The Lanterns are getting ready for a recharge just like the rest of the DCU, and we've got the details on the four new #1s heading our way this September courtesy of DC Comics.
Afraid your favorite Lantern would be wiped out in the relaunch? Well, if you like what you read last month, "All will be well."
Green Lantern #1 – Things remain essentially the same with Geoff Johns continuing on as writer and Doug Mahnke and inker Christian Alamy as regular artists. Ivan Reis and Joe Prado on covers.
Green Lantern Corps #1 – Peter Tomasi is back on the title he made great. He's joined by artists Fernando Pasarin and Scott Hanna. This one focused on Guy Gardner and John Stewart with a vast intergalactic ensemble.
Green Lantern: The New Guardians #1 – Tony Bedard scripts this Kyle Rayner centric series with interior art and cover by Tyler Kirkham and Batt. This seems to be about the full spectrum of multicolored lanterns introduced over the past couple years.
Red Lanterns #1 – Hey, remember this one? Atrocitus and the Reds finally get that book they've been promised for a good while now. Scripted by Peter Milligan, art by Ed Benes and Rob Hunter.
The takeaway here is that DC doesn't want to mess with what's already working for them, at least in the case of Green Lantern and Blackest Night. If you were afraid this reboot was going to wipe out your favorite stories or even the most recent continuity, that may not be the case for some of the books you've been reading. Some minor shuffling aside, this is what we're reading now. Nobody seems to be missing. All four human Lanterns are still zooming around the galaxy, and the past few years of successful GL story lines still seem to be in place.
Nothing terribly universe-shaking in this corner. But the day is still young…
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I’m glad that they’re not erasing Blackest Night and Brightest Day, but this is the perfect example of what’s wrong with comics today. They try to move forward by erasing the past, but still keeping the past, present.
(Does that make sense?)
Here’s hoping they do the same with the current line of Bat-books.
The New Guardians one kind of makes me think of The Power Rangers or something. Although it could be good. I’m going into this whole relaunch thing with a Glass half full frame of mind. It all seems so far away though!
I’m glad to see that they are keeping the new color rings though because that was a great idea by Johns
“Green Lantern #1 – Things remain essentially the same” — A good summary of the last year and a half or so of Green Lantern, and the reason I finally dropped it.
DC’s making all the right moves with this so far. 🙂
So they aren’t rebooting the universe or continuity, all they’re doing is a Marvel on a MASSIVE scale and hitting everything with renumbering for a one month sales boost?
Now I’m def don’t get the point of this from a story standpoint
I honestly don’t get the criticism of the post-BN GL books. I’ve been loving them so I’m relieved to see, first of all that Johns is still writing (will he just give up sleep and food?), and that this epic story will impact the new DCU. I’m onboard for all four.
4 Green Lantern titles ? I thought things had gotten a little weak when they expanded to 3. I can’t see the Red Lanterns book lasting – other than seeing the red lantern cat spewing plasma I just can’t see the appeal.
If they keep the past intact but move the GL saga in a differnet direction when this re-launches, I’m all for it. I honestly DC has been riding this multi-colored Lantern Corps stuff for way too long now and it needs a change. I’d be fine with most of these books going back to its old-fashioned space cop roots.
@usagi: Me being a Batman fan I don’t think 4 green Lantern books is all that much. If all you read is GL and you don’t care about the rest of DCU then 4 books a month is a cake walk. I’m not even sure how many Batman is up to now.
Tomasi’s GL Corps was my favorite book in 2009 but I dropped it as soon as he left. If they can make it an ensamble with characters like Killowog and Arisa, I’d definetly pick it back up. Another solid bit of news for the PROS category… Fingers crossed for the Bat-titles.
@origamikid Some books are some books aren’t.
WAIT! What kind of reboot/relaunch is this?! It’s CoIE all over again! Dogbrammit!
I was excited to see them re-introduce concepts from the DCU’s 70+ years of continuity with an eye for the audience of today. I.E. a build up to a reintroduction of the skittles lanterns, but seeding their existance from the very begining. But this is just going to confuse continuity more… Awesome Opposum, DC. Looks like Barry Allen’s a big GL fan since he decided to leave them untouched while he was fixing the time-stream.
That said, Green Lantern: New Guardians and Red Lanterns still sound good to me. Tony Bedard and Peter Milligan? Sign me up!
Here’s hoping the rest of the universe is wiped clean, though.
If “The New Guardians” is going to be dealing with the other corps, then the main GL book will hopefully get back to basics. Which it has needed to do for a long time. More “Hal Jordan, Space Cop,” or “Hal Jordan, citizen of the DC Universe”, palling it up with Barry and Ollie. If it goes this route, I would add GL #1 to my preorder.
@thehumaneclipse I dont understand, how can you be glad about this, but say it is what’s wrong with comics today? The GL stuff has been good, and has sold well, they are tweaking it and keeping what works. Seems all positive to me…
I want to check out the Tomasi return to GLC but I’m just so burnt out on GL.
Oh wait! It’s digital, I can always go back and get the issues if they’re good!
I loved Geoff Johns original Flash run, so when he took over for Green lantern, i was all over. And dropped it pretty quickly. Not my cup of tea at all. Looks like they aren’t changing much though, which is good for the boat load of people who have been fans of this book. Glad they aren’t getting the shaft.
I love a lot of the ideas that have been in the GL books, but they’ve mostly all been poorly executed. I’ll give these #1’s a shot, but I doubt I’ll stick around for the long haul. Love that cover, though.
I’ve been digging GL post-Blackest Night as much as I did pre-Blackest Night, so this is good news to me.
I might have preferred some new artistic blood on Corps and New Guardians, but Pasarin and Kirkham are ok enough, I suppose.
If they manage to play the Bat-corner of the DCU like they did the GL-corner, I think everything just might work out okay. Although with the rumor of Morrison’s involvement in the Superman line, I wonder what that means to his involvement in the Batman line of things?
I am soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo happy this part of the DCU appear untouched. one concern i had was regarding the other corps so am very happy to see these books and teams 🙂
It wouldn’t make much sense if the GL continuity changed due to Flashpoint anyway. It’s not like Reverse Flash can just go around the universe making changes. He could mess up the histories of the earth-based lanterns I guess, but he wouldn’t be able to affect any events that happen up in space.
This all sounds good, but I was hoping for a ‘Tales of the Corps’ kind of anthology book with stories from across the spectrum!
I get it now! I get what DC is doing!
This “reboot” is akin to Green Lantern: Rebirth, except for the entire line of DC Universe titles. Think about how Green Lantern :Rebirth worked. 1) Primary character is de-aged (i.e., no more grey at Hal’s temples). 2) Character’s uniform gets tweaked. 3) New status quo acknowledges 95% of the existing continuity but changes/streamlines the 5% that doesn’t work for today’s audience, or doesn’t work with where the writer wants to go with the story. 4) Compresses prior continuity to seem as if it happened over a much shorter time period. 5) Story moves forward from issue #1 in a way that new readers do not really need to know the continuity.
I suspect that those characters who have not had a monthly book recently (or ever) (e.g., Aquaman, Hawkman, Mr. Terrific) will all get the “Rebirth” treatment and benefit from it. Take Hawkman for example. If they were to de-age him, streamline / explain his origin, acknowledge and compress what has come before, and most importantly, move forward to tell exciting stories, Hawkman would be primed and ready to regain his former glory in the DCU.
For team books, like JL and JLI, you can just start with the “getting the band together” issue, which everyone seems to enjoy, and still accomplish many of the same chores as a “Rebirth” story. A good getting the band together story gives the reader everything they need to know about the characters on the team. Continuity is less important with a team book because the reader is mostly concerned about the continuity of the team, which they should know if they started with issue #1.
Now, there will to be exceptions to this model. Specifically, I think the books that have recently had a “Rebirth” will not get this treatment. This means GL and Flash will continue forward without many changes. I am going to speculate that Batman (and the rest of the Batman family of titles) will continue forward relatively unchanged. To my way of thinking, Batman: The Return was very similar to a “Rebirth” in terms of resetting the status quo and it seems to be working. Power Girl is probably safe too, as they have righted her ship ever since Connor/Palmiotti/Gray run.
Superman and Wonder Woman are the wild cards, in my opinion. This is because they A) have ongoing titles that are B) not working. I have a feeling that there is the potential to do more of a hard reboot / reset with them. (Especially, if you believe the Clark/Lois marriage going away rumor.) However, I think even with these characters it will follow the same basic model, except the difference might be that DC changes a greater percentage of their continuity, so instead of changing 5%, it’s closer to 20%.
So, that’s my guess. We will see what happens.
Well I’m back on the GLC bandwagon with Tomasi back on the title. Also, I’ll give Johns title a shot again now that we’re gonna get War of the Lanterns out of the way.
So now I’m picking up 4 books definitely: Aquaman, Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, and DCU Presents.
@ctrosejr I totally agree
Glad to see Tomasi back on Corps. Now if only he’d be able to use the old cast. Guy and John are a less interesting pair than Guy and Kyle IMO. I’ve also got a theory that the “three earth lanterns” tease will end up being true after all. Kyle will stay a blue lantern.
I’ll gladly be giving both new books a chance. And I’m nowhere near dropping the big two.
I’m not as fatigued as a lot of people seem to be. The GL War is getting old already, but I’m still enjoying the GL corner of the DCU. I’m hoping the reset maintains the current GL status quo, but gives it a good shot in the arm and opens the door for Johns/Tomasi to steer the books in a different direction.
So what about Emerald Warriors? Guy doesn’t get his own book anymore?
Sounds good to me. I’m not so sure about a Red Lantern book but I’ll keep reading the three books from the current writers for sure. They’ve built such a great mythology around Green Lantern over the past few years, why end a good thing? Hopefully Morrison’s Batman work can continue on in a similar way.
The more I hear about these solicited “reboots”, the more it’s becoming apparent to me that there is a whole lot more in what DC is selling than what they are actually going to follow through with. This “reboot” sounds more and more like a very soft one for the most part. Just an excuse to make 52 #1 issues, and get a TON of buzz. But at the same time allowing them the ability to in fact actually reboot a handful of trouble characters. Hawkman, Superman, Wonder Woman. I’m looking at you. This is just the vibe I’m getting so far. Obviously can’t say for certain til we see it play out. But so far, I’m thinking the reactions to this news just might be a bit over-zealous. Both in terms of people who swore off DC (After seeing these GL books, I’m guessing the Bat verse isn’t going to change too much now) for messing with their characters. And also the people who have praised them to high heaven for doing away with all their continuity and starts “fresh.” I feel right now that we’re going to get something a lot more in the middle ground of those two opinions.
@IroncladMerc: From the article “GL Corps #1 . . . This one focused on Guy Gardner and John Stewart with a vast intergalactic ensemble.”
@ctrosejr I think you pretty much nailed it. Nice work.
@ctosejr: I hope you are right, pal! That does make a lot of sense, don’t you think guys?
Oh, and did anybody else notice that all these new Green Lantern titles will be coming out right around the same time as the GL movie DVD/Blu Ray release?
Apart from Mahnke and Pasarin, I’m not so excited by the art on these books. I was hoping for something really creative for the Colored Lanterns Book. These announcements tell me that, apart from rebooting the books, they’re not going to innovate anything else. I’ll have to see how this develops.
GLC is Stewart & Gardner? Hrm; might have to start picking it up again.
that’s 4 more green lantern titles then i will be buying
Kyel Rayner lives!!!!!!!
i was worried about Red Lanterns not getting a lot of sales until i saw Ed Benes. Good Move DC
Meh, the only one that actually seems intresting is the New guardians. I like the concept of the different colored corps, and that was my favorite thing that spun out of Blackest Night, and I really like Kirkham’s art. Green Lantern seems to be the same old thing. which is why I dropped it in the first place. I like Tomasi back on GLC, but I’m not too sold on Pasarin’s art. And while i do like Ed Benes’s art, he might not be the right choice for the red Lanterns book.
Glad Kyle’s still around post-War of the Green Lanterns. Why no cover image, though? And the Red Lantern book doesnt interest me AT ALL. I’ll probably check out Green Lantern and GL Corps. New Guardians is a definite pick-up for me.
HEY YOU GUYS! (I just watched some Electric Factory)
There is a new teaser for the ‘New Guardians’ book announced. It shows the team in silhouette with the obvious one being Kyle since the description of the book says it’s Kyle on it. Who do you think the other members are?
It looks like Saint Walker is still the representive for the Blue Lanterns. While the sidekick for the original Indigo Lantern has taken her place. Finally, either a random construct is gonna be an Orange Lantern or Hector Hammond is still in control of the Entity.
It would help if I posted the teaser wouldn’t it?
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/06/12/green-lantern-new-guardians-teaser-image/
Buying all four #1’s, but only keeping up with Hal Jordan’s and the new guardians. Looking forward to those two very much.
Have to agree with thehangman! it would be interesting to see this expansion but essentially I will also be sticking to Hal Jordan and the new guardians.