pieces of Green Lantern history and giving them amazing superhero sci-fi. It’s plain to see how much it inspired Lanterns, a show that decided to take the Green Lantern mythos in directions that they didn’t always get taken. It can be somewhat mindblowing – it’s Morrison and Sharp, after all – but it’s perfect for Lanterns fans who want more of the same.

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