Geoff Johns Opens Up About His Return to Green Lantern

DC Comics will be celebrating Green Lantern’s 80th Anniversary next month, and you can’t celebrate Green Lantern without Geoff Johns. Johns is responsible for some of the biggest Green Lantern stories around, including Rebirth, Sinestro Corps War, and Blackest Night, and he will be making his return to the character alongside artist Ivan Reis in DC’s Green Lantern 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular #1. The duo will be working with inker Oclair Albert, colorist Alex Sinclair, and letterer Rob Leigh on a new short story titled Last Will, which will have Hal crashing landing on a mysterious planet. He’s left with only a small amount of energy in his power ring, enough to leave messages to three different people. Johns couldn’t be more thrilled to be writing Green Lantern again, and he can’t even believe it’s been so long since he last wrote Hal Jordan.

“I love jumping back into this — I can’t believe it’s that long when you said it! — I love jumping back into Green Lantern; it’s a huge passion for me, obviously,” Johns told CBR. “I love all DC stuff, but between the world of the JSA and Green Lantern, those are my two favorite places to be. And working with Ivan, Oclair, Alex and Rob again, it was great! It felt like just slipping right back into the mode we were in on Green Lantern and writing Hal Jordan was so fun. I could write that character all day long, he’s such a fun character, but it was great! And I’m really happy how the story turned out: It’s a small, personal story about Hal Jordan but it reveals a couple of fun things.”

As you can see in the preview below, one of the messages goes to Batman, which might surprise some since the characters are at odds with each other more often than not. As Johns explains though, there is a respect there, and that’s why Batman is on the list.

“I always saw them, in many ways, as opposites and, yeah, the story is about…this spoils the whole story [laughs.] But if you could leave a message for three people, who would those three people be and what would you say? And I think as much as they are different and go about things differently and operate differently and are motivated by different things, I find that Hal and Bruce…there’s a real deep understanding between the two and a respect between the two as different as they are. And I love that Hal would not die without saying something to him about it and wanting to say something about it and wanting to be kind of truthful with Bruce about how he feels about him,” Johns said.

“I think there’s something extremely profound about that for Hal and it reveals it reveals a lot about Hal: He’s got pride and he can be stubborn and he’s got his ways but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t respect other ways or even be honest with himself about why he might have a little bit of resentment towards Batman,” Johns said.

The 80th Anniversary issue will feature work from Johns, Darryl Banks, Charlotte Fullerton McDuffie, Sina Grace, Mike Grell, Jeff Lemire, Ron Marz, Denny O’Neil, Fernando Pasarin, Ivan Reis, Rafa Sandoval, Mariko Tamaki, Peter J. Tomasi, James Tynion IV, Robert Venditti, and more, and will retail for $9.99.

The Green Lantern 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular #1 hits stores on June 23rd.

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