Green Lantern has been a tough superhero for the DCU to crack. We’re all aware of Ryan Reynolds’ somewhat hilarious Hal Jordan in the 2011 film, but, outof the popular Green Lanterns, there hasn’t been a good John Stewart sinceJustice League Unlimited. In fact, we’ve never seen a live-action African American Green Lantern. In James Gunn’sannouncement of the new DCU slate, he noted the new HBO series would follow Hal Jordan and John Stewart in aTrue Detective-like mystery. And that the show would be calledLanterns.
John Stewart will finally be a main character in this live-action DCU project. Although, judging by the graphics James Gunn used to introduceLanterns, it seems that Stewart may not be a Green Lantern, but a Yellow one. It’s an interesting premise that comes from a specific DC Comics run and may turn out differently due to this dark mystery genre inspiration.Lanternslooks like it will be an original take on the Green Lantern story and might push these DC staples closer to the spotlight. But more than that, it will be the first timeJohn Stewart will take center stageas a live-action character.
John Stewart Is Important to DC
The Green Lanterns are some of DC’s more relatable heroes. They aren’t victims of strange experiments or people with resources beyond measure. Oftentimes, they are regular people, born into difficult situations, that come out showing real strength of character. And they aren’t given their powers by chance, but it’s due to this character that they are personally selected by the Green Lantern ring.
John Stewart is one of those people. Born into a poor family in the ailing part of Detroit, Stewart refused to be dragged down by his economic status and joined the military in order to put himself through college. While he was in the Marine Corps, he proved himself by openly defying orders in order to save lives. And when he became a Lantern, even the Guardians were frightened by the sheer power he displayed.
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Stewart is also one of DC’s first Black superheroes. Black Lightning was the first African-American hero with his own comic book, but John Stewart’s character was introduced years before him. Although Stewart wouldn’t become a Green Lantern until more than a decade later, he was DC’s first major recurring Black character. His name “John Stewart” was seen as a powerful statement for Black equality at the time. DC was going to name him “Lincoln Washington” but artist Neal Adams resisted giving his hero a moniker that had historically been a slave name.
John Stewart is one of DC Comic’s proudest heroes, and while he’s been well-represented in a lot of animation, this may be the first time we get to see anactor play Green Lanternin live-action — barring Wayne T. Carr being filmed, and then cut, from Zack Snyder’sJustice League. Although Alan Scott was the first Green Lantern, and Kyle Rayner might have been the strongest Green Lantern, John Stewart is still a fan favorite for a lot of people.
Lanterns Will Take His Story to a New Level
Lanternsbears an exciting promise for the DCU. First, it plans to take DC’s intergalactic police force and look at them more like detectives. The Green Lantern comics have always revolved around this idea of superheroes drawing power from a spectrum of emotions or a strength of character; specifically with Green Lanterns representing willpower and Yellow Lanterns symbolizing fear. But this series may change the way we look at these heroes. The comic book runEarth Onedid away with this long-running definition of what it meant to be a particular Lantern, and had a Green Hal Jordan team up with a Yellow John Stewart. Typically, they would be opposed to each other based solely on the color of their rings, but the book explored these forces from a different angle.
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Second, James Gunn promised to take these traditionally interplanetary heroes and tell their stories on a terrestrial level. This is an interesting choice given that Green Lanterns are almost always seen flying through space and fighting aliens. TheEarth Onecomic has a lot to do with space, soLanternsmight bring us an entirely new perspectiveon what we thought we knew about the Lantern Corps. Old-school Green Lantern fans might not like this, but it could reinvent the character at a time when the DCU is reinventing itself.
So what we might seeis a pair of Lanterns, not necessarily green, getting into a gritty case, and really exploring the “policing” side of their characters, instead of just getting into big CGI battles. It’s an opportunity to really get to know John Stewart and Hal Jordan, in a way that perhaps only comic book fans could in the past. This will be the first chance a much larger audience will get to explore who these Lanterns are, instead of just what their rings do.
