The Green Lantern Brings Back Obscure 1960s Characters and Concepts

One of my favorite things about Grant Morrison’s run on Batman was his insistence that everything counts. Hairy-chested Neal Adams ‘70s Batman was obviously the cornerstone of the run, but it all mattered, from “Knightfall” and “No Man’s Land” to the Black Casebook files or the Batman of Zurr-En-Arrh. It added a lot of fun to an otherwise pretty heavy book.

The Green Lantern is doing a lot of the same things, and the end product so far has been a blast. Morrison and Liam Sharp have dug through all of Hal Jordan’s history and are pulling in deep cut characters and cameos. And while in the first season of The Green Lantern, all of those cameos had a purpose in the story that was eventually revealed, in the moment they were all just entertaining callbacks to obscure old stories. The same will probably be the case in Season 2 – this is definitely going somewhere, but for now it’s just a riot. 

The Green Lantern #2 has some more of those. Namely, Cosmidor City and Eve Doremus, which have been mostly dormant since a brief arc in the late ‘60s. The Cosmidor here is vastly different from what was in Green Lantern #58. There it was just a regular company town with normal buildings, normal layout, with an ineffective fire department that was considered a public good. Here, Cosmidor is a combination capitalist end state and science city of the future, like a Borg Cube if it was assembled on the Jersey Turnpike. 

Eve, on the other hand, is surprisingly unchanged. Surprisingly, because she talks like it’s still 1968. And when he’s around her, Hal does too. She’s a former love interest of Hal’s who just kind of drifted away after a few arcs. But she’s back now, bringing in Hal to investigate mysterious goings on in her dad’s city, like giant feathers appearing around the city. And the speech thing…no spoilers, but you should read the issue for more on that. It’s not an accident. 

Here’s what DC has to say about The Green Lantern Season Two #2:

THE GREEN LANTERN SEASON TWO #2

written by GRANT MORRISON

art and cover by LIAM SHARP

variant cover by NICOLA SCOTT

Hal Jordan is stuck on the worst possible planet he can imagine: Earth! Reassigned by the bold new Guardians to patrol his home planet, Hal finds himself a bit bored with his familiar haunts versus the infinite expanse and adventure of outer space. But when an invasion from the dawn of time strikes the planet, can Hal stop…the Ornitho-Men?!

And in more exciting news, Season Two was originally planned for a shorter, clipped run, but Liam Sharp announced online that it would be extended to a full 12 issues. Hooray! Check out the preview below!