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This article contains spoilers for Lanterns season 1 episode 2.
We still aren’t getting many scenes of Hal Jordan and John Stewart in green tights, but the second episode of Lanterns has a lot of comic book weirdness. Not only do the Manhunters get a mention and John makes a construct, but we also see a lantern tucked away in a pocket dimension. Hal and his fellow GLs have been keeping their lanterns in pocket dimensions since John Broome and Gil Kane have been telling their stories in the early Silver Age. But the most exciting reference might be the passphrase that Hal uses to give John access to his pocket dimension.
When John walks up to the box that hides access to the dimension, he lifts up the phone and asks Hal to speak. “Mogo doesn’t socialize,” declares Hal. That answer doesn’t just open the box, it also excites comic book fans in the audience, who know that phrase as the title of a classic story by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, the creative team behind Watchmen.
“Mogo Doesn’t Socialize” appears in 1985’s Green Lantern #188, as part of series of back-up stories called Tales of the Green Lantern Corps. The Green Lantern Corps were one of the innovations that Broome, Kane, and editor Julius Schwartz made when they reinvented the Green Lantern concept for the Silver Age. The original, Golden Age Green Lantern was Alan Scott, a man who made a magical wishing ring out of a meteorite that fell to Earth. 1959’s Showcase Comics #22 introduced Hal Jordan as the latest recruit into the Green Lantern Corps, a set of intergalactic peacekeepers who worked for the Guardians of the Universe.
Broome and Kane quickly began developing the Green Lantern Corps, introducing fellow members such as Tomar-Re in 1961’s Green Lantern #6 and Katma Tui in 1964’s Green Lantern #30, as well as Corpsman-turned-villain Sinestro in 1961’s Green Lantern #7. However, the other members of the Corps never got much attention until the 1981 miniseries Tales of the Green Lantern Corps by Mike W. Barr, Len Wein, and Joe Staton, and even that still had Hal Jordan front and center. Starting in 1982 with Green Lantern #148, back-up stories introduced readers to other members of the Green Lantern Corps, often weird aliens with wildly different backstories.
The anthology format meant writers could experiment with the Green Lantern concept, which drew the attention of Alan Moore, who would do some of his best DC Comics work in his three Green Lantern Corps stories. “Tygers” in Green Lantern Corps Annual #2 explains why Hal Jordan’s predecessor trusted a spaceship instead of his ring, creating a horror tale about the hellish planet Ysmault and introducing the Daxamite Green Lantern Sodam Yat. In the next issue of Green Lantern Corps Annual from 1987, the story “Blackest Night” sends Katma Tui to recruit Rot Lop Fan, a worthy member of a race who lives in complete darkness, and thus does not understand the concept of colors and lights. Together, the two find a way to communicate, with Rot Lop Fan interpreting Green Lantern powers as differences in sound, and eventually becoming the Lantern of the F-Sharp Bell.
“Mogo Doesn’t Socialize” combines Moore’s boundless imagination with the mandate to use Tales backups to develop the Corps. The story follows a merciless bounty hunter called Bolphunga the Unrelenting, who takes a mission to capture the Green Lantern known as Mogo. Bolphunga traces the GL to a distant planet, and begins announcing his intentions to capture his quarry. When Mogo does not respond, Bolphunga thinks that his boasts have scared his target, and begins scouring the forest to find Mogo. But every creature he finds lacks a Green Lantern ring, and therefore cannot be Mogo.
It’s only when Bolphunga looks at the map that he’s drawn of the planet, noticing the shape of the green forest and the various fields he’s charted, that he begins to realize. The terrified Bolphunga quickly packs up his gear and rushes back to his ship. As he flies away, we finally get a good look at the planet from a distance, and realize that the forests on the surface form a Green Lantern ring. That’s because Mogo is the planet, a sentient planet and member of the Green Lantern Corps.
“Mogo Doesn’t Socialize” uses a frame narrative in which the veteran Tomar-Re explains to the teenage recruit Arisia (not yet in an adult body and dating Hal Jordan) why she’s never seen Mogo at any of the Lantern gatherings. And, indeed, Mogo rarely appeared again on the page, outside of a brief reference in one of the nightmarish prophecies in “Tygers.”
But when Geoff Johns took over Green Lantern in the 2000s, he began borrowing heavily from those three Alan Moore stories, turning them from interesting genre exercises to straightforward superhero tales. Rot Lop Fan finally fights alongside the Corps in the 2011 War of the Green Lanterns crossover. Atrocitus, founder of the Red Lantern Corps, hails from Ysmault and is associated with the demons who taunted Abin Sur in “Tygers.” Moreover, the “Blackest Night” teased by the demons of “Tygers” becomes the center of DC Comics crossover that ran between 2009 and 2010, in which the Black Lantern Corps resurrects the dead. And Mogo does indeed start to socialize, becoming a regular figure in Green Lantern storylines—starting with 2006’s Green Lantern Corps #2, penciled by Patrick Gleason and written by Mogo’s co-creator Dave Gibbons.
Still, as popular as he’s become, Mogo can only participate so much in mainline DC Comics stories because, well, he’s a whole living planet. So don’t expect him to show up on Lanterns, unless that show wants to take a page from DC Studios co-head James Gunn and give Mogo a human body, just like Ego the Living Planet had in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Barring that, we’ll just have to accept that Mogo doesn’t socialize on TV either, and make do with a cheeky reference on Lanterns.
Lanterns debuts new episodes every Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.
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