Jeremy Adams And Morgan Hampton Tease DC’s ‘Green Lantern Corps’ Is Getting The “Star Trek Approach”

Green Lantern Corps #1 crop

With DC Comics‘s Green Lantern title getting back to basics, it’s time for the inevitable spin-off: Green Lantern Corps, a new ongoing series debuting this March. Written by Green Lantern scribe Jeremy Adams and Morgan Hampton, with art by Fernando Pasarin and Oclair Albert, the new series juggled an extensive cast, with a surprising inspiration.

“We’ve been talking a lot about a Star Trek approach, where everybody’s going to be in every issue,” Hampton told Comic Book Club. “But just like in Star Trek, there might be Worf episodes or Picard episodes. We want to shift focus every two to three issues.”

While the first issue cedes focus to John Stewart, it also includes favorites ranging from Guy Gardner, to Jessica Cruz, Jo Mullein, and many more. To find out about Adams and Hampton’s take on the title, as well as a preview of some interior pages, read on.

Comic Book Club: You two are writing, you also have two artists, Fernando Pasarin and Oclair Albert… You’ve kind of got your Green Lantern Corps of your own working on this. So how do you split up duties? Is it just a big group think thing going on?

Jeremy Adams: Definitely think that Morgan and I are doing more of a group think. What we’ve learned is, basically how I do television, a whiteboard, getting in a room… Let’s break down what’s happening in act one, two, three, and then moving from there. And then we can split up duties and go over each other’s work or whatever. Which is great. With Fernando and Oclair, they’re a tight knit team, and I worked with them for so long, especially on The Flash… That’s a whole other animal, because they are so good. Whatever we’re going to write, they’re going to make one thousand times better.

This is a pretty big cast here. How do you balance everyone? Or do you not?

Morgan Hampton: We’ve been talking a lot about a Star Trek approach, where everybody’s going to be in every issue. But just like in Star Trek, there might be Worf episodes or Picard episodes. We want to shift focus every two to three issues. While we have this overarching plot going on, we’ll shift and see how one character is navigating that, and then what’s going on in their personal life that’s exacerbating this bigger issue. So that’s been the formula that we’ve been using to help balance the character stuff with the cool, big swings that we that we’re going for.

I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that John Stewart is the focus at the beginning. So what works about him as a character? What makes John Stewart special in your estimation?

Hampton: John is very measured, or at least he presents as very measured. Having a background in the Marine Corps, being an architect, he’s very calculated with his decisions. But what’s been really fun to flesh out with him spinning out of the past couple years of Geoffrey Thorne’s run and Philip Kennedy Johnson’s run is, emotionally, he maybe is not so put together as he presents. How do we explore that with some of the very questionable decisions that he’s made over the past couple years? And how do we pull him through that and have him grow as a person?

Adams: John is the only Green Lantern that’s not a knucklehead. Especially the originals. Guy has issues. All things considered, John’s fairly even tempered, but obviously he’s gone through a lot in the last five years.

One of his questionable decisions is creating his own sister out of Green Lantern energy… I assume with all your nodding, that’s something that we’ll be dealing with in some way in this series.

Hampton: Yeah, there’s no way that we can just brush that under the table

Adams: Philip, when he did that… And he’s writing this very personal story about John’s mom and even just John, in general. But with the history of Green Lanterns, creating constructs and maybe using their powers in certain ways, that can cause pause. A lot of people are wondering whether they’re not saying it directly to John. Because the Corps is just starting back up, and the rules are starting to get in place, there’s going to be time to explore that a little more, but even John is is hiding a lot more problems that he might have not [been] dealing with maybe as directly as he should.

One little flip that was set up in the Fractured Spectrum Special is that the Guardians are no longer in charge, the Green Lanterns are kind of running themselves. Bear with me for a second here. But there’s been this tendency over the history of Green Lantern to be like, the Green Lantern Corps has rebuilt themselves, except the Guardians have a dark secret, and then the Green Lantern Corps is destroyed, and then they rebuild themselves… So given that flip, given that the Guardians are taking a back seat here, is that a pattern that you’re trying to avoid? Are we going to see the Green Lanterns themselves perhaps lead to their own issues and problems?

Adams: Yes to all of that. Exactly what your point [is], you’re dealing with a book that’s been around for ages, right? And so you do have this up and down with comics. It’s very much like jazz. A variation on a theme. And there have been things that have been done. We’re playing with the emotional spectrum. We didn’t create the emotional spectrum, but we’re taking themes and ideas that have been done before us and playing with them. With the Guardians, how do we have a new angle on the Guardians and whatever happened to them? The Source Lantern was short circuited by the fight between Kyle and Varron, and so we don’t know exactly what’s — I mean, you don’t know, but we know — going on with them, but it’s going to lead to a bigger story with them. Whether that ends with them blowing up the lantern Corps again? I don’t know. I try to avoid as best I can retreading stuff as as much as I can, but it’s hard, especially when it’s like, well, there’s Oa, what can we do with Oa? So bringing even the Lantern back to Oa has been done before. It’s in the context of the Designated Survivor Lantern and all this stuff. To your question, it’s hard, but we’re trying to do something different.

I want to ask you about a couple of characters in particular that I think are interesting to throw into this mix, starting with Jo Mullein. She seems like such a challenge to write, just because she is so intrinsically tied to the events of Far Sector. Obviously, she’s been involved in different ways since then. But what is your take on her now that she is away from Far sector and on Oa proper?

Hampton: Geoffrey Thorne’s run did a pretty good job of integrating her kind of into the Corps of it all. At least for me, my approach doesn’t feel like the odd one out. In a way, this is a familiar place for her. I mean, she was part of the NYPD before she was a Green Lantern, and as you can see in this first issue, the way Oa is set up, is it feels like a police precinct. She feels very much at home, in a weird way. Home doesn’t feel like home for her anymore; this is what home is for her at this point.

Another one that has grown tremendously is Jessica Cruz, who started completely defined by her trauma and fear, and now is running the whole shebang. Obviously, you never lose that completely. But who is she without that as her defining characteristic?

Adams: There’s this phrase that someone told me that weakness is a strength out of balance. And that’s the journey of Jessica Cruz. It has been really interesting, because she was defined by her fear, willpower to overcome that fear, then she embraces fear. There was a moment where she was a Yellow Lantern. So her relationship with fear is different, and we never really get over the loudness of fear in our own lives. We can tamp it down, and it can get smaller, but we’re always going to have that. Her relationship, her knowledge, even in last Green Lantern [issue], she’s able to reach Kilowog because of her relationship with fear. And even when you quote, unquote, defeat — like, I jumped off the high dive. Guess what? There’s always another higher dive, right? So you may make a breakthrough, but there’s always going to be another mountain to climb. This, to me, is more logical, that this person is now faced with a more complex version of how to deal with her fear, because now it’s not just about her, it’s about everybody that’s under her. That is more realistic to me, because when I see people go through an amount of growth, it’s never stagnant. It’s never defeated… It’s bigger and and it is more complex, but it also shows her growth more.

Even when I initially put that in Fractured Spectrum, I was like, who’s going to be the person that leads [the Corps]? And my first thought was Jo, because she had already started leading the charge with the Resistance Lanterns. But that’s the obvious choice to me. Jess is not the obvious choice. In the minute, I thought: oh no, this is exactly right. Jess is the one that actually has a more nuanced approach to fear and responsibility, and it’s a really cool turn for her character.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Green Lantern Corps #1 hits stores on February 12, 2025. And head back here then for a spoiler-filled interview about the issue!

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