For fans of the recent run of the Green Lanterns comic, some sad news has been announced. Tim Seeley is exiting the book as of issue #47. His only remarks regarding his exit have been:
“Yeah, [Green Lanterns #47] is my last issue,” Seeley confirmed with Newsarama. “So after this, Aaron Gillespie picks up some issues, and then you get Dan Jurgens, who will probably do a whole lot of cool cosmic stuff because that’s what Dan does.”
Despite the change in personnel, the solicitations for issues #48 and #49 carries over Seeley’s “Rebel Run” arc:
GREEN LANTERNS #48
Written by TIM SEELEY • Art by RONAN CLIQUET • Cover by PAUL PELLETIER and DANNY MIKI • Variant cover by BRANDON PETERSON
“REBEL RUN” part one! The Guardians can no longer stand idly by as Jessica Cruz’s ring gains more sentience. They’ve seen anomalies within the rings turn into universal nightmares, and now it’s up to their greatest Lantern, Hal Jordan, to relieve Jess of her ring!
On sale JUNE 6 • 32 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T
GREEN LANTERNS #49
Written by TIM SEELEY • Art by V KEN MARION • Cover by PAUL PELLETIER and DANNY MIKI • Variant cover by BRANDON PETERSON
“REBEL RUN” part two! Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz hide from Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps on the planet Hellhole. While the two butt heads over what to do next, they find an ancient threat that has been slumbering within the core of this crime-infested world. It has been feeding, and it is ready to wake and strike!
On sale JUNE 20 • 32 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T
Seeley recently sat down to an interview about how the end of his run and what’s next:
He even had his thoughts on what drew him to Jessica Cruz:
Yeah, definitely. The thing that instantly appealed to me about Jessica was that she was someone with an anxiety disorder, which I have and have had my whole stupid life. And I know what goes into that and how it’s so frustrating, because it seems like something you could control and that you spend so much of your life trying to tell yourself that everything is not going terrible and it’s not all spinning out of control.
I think having that be the basis of her qualifications, that clearly she must have so much willpower to get over the screaming inside her own head, is something I instantly related to, and I feel like a lot of people would, especially, I just read an article that America’s collective anxiety has gone up in the last two years.
So I think a lot of people are starting to understand this character even more.
Well, we love Jessica too Tim!
Well, when I first saw the character, I was instantly interested in this idea that she had some kind of event that caused her to have an anxiety disorder, which as far as I knew is not how it worked, having an anxiety disorder of my own.
And so, as I had ideas for that, it just so happened that I was asked to do the book. And I thought, oh, perfect! I can work on that and explain what made her who she is. I can explore who she was before that and also deal with what previous Green Lanterns writer Sam Humphries had kind of set up in his run on the book, which is that Jess’ ring is different, and it talks to her in a different way.
I tied all those things together and used this goalpost of picking up something from one of Geoff Johns’ book, which was a flash-forward scene where we see Simon and this new bearer of the ring which happened to be Jessica having a confrontation.
So I decided to put all those things together and swirl it in a big ol’ stew, and then have it end with those panels from Geoff’s flash-forward.
On working with the artists:
Doing a bi-monthly book, you end up not being able to have just one artist doing the book because it’s just impossible to draw two a month. So my run has been with a collective of different artists.
But toward the end of this, I think everyone from the editorial staff and me were really impressed with Ronan Cliquet. We were like; this is the guy I work best with and who seems to really just gel with those two characters.
And then they brought in V Ken Marion as well, and he’s, stylistically, really different from Ronan, but he’s also in the vein that Ronan’s such a great storyteller, and so is Ken. He’s got a totally different style, and he’s more flowery and line-y, whereas Ronan is really slick. But they’re both great storytellers.
I think this arc is weird because there’s two guys doing two different styles, and I think it really still holds together somehow.
On the end of his run:
Yeah, for me, the real interest was the idea that people are chosen for this job, and it’s this really important, dangerous job, and you’ve got all this responsibility, but you’re just a normal person from Earth who didn’t study to do this. Your qualifications are that you have, possibly, a strong will, and you might not even know why you have a strong will.
So that’s what interested me the most. I think I was never particularly curious about, like, the lore and the history and the other colored corps and stuff that I think have been explored before. Those things really worked well for Geoff and other writers, but I just knew I couldn’t find something in that for myself.
So I wanted it to be about these people and that idea, this sort of “you’re chosen, but are you really qualified?” You can be chosen to be this space god cop but still not be able to get a job on Earth worth anything. You know? You still have problems. It doesn’t come with respect, and no one can know that you get to spend weekends chasing down cosmic criminals.
That stuff really interested me, the sort of human superhero trope stuff.
On what he is working on next:
Yeah! I’m doing Injustice vs. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. And I’m doing some other stuff that I’m working on, like the Bat-family wedding – the five-week event. So I have lots.
And there are lots of things behind the scenes because, at DC, there are always all kinds of things going on.
But the wedding stuff is June, and Injustice vs. Masters of the Universe starts in July. I finally finished all the wedding craziness, which sounds something like real life, doesn’t it? That you would be spending long hours and finally being done with your wedding stuff. And I’m on issue #3 of the He-Man title, and it’s going to be big and crazy and awesome.
Seeley has definitely given fans a different view of Jessica Cruz and the rest of Lanterns, leaving fans with more than they could have expected.
