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Like any superhero concept that’s existed for more than 80 years, Green Lantern has undergone some significant changes. Most notably, the Green Lantern introduced in 1940 had a magical ring vulnerable to wood, while today’s Green Lanterns are sci-fi superhero space cops with power rings. Furthermore, some beats in the Green Lantern story have aged poorly, and get retconned or ignored over time.
One would expect Chris Mundy, creator of the HBO series Lanterns to make liberal use of retconning, choosing not to adapt the time that Green Lantern Hal Jordan repeatedly used a racial slur to refer to his Inuk friend Tom Kalmaku, or the time he dated a 13-year-old, or the time he was played by Ryan Reynolds. But a new profile in EW suggests that Mundy might be willing to revisit a different embarrassment from Hal’s past, one involving his new partner John Stewart.
In between explanations about Lanterns‘s bifurcated timeline, the role Sinestro will play, or how there really will be green in the Green Lantern show, the profile revealed that “John remains a constant source of ire for Hal due to the fact that he is an anomaly.” Specifically, the profile explained that unlike Hal (Kyle Chandler), who received his ring after his predecessor Abin Sur crash-landed on Earth, John (Aaron Pierre) was given a ring when the Guardians of the Universe—the blue-skinned, big-brained founders of the Green Lantern Corps—”intervened to self-anoint a member of their order” because they “felt they had just cause.”
In broad strokes, that description matches the original origin of John Stewart in 1971’s Green Lantern #87, by Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams. The series had earlier established that the Guardians had chosen a backup for Hal, should he ever be unable to do his duties. Issue #87 begins with that backup, Guy Gardner (a relatively normal person, having not yet sustained the head injury that turns him into the arrogant jerk who Nathan Fillion plays in Superman), being injured, which sends the Guardians looking for a second understudy.
The Guardians whisk Hal to Detroit to meet his new backup, a Black man who stands up to white police officers hassling two guys playing dominoes. Instead of recognizing a fellow enemy of injustice, Hal only sees a disrespectful young hothead. Although Hal acknowledges his colleague’s bravery and strength, he complains that John “also has a chip on his shoulder the size of the rock of Gibraltar.”
Once John gets a ring, he does nothing to endear himself to Hal. He tosses aside the mask traditionally worn by Corpsmen, boasting “I’ve got nothing to hide!” He lets oil from a runaway tanker truck spill on some corrupt lawmakers. But when those same lawmakers fake an assassination attempt, hoping to pin the blame on Black radicals, John sees through the ruse in a way Hal cannot.
To be sure, John comes off as brash and reckless, very different from the stoic man he’s become since the 2000s Justice League animated show made him into a former Marine. But Hal comes off worse, looking like an authoritarian who can’t admit his racial biases. Such characterizations happened often during O’Neil and Adams’s run, which often paired Hal with Oliver Queen a.k.a. Green Arrow. Where Ollie was a loudmouth jerk, O’Neil and Adams made him the book’s moral center, presenting Hal as a wet blanket and bootlicker who needed to raise his consciousness.
In the years since, the dynamic between the two have shifted. John is often written like a straight-laced military man and Hal as a charming slacker. Moreover, Hal hasn’t shown a hint of overt racism since he stopped calling Tom Kalmaku a nasty name. One would expect James Gunn and Peter Safran to go with that unproblematic version of Green Lantern for the co-lead of their new HBO series.
Mundy’s comments don’t say anything about Hal having any unchecked biases. He framed Hal’s conflict with John as a generational clash, describing the two as “the old guard and the heir apparent.” But if they’re going to follow the comics as closely as other properties in the new DCU have done, then we might get a more complicated story, one that will make Lanterns a richer show.
Lanterns comes to HBO and HBO Max on August 16.
The post Lanterns May Be Reviving a Controversial Origin Story appeared first on Den of Geek.
