‘Green Lanterns’ Writer Dan Jurgens Says Guy Gardner Should Have His Own Series Again

Guy Gardner ought to have his own solo comic again, says veteran writer/artist Dan Jurgens, who is currently in the middle of an arc on Green Lanterns that will set a new status quo for several characters and clear a path for Grant Morrison’s upcoming run as the steward of the emerald knights.

Guy is not alone; Jurgens thinks that there is a lot of currently-untapped potential for solo stories…but Guy was the first that sprung to his mind when we asked whether there was a character he particularly enjoyed writing.

“I can’t understand why Guy Gardner doesn’t have a series,” Jurgens told ComicBook.com. “He should have some kind of a series, he’s a great, fun character. Kilowog is a great, fun character to play around with. There are certainly some other very intriguing possibilities that are out there in the world of the Green Lantern Corps.”

There is, of course, a historical precedent for it. Before the Rebirth series Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps, Guy was the first Lantern who had his own name in a comic book title — which ran for a good chunk of the ’90s.

After being drummed out of the Corps, Guy got his hands on the yellow ring and starred in his own title — first called just Guy Gardner, and later Guy Gardner: Warrior. The latter incarnation would jettison the yellow ring and instead introduce a battery of alien powers to Guy, along with a new, tattooed look that would be abandoned when Geoff Johns brought him back to the Green Lantern Corps in the first Green Lantern: Rebirth miniseries.

For almost fifty issues, Guy supported a solo monthly title without the benefit of superstar talent for the most part — Beau Smith, who wrote the Warrior run, only became a household name in recent years when his creator-owned property Wynonna Earp became a TV series on SYFY, and while Phil Jimenez and Tom Grummett contributed occasional art to the series, most of the pencils over the forty-odd issues were done by Mitch Byrd or Joe Staton.

The Green Lanterns arc’s central antagonist, the Cyborg Superman Hank Henshaw, returns to being a Green Lantern foil in this story — which marks the latest in a series of big stories in which Jurgens, who created Henshaw, has featured the character prominently. Henshaw first entered the public consciousness during “The Return of Superman,” in which Jurgens introduced the “Cyborg Superman” identity and destroyed Green Lantern Hal Jordan’s home of Coast City.

That story, of course, sprang from “The Death of Superman,” of which Jurgens wrote and drew several chapters, including one that heavily featured Guy Gardner, who then sported Sinestro’s yellow ring.

While Warrior grew Guy significantly as a character, Johns essentially reset him to his hot-tempered ways when restoring him as a Green Lantern. The writing in other books since Green Lantern: Rebirth has softened some of those edges, but Jurgens admits to having reverted back to a more rough-and-tumble version in his writing.

“I actually think I turned the clock back just a bit on Guy,” Jurgens admitted. “I think recently he has been a little more reasonable, and I tried to kind of bring back a little bit of that impulsive hot-headedness that I think — along with the arrogance — makes Guy an interesting character.”

Green Lanterns #54 will be available in stores and online on Wednesday, September 5.