DC has put comics back into comic book stores, with a wider array planned in the coming weeks as production and distribution capabilities start to resume something that at least approximates normal operations. Among the first out of the gate was The Green Lantern Season 2 #3, from writer Grant Morrison and artist Liam Sharp. Since Geoff Johns reinvented the character 15 years ago, it seems like Hal Jordan, his friends and his foes are constantly being given more and deeper mythology, making the stories more rewarding for long-term readers but increasingly complex to maintain. Morrison, a writer known for having a galaxy’s worth of big ideas in his head, seems to have figured out a way to let the steam out without slowing the train down too much, so to speak.
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Each issue of The Green Lantern has been a stand-alone delicacy. One-and-done stories that feed into a larger (and suitably epic) over-arching tapestry, Morrison and Sharp’s The Green Lantern appeals to the bookstore audience who just jumped on becuase they saw Morrison’s name, without alienating the long-term fans who want their deep cuts. In the second season, Morrison thinks, that approach is only getting richer, the chemistry working better.
“We’ve become comfortable with Hal Jordan,” Morrison admitted. “but at the same time we want to push him to places he hasn’t been before. Or has been before, with some new thoughts about it.”
He said in the first season, “both of us were kind of finding our feet and trying to find the modes of expression we could use to say what we want about Green Lantern.”
Given the nature of the character, unexplored potential is easy to find, and places — physical, mental, emotional — that Hal has not yet explored can be found all around him. The character, after all, has a lot to work with. He’s a soldier, a test pilot, an insurance agent, a toy salesman, a galactic cop…and any given story he might pick back up with someone or something that he encountered in one of those previous roles or elsewhere. It lends itself nicely to the done-in-one format that Morrison and Sharp have favored, although they admit that the series’ second season will, like the first, have an overarching story that fans can follow through to the end.
“We talked at the beginning about things like Adam Warlock by Jim Starlin,” Sharp explained. “He would have a big, epic space opera story. That would be a big arc, but you’d still be able to jump in and each issue still had its own universe and story to it and it didn’t really matter if there was a cliffhanger because you still felt satisfied with the amount of story you got in an issue.”
The Green Lantern Season Two #3 is in stores now. If you don’t live in an area where there’s a comic shop open, you can order it online from a variety of retailers who are open, including Aw Yeah Comics and Midtown Comics, or you can buy a digital copy on ComiXology or Amazon. Keep your eyes on ComicBook.com for more from Morrison and Sharp in the next few days.
