Comic Books

Phillip Kennedy Johnson opens up about ‘Green Lantern: War Journal’

The new John Stewart title launches next week (September 19).

September 12, 2023

Back in May, writer Jeremy Adams and artist Xermanico launched the latest Green Lantern solo book. While that story has had plenty to offer in the ongoing evolution of Hal Jordan, it was the backup story that generated just as much hype. Led up by writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson and artist Montos, the pair forged a new path for John Stewart that spun directly out of Worlds Without a Justice League – Green Lantern. Now, the creators and Stewart are leaving the back pages for their very own title, Green Lantern: War Journal.

The brand-new solo book spins directly from those backup stories (which concluded this week, September 12, in Green Lantern #3). Once Green Lantern: War Journal launches later this month, the story follows Stewart as he believes his “time as a Green Lantern has come to an end.” If only things were that easy, and instead Stewart may have to abandon his peaceful slice of life when “a terrifying and contagious force with a mysterious connection to Oa appears on Earth.” With some possible Multiverse action, and a new Lantern to boot, Stewart will clearly have his hands full in this poignant slice of drama.

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Green Lantern: War Journal #1 officially drops September 19. In the meantime, we recently caught up with Kennedy Johnson during a Zoom call to talk about the book. That includes how War Journal builds from the back-ups, why the tale focuses on his family, Stewart’s big bad and his mentee, and some other possible highlights for the series proper.

Issue #1 main cover by Taj Tenfold. Courtesy of DC Comics.

AIPT: Where are we at leading into issue #1 of Green Lantern: War Journal? It seems we’re dealing with the Multiverse, and maybe two or more Johns.

Phillip Kennedy Johnson: I wanted to take a different tact than I usually take with my books. I very often draw on old stories, like pre-modern English or things like Tolkien. I love old classic fantasy, but I also really love Beowulf and older Arthurian legends. And this one just didn’t feel like that kind of story. I wanted this to feel more like an 1980s action film. I wanted to see James Cameron’s John Stewart, you know? And so I actually drew upon movies like Terminator 2 and Aliens and Predator — that golden age of just top-shelf action flick. Stuff that just felt like it could be a really stark contrast to the current Hal story that’s happening. And to also use that as the setting for a new Jon Stewart story that actually, despite the testosterone-driven story that’s coming, actually shows him as being much more complicated than we sometimes see him.

We often see him in a team book, and so we get the John Stewart shorthand where he just gives a little bit of military jargon and so we’re able to boil everybody down on the team to where it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s the ex-military guy.’ I want to see John, the ex-Marine, but also John, the architect, John, the son, John, the brother. John in this transition between his career as a Lantern and his time as a son dealing with end of life stuff, and trying to figure out what he’s gonna do next with his life. Thinking that he’s done with the Lanterns even if they’re not done with him.

Courtesy of DC Comics.

AIPT: I think one of the things that struck me about your portrayal of John is that he’s kind of stuck between worlds. But he never strikes me as someone who feels confused or even dealing with contradictions. I think part of that is sort of showing his family life and his family. Why is that specifically that focus, especially his relationship with his mother?

PKJ: We’ve all seen action movies in which there’s all this visual bombast. And you just can’t bring yourself to give a shit about any of it because you don’t know who anybody is. What they care about, what they’re afraid of, what their failings are, what their virtues are. I just don’t care about that kind of stuff. Like, I want to see that kind of stuff on the screen. It’s cool and everything. But if you don’t know who the characters are, you have to communicate who these people are. You communicate it through detail and through emotional investment, you know? I want to see these little nuggets, these little hints throughout John’s mythology like his mother, who inspired him. These things shaped him as a person but we don’t ever hear about it. I want to see John as a much more complete person. So that’s kind of been the mission statement of this whole thing. To me, John is the consummate superhero and his hero is his mom. So I want to see their relationship.

And honestly, I project a fair bit of myself onto her as a parent of a young kid. And I’m already dreading having to send him away someday. Like, I’m preparing him for a life without me in it. And I hate every minute of it. And someday he’s going to — if things go the way I hope they go — have to look out for his old man and I’m going be trying to tell him he doesn’t need to and get him out there and live his on life.

I want to see how a hero like John deals with personal tragedy — that stuff that all of us have to deal with — even while the world of the Green Lantern Corps and the protection of the universe is beating his door down telling him, ‘You’re not done with us, we need you.’ I want to see him dealing with very personal, real life relatable stuff even while the weight of the universe is crashing down on him and forcing him to take action and giving us those big awesome action scenes I was talking about earlier.

Variant cover by Mirko Colak. Courtesy of DC Comics.

AIPT: I think you’ve talked about this in other interviews and maybe in the last time we spoke, but you can define all the Green Lanterns by maybe some core personality traits. Hal’s very charismatic, and Guy is a jerk. What qualities make John such a great Lantern?

PKJ: I mean, it’s funny you ask because [for] this book, if anything, the mission statement is to make him more complicated. Just to blow out him as a character as we’re also blowing out the Green Lantern mythology and the lore behind the Green Lantern. So if anything, we’re making him more multifaceted. But if we had to boil him down, I would say it’s his duty to the thing that is bigger than himself. And that does not mean his military service. His military service is an expression of that trait, and not the other way around. He was a Marine, but he was a Marine for the same reason that he is also a Green Lantern. It’s the service of the big thing. There’s a thing that they serve that is bigger and older than the Justice League and has a much broader jurisdiction and mission, you know? So he’s in service of that nameless, faceless duty to virtue and truth and justice as those big ideas.

And right now, a big part of that duty is to his own mother. He knows that in war or in service to the Lanterns, when somebody falls, the rest carry on — someone else carries the flag forward. He understands that, but there’s no one else to pick up the flag for him if his mom needs him. So right now that sense of duty is aimed at his mother. He is duty bound to stay at his mother’s side as she’s struggling with dementia and end-of-life stuff. But meanwhile, the entire universe is in danger. So we’re going to see a big tug of war with John at the center.

AIPT: The book also deals with a new mentee for John in Lantern Shepherd. How do you see him in the grand scheme of the Lanterns? Why is that an interesting decision to make?

PKJ: I wanted to give some kind of connective tissue between our John Stewart, who is currently in transition between being a Lantern and being a dutiful son, and the John Stewart of the Dark Crisis and World without a Justice League universe, where he is the Superman of Earth — the guardian and the builder. That is a John Stewart that has realized his full potential and has become the consummate Green Lantern of all universes. That is like the perfect John Stewart as a Lantern.

Variant cover by Dave Wilkins. Courtesy of DC Comics.

I wanted to see the contrast between that one and this one. We’ve seen one who fulfills his full potential and this one who’s in a different place in his life. I wanted another character that knows both of them. Someone who knew John Stewart on that other world, but also knows ours and knows what he’s capable of and has to help him realize his own potential. So Shepard is this really green rookie cop character, but he’s also super badass. He’s the lone survivor of the Guardians of the Watchfire that were on that other Earth. He’s incredibly capable, as as a hero, he tries to aspire to be like that other Jon Stewart.

In a way, he’s kind of like Bishop from the X-Men — hopefully I’m not gonna get in trouble for making an X-Men reference here — but it’s that guy from that other universe in which the X-Men are like his heroes. Bishop comes to the X-Men because he always saw the X-Men as this unachievable virtue to live up to. And then he comes back and he has show us how to do stuff. That’s kind of the role that Lantern Shepherd fills.

AIPT: Alongside Shepherd, there’s a big bad for John in the Revenant Queen. She’s popped up before, but this is her first really big focus. What can you tell us about what role she’ll play here in War Journal?

PKJ: I can’t spoil it, but I will say that I’m really excited about her. She has ties to the very origins of the Green Lantern core, which I’m really excited to show. I went old-school again…I don’t want readers to have to do homework to read this book. People can jump on from #1 here and just ride. But old-school Green Lantern fans who know some more of the lore and know about the origins of the core and the dark stars and the controllers and all that stuff, I wanted them to see something that blows their minds. Like, ‘Well, everything I thought I knew was a lie.’ The Revenant Queen is that kind of thing. She and the Radiant Dead represent, to me at least, one of the coolest kinds of threats in genre stories, which is that contagious horror. It’s that thing that I’m terrified of that makes you like them if you just get too close. Or, if they win, you become one of them. The Radiant Dead are that thing, but in a very different way from the Black Lanterns — this a much deeper threat, and it actually ties into some of my earlier DC work as well in a way that I think is going to be really fun for readers to see.

Variant cover by John Giang. Courtesy of DC Comics.

AIPT: Is this stuff with the Revenant Queen and the Radiant Dead about building a rogues’ gallery for John? It seems like he hasn’t really had one before.

PKJ: Yeah, that’s what she [the Revenant Queen] is to me, at least. I want her to be a proper big bad that is laser-focused on Jon Stewart. And we’ll see why that is. But the Revenant Queen — and really the entire Radiant Dead — have it out for John specifically. I don’t want to spoil too much, but I just can’t wait to see what she is and what and who she is and where it’s all going to go.

AIPT: Last question for you: Speaking as broadly as you can, what can we expect in terms of big beats, big moments, and anything like that from this story?

PKJ: We’re going to see John interacting with other characters in the DC universe that I love dearly, not just in the Green Lantern Corps, but also DC at-large.

We’re going to see… man, what can I say here?

There’s going to be some crazy action set pieces that Montos is just drawing the shit out of. I give Montos insanely difficult things to do, and he just hits nothing but home runs every time. Like every single time. Whether he’s doing little detailed emotion shots on faces, or if he’s drawing these big, crazy action spreads. I told him to draw an entire army of alien Green Lantern constructs behind John. Or cosmic horror or body horror or crazy tech like machines building themselves in real time on a battlefield. He’s just crushing all of it. So I just keep leveling up things that I give him because he’s just giving the reader such a feast. Every script is written to be a singularly amazing comic book. You’re going to get that big bad that you were asking about for John Stewart. And the Radiant Dead are definitely up to the challenge and Montos is up to the challenge of drawing him.