DTM 2086 ii Stee

Lantern, he did so by

turn evil and annihilating the entire
GL corps. To put it mildly, it wasn’t
the greatest piece of literature ever
produced.

But then came Johns. The
Michigan native wrote the now iconic
Green Lantern: Rebirth (2004), which
took Parallax, the name Jordan had
given himself when he destroyed the
corps, and turned it into the concept
of one of the best, freshest villains in
years.

Through Johns’ entire six year
run on Green Lantern, the book has
remained consistently superb, and
over that entire time Johns has been
slowly building and developing the
arc of Blackest Night, the culmination
of just about everything that has
occurred during the last six years of
Lantern and it’s sister title, Green
Lantern Corps (which features the
previously mentioned Kyle Rayner as

 

it’s main character).

As is to be expected about any
major DC comic event, Blackest
Night is beyond epic. In past years,
the vast majority of major storylines
in DC have seen Superman fight the
main villain while Batman find a way
to take out the secondary bad guy.
That has been a very solid formula
that DC has built around for, well,
decades now. Blackest Night however,
is nothing like previous events. It
isn’t just a big Green Lantern book,
like another Johns masterpiece,
Sinestro Corps War, was, this is one
of those blockbusters that surrounds
just about every hero and villain DC
has; and this time, it’s all about Hal
Jordan.

For the last several years,
Johns has created a number of
different corps, each of whom are
able to manipulate and use the
other emotions that populate DC’s

emotional spectrum. While green
represents will, there is yellow for
fear, red for rage, violet for love,
orange for avarice, blue for hope and
indigo for compassion. The build
towards all of the various corps, all of
which have been brilliantly developed
and have their own excellent twists
and turns, has been nothing short
of spectacular. Out of every comic
book both DC and Marvel publish,
in the last five years there hasn’t
been another one close to Johns’
Green Lantern. During that time
he’s also done unbelievable work on
Superman, Adventure Comics and
Flash, but as good and as great as
those title are, Green Lantern has
become the standard bearer for Johns
and DC as a whole.

With any luck, Johns, who
has said he plans to stay on Green
Lantern until he retires (which might
be the best news any comic fan could

 

ask for), will be heavily involved
with the making of the Green
Lantern movie. In the last few years
he’s written several episodes of the
long-running series Smallville, all of
which have been fantastic. I can’t see
there being any way Johns won’t be
involved with the film. There hasn’t
been a writer in the last 30 years that
has made the same type of impact

on a character like Johns has for Hal
Jordan, so there’s just no way that
Warner Brothers, the studio that owns
DC, would pass on having him be

a driving force behind the creative
direction of the movie.

When Blackest Night comes to
an end and the dust settles, there are
a number of things that will clearly
change the entire DC universe and the
primary focus of storytelling years
into the future, but most of all, there’s
a new number one hero in DC, and no
fan could ask for anything more.

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