DC’s Absolute Green Lantern Team Teases Hal Jordan’s Very Bad Day, Alien Encounters, and More (Exclusive)

DC’s Absolute Universe will expand with three new series this year, and one of the most anticipated and mysterious new additions is Absolute Green Lantern. The series will be written and drawn by the talented team of Al Ewing and Jahnoy Lindsay, who are set to take everything you know about the Green Lantern Corps and turn it on its head. ComicBook had the chance to speak to Ewing and Lindsay about alien encounters, Hal Jordan’s very bad day, Jo Mullein leading the charge, and more.

While the Green Lantern mythology spans the cosmos, one of its most important encounters with Earth was rather small, occurring when Hal Jordan first meets Abin Sur and starts wielding a ring. Imagine then if that scenario occurred on a more massive scale and in a far more terrifying way, and you’re on the right track.

“My initial idea was, what if you didn’t know anything about it? What if an alien with an alien system of law and justice comes down from space and adds this green power and kind of makes first contact? What would that look like? It’d be frightening. It’d be strange. It wouldn’t be how we, you know, conceptualize that telling a story in the 60s. It’d be something very different, and the nearest I could get in my head was something like the Old Testament where biblical angels come down to humanity and sort of attempt to make themselves understood,” Ewing said.

“There’s a kind of process of judgment there. So really, I think we were trying to do without issue was get across to the reader the idea of not knowing anything, just experiencing terrifying events, alien events, an alien system kind of,” Ewing said. “And for the reader to experience that in real-time through familiar elements like Hal Jordan and Jo Mullein, but to kind of experience what happens when the strangeness of what the Green Lantern is and the Absolute Universe hits these familiar landmarks. That was my thinking.”

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While the giant Lantern symbol destroying a chunk of the city is obviously one of the first elements of this, there’s also a more direct connection in the midst of it all in Abin Sur. That said, this Abin Sur is still shrouded in mystery, and looks massively different than the one you know from the regular universe. That was actually a bit of an accident, but the more muscular and alien-like design was so good they had to keep it.

“Yeah the Abin Sur, honestly, it also came from a bit of a misunderstanding of who the character was at first. Admittedly, I wasn’t up on Green Lantern lore when I first started, so when we’re talking about this alien, I came up with just like this long, lanky character,” Lindsay said. “But that was before realizing that Abin Sur exists and he’s a character and he has a way he looks. And editorial was just like, no, that’s perfect. Just keep it, go with that. That’s exactly what we’re looking for.”

“It was just so ideal. That design was just wonderful, Just like this, Because like you say, he’s a monster. He’s like, he’s an alien thing and we don’t know him. You know, you say that’s Abin Sur, and every reader is going to be like, really? And it’s like, good. That’s what we want and it’s fantastic. I gotta say, I’m so in love with your work. It’s really great, so thank you for everything you’ve been doing on this book,” Ewing said.

“I appreciate it, and again, honestly, the opportunity to work with you, it’s just been a blessing and just amazing and everything. So I’m happy to be a part of the team,” Lindsay said.

Lindsay has enjoyed getting a chance to work with characters like Jo, Abin Sur, and John Stewart, but it’s actually Jordan who has become his favorite to draw over time. “I would say how I’ve grown to love Hal and drawing him and his kind of transformation almost, the most. At first, it was definitely Jo. She’s like the lead so far, and it’s a blast to draw her, but I’ve grown an attachment to Hal and kind of how his powers begin to manifest over the book,” Lindsay said.

“That was very emotionally available to start with. I don’t know. As I’ve been writing Jo, she’s kind of more reserved, more secretive. What she’s been through in the past has sort of colored the present, whereas Hal, you see all of its emotions right out there,” Ewing said.

“Jo was somebody who could kind of deal with this, communicate with this alien creature that comes down. There’s a connection there between the two versions, the two alternate realities,” Ewing said.

As for Hal, well, the hotshot pilot of the regular universe is a far cry from the Jordan fans will get to know in Absolute Green Lantern, as it’s going to be a very, very bad day for Jordan. “But in terms of what we did to Hal, and again, really avoiding major spoilers here. I just wanted to give Hal a really bad day,” Ewing said. “Not out of any sort of animosity to the character, but this is kind of what I do with characters who A, I like them, I think they’re complicated and interesting enough to take it, and B, if they’ve had a really good time in the regular universe, it sort of follows that they have a really terrible time in the Absolute Universe.”

“I wanted to kind of give Hal the Green Lantern experience, but different, very different when you see in one, the way he talks, the way he talks about what has happened to him. You know, he could be talking about a regular universe Green Lantern experience. He’s not,” Ewing said.

Absolute Green Lantern #1 hits comic stores on April 2nd.

Are you excited for Absolute Green Lantern #1? Let us know in the comments, and you can talk all things comics and Green Lantern with me on Bluesky @knightofoa!