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| SDCC Day 1 – Green Lantern Panel |
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Johns handed out DC Direct rings to some fans in the audience and the panel went directly to Q&A from readers…
- Asked if the GL Corps: Recharge limited series (by Gleason and writer Dave Gibbons) will lead into an ongoing Corps series, Tomasi said there’s a good chance if they numbers [sales figures] are good, and they they’re ready to “rock & roll” with a regular series.
- Asked about villains in the regular GL series, Johns said he has plans for new ones, but that he likes the older villains as well. He said artist Ethan Van Sciver has a twisted take on Hector Hammond. Issue #4 features the Shark, who according to Johns is “just beautiful” as Van Sciver draws him. Black Hand and Mongul will appear, and Sonarr is coming up in a story, according to Johns, so bizarre, only Van Sciver could be a co-plotter on it.
- Every era of GL villains will appear in Recharge.
- Hal and the GL Corps play a significant role in Infinite Crisis, and there will also be significant changes in the GL book when the books jump ahead “OYL” next spring.
- Regarding how many Green Lanterns there will be in the reformed Corps, it’s over 7200, or 2 per sector.
Johns said they are really treating the Corps as a police force and like any police force officers should have back-ups, which is why they’re going from one GL per sector to two.
John Stewart is Hal’s partner on Earth.
Kilowog’s partner is Salakk, the Corps administrator and keeper of the new Book of Oa. As the administrator, the six-armed Salakk has energy constructs that monitor Oa, and that one of them is always trained on the imprisoned Parallax.
”Besides, we had zero Green Lanterns for so long, let’s do more than what we had before,” Johns said on the subject of the # of GLs. .
- There is no crossover between Space Ghost and the Green Lantern Corps planned.
- Regarding a GL in the JLA, Johns said John Stewart plays a significant role in the JLA after the current arc. He then added, “After that, who knows if the JLA will be around”.
Johns later said both Hal and Guy don’t feel very welcome around the JLA because of Batman.
- Asked how Alan Scott fits into the picture, Tomasi said he will be taking on important duties and Johns hinted there were some important things coming up for him.
- Asked to how other space police organizations react to the reformation of the Corps, L.E.G.I.O.N.’s response will be dealt with in Crisis #1.
- Johns said Dave Gibbons has come up with a new spin on the Guardians for Recharge. Asked later about their methods of operations and what their overall goals are, Johns said that isn’t even known to the Green Lanterns sometimes and they’ll find themselves on missions they don’t understand or necessarily agree with.
- Regarding the subject of new female GL’s – considering the history of killing them off – Johns and Tomasi both said new ones are being created.
- Johns said sector 1417 will demonstrate how the GL's are regarded differently around the universe. In that sector, the GL symbol is roughly equivalent to a swastika, and when someone is appointed a GL, they become a shunned individual.
- Green Lantern #7 will have an appearance by Green Arrow (drawn by Carlos Pacheco).
- Guy Gardner, who has a big role as a GL trainer in Recharge will also play a big role in Crisis.
Asked if Guy will get a shot at payback against Batman (re: their Justice League days), Johns said read Recharge #1.
He also said, “I like Batman, but as history has shown, Batman and GL’s just don’t mix.”
- Asked about how Hal’s past will be handled in the GL monthly, Johns said they might take some liberties with how the past is interpreted and it may not be literal interpretation of what was shown to happen in the past, but that it will be thematically along the same lines.
- In a discussion of the change in the ring’s yellow impurity and how that led to the end of Parallax, Johns said that was Paul Levitz’s idea, the thinking being if they were going to do bring Hal back and get rid of Parallax, he wanted it all tied to GL mythology.
The hint he found was in issue #2 of the old GL series (written by Joey Cavalieri) where Hal releases the yellow impurity from the battery, which ultimately created Parallax, though Johns thought Sinestro was ultimately responsible for that.
- Asked of G’Nort will come back, Johns replied, “You know what … No!”
- Asked why they brought Hal back, Tomasi said he thought GL was good but that the franchise needed to be juiced up a bit, so he went after the books and got them and shortly after starting the ball rolling on getting Hal back, and that Johns was in on it from the beginning.
Johns said brining Hal back was a challenge, since he had to start with the Spectre and a whole lot of baggage, and that he went through draft after draft. “But I like a challenge. I don’t want to do ‘All-Star Green Lantern’, I want to do the regular Green Lantern. If I have to bring him back I’ll bring him back.”
- Tensions between Hal and the characters that remember him as Parallax will continue. Tomasi said they don’t want to sweep that under the rug, that it is part of the character’s past and it will play a role.
- Asked since he’s now revived the Flash Rogues and Hal Jordan if there were any other characters he wanted to revive or bring back, Johns said he’d like to get a chance to write the Batman villains (“though they’re so good right now”), Superman, and he’d also like to try his hand at Suicide Squad.
- Asked if readers will see Ch’p, a “chipmunk”-style GL, Johns said Van Sciver is a “giant fan of rodents”, and can actually make them look cool like he makes Kilowog look cool. A GL from Ch’p’s sector will be seen in issue #4 of GL.
- Regarding why there are so many GL’s on Earth, Johns said the Guardians will mention in Recharge #1 that the GL’s of Earth share a trait that’s unique in the universe.
- On the subject of Hal’s past as the Spectre and whether he’ll have any guilt over that, Johns explained he’s playing it so that Hal has a difficult time remembering his past has the Spectre, so he isn’t dealing with guilt over things he doesn’t remember.
- The GL symbol will be like a badge in the new corps. Trainees will wear just the white circle on their uniform at first and will have to earn the Lantern symbol that goes inside the circle.
Speaking of rookies, though veteran GL’s aren’t affected by yellow anymore, rookies/trainees are. It’s not because of an impurity, but the fear that exists in the trainee’s minds. The more experience they get, the less yellow affects them.
GL costumes overall with remain fairly traditional, with no major revamps. Tomasi said since they’re looking at the Corps as a police force they’ll stay pretty standard. Johns later said there would be variations within the same design. For example, the costume Guy wears in Recharge is symbolic of the Corps Honor Guard.
- Asked the obligatory question as to if there are any plans for a GL movie, Johns said because the series is getting a lot of attention, Warner Bros. is showing interest in GL in other media, but in a straightforward, more serious manner along the lines of the comics (i.e. no Jack Black).
Tomasi added when he started at DC in 1993, there was pitch for a GL that would star Eddie Murphy. Johns also read that script while working in Richard Donner’s office and when he heard there was a GL movie in the works, perhaps with Jack Black, he thought they were probably using the same script.
- Don’t expect the GL monthly to go backwards in terms of supporting characters. Read: no Pie-Face and Carol Ferris will be moving off-stage. There will be new supporting characters but John Stewart, Ollie Queen, Kilowog and the Guardians will play roles.
- Asked if more Golden Age characters will be coming back, perhaps in JSA, Tomasi began to respond then stopped himself, then said a project is in the works by a writer who has worked for DC before and handles characters like that very well, leaving the room with the unconfirmed hint that James Robinson was the writer being mentioned.
- Asked if Sinestro will be forming his own anti-GL Corps squad, both Johns and Tomasi responded in unison, “Could be...”
- There are plans down the line for Major Force, but nothing in the immediate future.
- Johns said Hal’s frequent need to leave the Air Force for GL missions will be dealt with, beginning in GL #3, but not in a way people will expect.
- A fan suggested since the Corps will be treated like a police force, would they see a Corps S.W.A.T. team or hostage negotiation team. Johns said there were no plans but seemed to genuinely warm to the idea, saying he’d like to see a story where a GL hostage negotiation team is sent in to save a planet being held for ransom.
- Asked about the code of the GL Corps, Johns said it depends on the sector. Mostly they’ll imprison wrongdoers. He added that Pacheco is itching to draw a GL from a sector whose methods are to incinerate criminals, but added the rings still cannot kill.
- Johns said Hal will have “many” love interests. “He’s William Shatner, but not a bad actor. And he has good hair.”
- Asked if the Spectre will get a new host, Johns said to read Crisis.
- Finally, asked where he sees the GL books in five years, Johns said hopefully both books are still going strong, and that people can’t believe or don’t remember there was a time without a GL Corps.
For much more on Recharge, check out thispreview and our interview with Dave Gibbons.
[Check out Newsarama’s continually updated 2005 SDCC News Index for all the con coverage from Newsarama and CBR]. |
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