Grant Morrison is returning to DC Comics with a new Green Lantern comics series.
DC announced (via an IGN exclusive) that Morrison would be teaming up with artist Liam Sharp for a new book starring Hal Jordan titled The Green Lantern. While recent Green Lantern series have dealt with universe-spanning wars and galactic threats, Morrison wants to re-focus the series on Jordan’s work as a space cop.
“The basic concept is that [Hal Jordan] is like a space cop that patrols a sector of the universe where anything can happen,” Morrison told IGN. “We’ve made it more like a police procedural.”
“Instead of the big, epic, 12-part stories, we’re focusing down on the everyday life of a space cop,” Morrison continued. “Basically, it’s no more apocalypse-ending storylines.”
Although the concept of Hal Jordan as a space cop isn’t exactly new, it’s been a while since we’ve seen Jordan dealing with everyday procedural work. After Geoff Johns introduced a whole new layer of mythology to the Green Lanterns with an emotional spectrum that resulted in seven different clashing corps, Robert Vendetti followed up with a storyline that tasked Jordan with saving the universe from dying.
More recent Green Lantern stories have pitted the entire corps against threats like the Kryptonian Zod and the Darkstars, so it might be a nice change of pace to see Jordan focusing on stopping criminals instead of saving the entire galaxy.
The first arc of The Green Lantern will feature Jordan trying to stop three intergalactic criminals who crash landed on Earth while being transported to trial.
Sharp also mentioned to IGN that he’ll explore how Jordan deals with being on Earth for an extended period of time, and noted that Jordan might be “unreconstructed” in the comic. “He doesn’t belong here at all, you know?” Sharp said. “He’s longing for the heavens, and to be back up as a Green Lantern.”
Morrison might also be adding a little bit of ambiguity to his character. “We’re doing Hal Jordan where, you know he’s a good cop, but is he really a good guy?” Morrison said. “And we’re looking into his relationships and how he deals with people.”
The Green Lantern series will also show what Jordan does when he’s not on Earth. “He has other lives on other planets. We’re gonna be looking into a lot of things that I don’t think we’ve seen a lot with Hal Jordan before,” Morrison said.
DC will release The Green Lantern in November 2018.
