When the Dawn of DC was first announced in late 2022, Green Lantern fans had a lot to celebrate. That’s because, among some already jam-packed solicitations, the publisher was set to launch two full books starring the Lantern Corps’ finest, Hal Jordan and John Stewart. Flash forward a few months, however, and it seems things have changed just a bit, with only one Green Lantern book (from writer Jeremy Adams and artist Xermanico, who last collaborated on Flashpoint Beyond) set to debut this week (May 9).
But don’t let that get you down, GL fans, as we’re still getting a double barrel of Jordan-Stewart action. Adams and Xermanico will handle the main book, in which a post-Dark Crisis Jordan returns to Earth to set up some roots — only to encounter an old foe and a newly-quarantined Section 2814. Meanwhile, on the backup, writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson and artist Montos tackle a Stewart-led story that spins directly out of Worlds Without a Justice League – Green Lantern. From there, according to Kennedy Johnson himself, a Stewart-starring miniseries debuts sometime later this year. For now, though, both tales more than make up for any publishing switcharoos, with high adventure, boundless humanity, and epic green constructs galore.
To better understand both stories and titles, we took part in recent roundtable conversation with both Adams and Kennedy Johnson. There we discussed the way these stories tie together, the continued development of these two long-time heroes, their respective life changes, and even some tidbits about DC’s other big event, Knight Terrors, among many other topics.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
Jeremy Adams on Hal Jordan’s homecoming
Philip…obviously I’m a huge fan of yours and seeing what you’re putting together and knowing a little bit about where you’re going is unbelievable. I’m always telling people like, ‘Listen, even if you hate my stuff, just wait.’ This is like the teaser at the end of a Marvel movie, but it’s like its own little movie that is so good.
He [Hal] is a guy who is coming home. The first thought I had was, ‘I wonder how much she has in his bank account? I bet it’s not very much.’ And here he is on Earth, and he doesn’t have a ring right away. What’s the mystery of what happened? Why is Section 2814 quarantined? What is going on with the Corps? Why did Hal decide to come back home? The girl he loves has moved on, and so how do you piece your life back together that way? But he’s still this hero. I mean, he spent so much time being a hero and so much time saving the universe, and that never changes.
At the end of Geoff Thorne’s run, the Corps is in disarray. We have the United Planets up there. Where’s the Guardians? What happened? The Power Battery is gone. There’s all this stuff and there’s all these dangling threads. And as a storyteller, those are really exciting because I’m going to start peeling back that onion in the Hal story.
Phillip Kennedy Johnson on building John Stewart’s story
Jeremy’s every bit of the DC nerd that I am. He just gets Hal down to his bones. Same with Xermanico — he just gets it visually, tonally, the color pallete — the whole thing. And that made me really excited to have a John Stewart book in between the same covers. Jeremy could not have been a better choice to write Hal.
For me, John Stewart’s word is duty. Like, how he is possessed of extraordinary talents and gifts and skills that he uses for a higher purpose. There’s this weightiness to John.
I wanted to bring this epic mashup of sci-fi and fantasy that — to tie it into the pre-recording conversation we were having — kind of feels like Star Wars sometimes. I wanted our John to feel epic, and almost weighty in a kind of mythological way, but also just so exciting and so fulfilling.
Variant cover from Daniel Sampere. Courtesy of DC Comics.
Jeremy Adams on Hal’s new outlook on life
I think a lot of us, especially me, and especially in college, there was this delayed growing up period where I was just having fun and I was doing my thing. And then at some point, I started thinking about the future. What is family? What do I really want? I think that’s something that Hal has to come to terms with. He’s been out in space for a long time. He came back to Earth, but Earth is moving on without him. And how do you reconcile being out and seeing the wonders of the universe and then coming back home? And why is coming back home more important than maybe what you did out there?
Phillip Kennedy Johnson on wanting more for Hal
It’s not my story, but I was going to jump in and say the same thing. Very often there are these big adventures that take him way off Earth for an extended period of time. So they come back and what’s the world like now? I think because now Sector 2814 is quarantined and there’s a little more permanence to it, we’re hopefully reintegrating Hal into the rest of the DC universe in a way. I want to see how he interacts with other superheroes. I want to see him get into a verbal fight with Oliver.
Phillip Kennedy Johnson goes deeper on expanding John’s background
My story is getting down to basics. I feel like the emotional spectrum thing has been done very thoroughly. And yet there’s things that are different now that are really interesting, like The Source thing that Jeremy mentioned.
I kind of want to develop it in different ways. I want to make it more about who John is and what he means to our universe. Like, how important he is in the Dark Crisis universe in which we introduced the Radiant Dead, and how those two things impact each other. I want to see John kind of discovering who he is. I’ll say this, my influences on this story are not previous Green Lantern runs. My influences on this run primarily are ‘80s action movies. Usually I’m too heady for my own good, and I draw on things like…[translations] of Finn and Hengest; now it’s Predator and Terminator.
I’ve seen John Stewart the Marine done to death. The best way of exploring that in the framework of the Jedi in the DC Universe take that I’ve been talking about is through the lens of these action flicks. I have a story with a very clear beginning, middle, and end that I want to do, and Predator and Terminator are the clearest influences.
[John’s] relationship with his mom and with his sister — those relationships are crucial for who John is. It’s just another way of looking at his identity being built around duty. We’re going to see him question what he’s supposed to do.
Variant cover from Pete Woods. Courtesy of DC Comics.
One thing that Geoffrey Thorne told me about John is that he does not intend to be a Green Lantern forever. In Geoffrey’s mind, he’s going to do his time of service and someday it will end. And then he’s going to go on and do other things with his life. And I thought that was really interesting. Whenever I think about characters — like Justice League level — it’s hard to imagine Batman or Superman or Flash or Green Lantern or any of these guys in retirement. But that was Geoffrey’s vision for John. And that kind of gave me a whole other way of looking at that character. Like, what’s going to be next for John? What are his other responsibilities in life?
There are sometimes these little vague references to his mother who’s very involved in civil rights. Sometimes there’s a sister that comes up very vaguely usually. And I want to see more of that. So this is our chance to do it. His mother is, I’ll say, probably his primary influence in his life. And we’re going to see some of that on the page.
Jeremy Adams on the value of Coast City
Talk about a city that’s had its ups and downs. Because Hal’s left so many times, I don’t think he’s ever really come back and try to plant roots in the same way that, hopefully, he does in this story. You know, Gotham’s got Batman, Metropolis has got Superman, and Coast City is supposed to be Green Lantern. But it’s a city that hasn’t had that for a while.
He has spent a lot of time off planet. He’s come home, but where is his home? And I don’t want to give too much of the mushy soap opera away, but his home is really, I think, Carol. I mean, his actual physical home, it’s a junky trailer. (Like I said, he doesn’t own much.) So it’s him starting over. And his head space is just [wondering] did he make the right decision in what happened in space to send him back home?
I think that’s something, especially if you have to move home, or like Philip was saying, maybe you’re out of the military. Should I have stayed in? I’ve known people in the past where they’ve changed careers; did I make the right decision? And now you have to start over and now you have to be faced with the reality of an everyday life that maybe wasn’t as spectacular as it was the day before. So there’s a little bit of that at the beginning of this issue. And we play with time, like we go from the present to the past. We also see how the world has moved beyond him being a hotshot pilot. That was a viable career opportunity when Green Lantern [was] a test pilot. That’s not where the future is going. So he has to contend with a lot of different changes and reintegrate himself.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
Phillip Kennedy Johnson on super world-building
It wouldn’t be a PKJ book if I didn’t put in 10 times too much world-building behind the scenes that never makes it onto the page. There’s this big, epic origin for the Radiant Dead that happened in this other universe. Getting to start a story in an alternate universe is the best, because you have all the same pieces on the board as we have in main continuity. We get to combine them in other cool and fun way. But if this had happened instead, it’s like this giant what-if universe. So that’s kind of where we started. And the Radiant Dead grow out of some familiar races and characters that we know of.
That’s the story I want to show. I want to show how we get a threat like the Radiant Dead, how it ties into the Green Lanterns, who’s responsible, where it came from, and what it could mean for our future if it were to come here, theoretically in my story.
Jeremy Adams on kooky super-criminals
I love the fact that the Green Lantern back in the Silver Age had some wacky, wacky villains, and I plan on exploiting that. But also some other ones, because I think that some newer ones that will play into some of the bigger plans that we have for the book.
Phillip Kennedy Johnson on building better villains
The Bright Revenant was the giant dead baby thing with wings from the Dark Crisis one-shot.
With a lot of these big, epic stories, a lot of the coolest villains, the most terrifying ones, are the big bad thing that infects, corrupts, or absorbs life itself. The Borg, to me , has always been by far the coolest villain. In the world of Serenity and Firefly, it’s the Reavers. Even in Star Wars, there’s an element of that to the Sith…that fear that your best and brightest may at any time fall from grace and become one of this other thing.
It’s gonna be purely new villains, but we see that there’s this threat that’s actually been there for a long, long time. So it’s a new-to-us villain.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
Jeremy Adams on tapping into other Green Lantern stories
For me, we will be building to some of that. Because, again, after Geoff Thorne’s run, there’s a lot of threads that I think are great and potentially explosive for the Green Lantern Corps and the Green Lantern mythology. If you remember at the end of that run, there was a moment where The Source was created and a Green Lantern had turned into a different lantern, a different emotional spectrum. So I think that stuff is interesting for storytelling blocks, but I’m not going to be there yet.
Phillip Kennedy Johnson on tapping into other Green Lantern stories
Geoffrey Thorne, in his Green Lantern work, was just communicating to the reader the same kind of thing I’m going to be communicating to the reader, I hope. And that is that John is possessed of great powers, not just from the ring, but from who he is. He uses those in service of others. Not that Hal or every other hero in DC doesn’t do the same thing, but it’s different. He’s just inherently one who serves, and he’s also possessed of great strength in a lot of different ways. He is, in a lot of ways, the perfect Lantern. Instead of being the dark horse pick that becomes the greatest ever in Hal Jordan, it always made sense for John to be a Lantern.
We’re not going to spend a lot of time hung up on the details of the Geoffrey Thorne run necessarily, but I took note of Geoffrey’s take on John, because he understands John deeply. I respect that take a lot.
I really want o develop the character of John, but only in purely additive ways. I want to get back to a more classic take on John, in a way, and not move quite so far from what people are used to seeing. But to try to add some things to the mythology that other writers can then take and build upon rather than completely changing everything.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
Jeremy Adams on appearances from other Lanterns
Right now, they won’t because Sector 2814 is quarantined.
Phillip Kennedy Johnson on appearances from other Lanterns
There will be other characters. I shouldn’t say any more than that.
Jeremy Adams on the magic of Xermanico
I could write the most garbage script ever, but Xermanico would make it look like a million bucks.
When we were doing Flashpoint Beyond, and he was drawing it, he would send us these layouts and we’d say, ‘Are we ruining this guy’s art with our words? Because it’s so dang good. I mean, he’s literally a wizard. And I think what I love about it is he really cares about it. He cares about it in that he’s responding specifically like, ‘can I lay this out this way? Can I do it this way? Here’s 12 different versions, pick one.’ And I’m like, ‘I can’t dress myself, and you’re asking me to make a decision on an incredible piece of art.’ So having someone that cares is everything.
One of my goals always as a writer is, since it’s a visual medium, can I write something that’s going to excite the artists that gets them really pumped. But also maybe pushes them a little bit because I want to see what they do. Literally, Xermanico is my Green Lantern ring. He’s making the constructs that I want to bring into being. And I don’t want it just to be a boxing glove; I want to see what Hal can do. Especially in issue #2, Hal uses this ring in a way that I think is super cool. And to see the way that Xermanico does…he puts the pressure back on me because I have to start coming up with better and better constructs.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
Phillip Kennedy Johnson on “discovering” Montos
When they found Montos, I confess I did not know his work. And then I checked it out..gritty is the wrong word, but there’s so much texture to it. Like, it seems so gripped in reality, but also there’s this kind of epic poetry kind of feel to it. There’s a gravitas to it that I just loved and it fit John so well. When you first work with any artist, there’s always this feeling out period where you’re trying to determine how much direction they prefer and how much they need. I overwrite a little bit to see what they need and what they like and what their strengths are. The pencils came back and everything was just better than I had. dreamed it could be. There’s the scene in the kitchen with [John’s] mom, and there’s all this love and all the little things on the counter — I had dictated a couple of those things, but he made it feel like a real place.
Jeremy Adams on the Hal Jordan-John Stewart connection
Yes and no. It’s like saying, ‘Are Han Solo and Luke Skywalker in the same place mentally?’ They’re just different characters and they have different motivations. But I do think there’s overlap. And I do think that of the Green Lanterns, I think that they are probably the most looked upon as leaders in a way. Hal is a little more bombastic probably than John would be. And I think John has a code of ethics, and Hal thinks from his gut more; there’s no filter between his gut and his mouth sometimes.
That’s interesting because, how do I say things without spoiling them? Listen, I understand the relationship in terms of it’s a huge, huge part of the Green Lantern mythos. I very much look at it like [Al] Pacino and [Robert] De Niro in Heat; that’s my baseline. There’s this dangerous respect, but also they know that they’re on opposite sides of the fence. Part of it is, why is Sinestro on Earth? That’s going to be unveiled.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
Phillip Kennedy Johnson on the Hal Jordan-John Stewart connection
They’re in a similar place, spinning out of the events that Jeremy has set in place for his story.
I think John is in a place that he has seen in others over and over, but never really experienced himself…he’s gone and done his time of service. Then he comes home and he has to figure out how to drive the speed limit again. That’s something that I hear about a lot people who, and I’m sorry for all the military comparisons ‘cause it’s apt in the case of John, where he does his time in a high intensity place where everything’s pedal to the floor all the time. And then you come over here, everything’s kind of quiet and chill and slow. People have a hard time dealing with that.
Jeremy Adams on the quarantine of Sector 2814
Philip knows this is, but that to me is the linchpin in a way to a much bigger story.
Weirdly, when I first started writing for DC, I had pitched a Green Lantern thing that had a very similar component. So when [editor] Paul Kaminski came to me and said, ‘Hey, I want this to be very Earth-centric,’ I said, ‘Great, I got a story that fits.’
We, as readers, don’t necessarily know what’s going on out there. And Hal, as a character, knows a little bit, but also he’s removed from it. The hope is that we do start on Earth and we get very comfortable with Hal as a character and we get comfortable with Hal being in Coast City. But all that other big, black space out there is lurking, and all the troubles out there are lurking. You have a guy that used to be connected and now he’s not. He’s not entirely sure what’s happening to his family and his friends and everybody out there in space. So it’s a huge component to the second act of this that I want to put together.
Jeremy Adams on tying Hal’s story into Knight Terrors
I can tell you that this event is supposed to exploit the fear of superheroes. It’s all well and good until you meet up with somebody who has the ability to overcome a lot of fear. That’s all I can tell you about that.
I don’t necessarily think [Hal’s] afraid of anything, and so that plays into the Knight Terrors. It will make sense. I tried to do some EC Comics type stuff and just really make it creepy. Writing somebody like Hal for Night Terrors sounds super fun.
To do the story about the Fear Universe or whatever and [Hal’s] actually like, ‘I’m not afraid of shit.’ It gives me a chance to delve into some stuff of Hal that maybe I wouldn’t be able to [otherwise].
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