Robert Venditti Leaving ‘Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps’

Another of DC’s original Rebirth creators will leave his long-running title this summer, when writer Robert Venditti says goodbye to Hal Jordan the the Green Lantern Corps with the series’ fiftieth issue.

Venditti took over the adventures of the Green Lantern Corps in 2013 with the previous volume’s Green Lantern #23. He had the unenviable task of following in the footsteps of Geoff Johns, who had revolutionized the character’s mythology and made Green Lantern one of DC’s most-read books. When Rebirth happened in 2016, he was one of only a small number of writers allowed to remain on the same character with its new #1.

“Turning in the script for Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #48 today, which seems like as good a time as any to say that this is part one of our big, three-part finale,” Venditti tweeted on Friday. “#50 will be my last issue writing the Four Corpsmen. A nice, milestone number to say goodbye.”

Before the Rebirth relaunch, Venditti wrote Green Lantern #50 — an issue that paid homage to 1993’s Green Lantern #50, featuring the Hal Jordan version of Parallax and dealing with the fallout from the destruction of Coast City.

There is no word yet on what his finale will entail, or who will take over from him. The comic’s companion series, Green Lanterns, has changed hands, with former Nightwing writer Tim Seeley and former Green Lanterns writer Sam Humphries trading places.

Venditti’s next major project for DC will be a Hawkman series.

For context, Venditti’s first Green Lantern issue featured an advertising banner encouraging fans to check out Man of Steel in theaters.

“I think maybe from the outside it could be easy to say that there’s these four human Green Lanterns that are all in our book,” Venditti told ComicBook.com shortly before the relaunch. “You’ve got John, Kyle, Hal, and Guy, and they’re all kind of the same. They’re all Green Lanterns. It’s like they do have that common element that they were chosen for their willpower, and that’s what defines you as a Green Lantern, but they all come at it in completely different ways.”

Venditti is currently writing Damage with artist Tony Daniel for DC’s New Age of Heroes intiative. Other recent creative moves include writer and/or artist changes on Action Comics, Detective Comics, Superman, and Nightwing. Titles like Supergirl, Justice League of America, and Super-Sons have all been cancelled, with the expectation that they will be retooled and relaunched.