Green Lantern

Green Lantern, American comic book superhero created for DC Comics by artist Mart Nodell and writer Bill Finger. The character first appeared in All-American Comics no. 16 (July 1940). Over decades of comics history, the Green Lantern superhero identity has evolved into a title used by several characters—both terrestrial and extraterrestrial—who each wield a ring fueled by willpower that allows them to create tangible constructs from their imagination.

Golden Age: Alan Scott

Alan Scott, originally a construction engineer and the first hero to be known as the Green Lantern, discovers what appears to be a green railroad lantern after a train accident. The lantern, actually a piece of a mystical orb known as the Starheart, instructs Scott to make a ring out of a fragment of its material. The ring transforms thought into reality as long as he touches the lantern once every 24 hours. Indeed, the power ring enables Scott to fly and manifest objects made of “green flame” at will, and it is only limited by an inability to affect objects made of wood.

Initial stories featured ordinary criminals as antagonists, but the Green Lantern’s roster of villains soon expanded to include the Sportsmaster, whose assortment of bats and mallets capitalizes on the ring’s weakness against wood, and Solomon Grundy, a giant reanimated corpse inspired by a children’s nursery rhyme. In addition to appearing in more than 80 issues of All-American, Scott also starred in his own Green Lantern solo comic for eight years and in many issues of All Star Comics as one of the principal members of the Justice Society of America.

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A broad downtrend in the popularity of comic book superheroes in the late 1940s led to the cancellation of the original Green Lantern series in 1949 and All Star Comics in 1951, effectively ending Scott’s run as the sole Green Lantern. When the superhero was reimagined during the Silver Age of comics, a new character, Hal Jordan, was made the Green Lantern, with a completely different backstory and no direct connection to Scott. Scott would reappear in a supporting capacity in the 1960s and beyond as DC developed the concept of the multiverse, allowing for both Green Lanterns to coexist in parallel universes. Though Scott was no longer the primary Green Lantern in DC’s comic book continuity, he remained part of the Justice Society in its many subsequent revivals, rebirths, and relaunches. Scott and Jordan met for the first time in Justice League of America no. 21. Scott’s character was reinvented several times in subsequent decades, briefly taking on the superhero alias Sentinel, who was capable of accessing the Starheart’s energy without the power ring.

Silver Age: Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps

Following the successful revamp of the Flash in 1956, DC editor Julius Schwartz, along with writer John Broome and artist Gil Kane, ushered the Green Lantern into the Silver Age of comics. The new Green Lantern premiered in Showcase no. 22 (October 1959), with a new history. Test pilot Hal Jordan chances upon the crashed spaceship of an emerald-garbed, red-skinned alien named Abin Sur. With his dying breath, the alien passes his ring to Jordan, whereupon he is transformed into an identically clothed superhero. Like his predecessor, this Green Lantern can use the ring to make his thoughts reality, and he too needs a lantern to recharge the ring. Like the Golden Age Green Lantern, Jordan’s power ring has a weakness, but this time it is unable to affect anything colored yellow. When the Lantern recharges his ring every day, he recites an oath: “In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight! Let those who worship evil’s might, beware my power—Green Lantern’s light!”

The mythos around Green Lantern’s ring was expanded, scrapping its Golden Age mystical trappings in favor of a more sci-fi–oriented backstory. This later Green Lantern is but one of many ring-wielding superheroes across the universe—members of a sort of intergalactic police force called the Green Lantern Corps. The Green Lanterns are picked by small, blue-skinned aliens known as the Guardians of the Universe, living on the planet Oa, to uphold justice and defeat evil. The Green Lantern stories were dynamic and inventive, often revolving around some alien menace or scientific conundrum. Principal villains included the rogue Green Lantern Sinestro, Star Sapphire, Black Hand, and the Tattooed Man. Green Lantern started appearing in his own self-titled comic in 1960, and he became a founding member of the Justice League of America. Kane developed into one of comics’ most exciting artists, but, when he left the title in 1970, Green Lantern’s popularity dropped.

Bronze Age: Hal Jordan, John Stewart, and Guy Gardner share the panels

Jordan was paired with the Green Arrow in a retitled Green Lantern/Green Arrow comic, featuring the creative team of writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams. Beginning with issue no. 76 (April 1970), O’Neil and Adams tapped into the radical politics of the era and the growth of the counterculture. The Green Lantern was portrayed as the arch-establishment figure, who was constantly challenged by the anti-establishment firebrand, the Green Arrow. As the voice of the streets, O’Neil and Adams introduced the concept of “relevance” to comics, tackling social topics such as race relations, Native American rights, women’s liberation, pollution, consumerism, and drug addiction.

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Despite enormous media interest, numerous industry awards, and Adams’s skilled draftsmanship, sales were never strong, and the comic was canceled in 1972. Appearances in The Flash eventually led to the revival of the Green Lantern series in 1976, and it continued in various guises until 1988. Green Arrow left the comic in 1979, and in 1986 the book was retitled Green Lantern Corps to reflect the increasing number of Green Lanterns that had popped up over the years, many of them enjoying success in their own right.

The expanding roster of Green Lanterns included Guy Gardner, a foul-tempered antihero who became a member of the Justice League in the 1980s. John Stewart, an African American hero who first appeared in the O’Neil and Adams period, periodically took over the lead role in the Green Lantern comic from the 1980s through the early 21st century. Even alien Green Lanterns achieved a degree of fame, with the pug-faced Kilowog joining the Justice League in the 1990s.

Modern Age: Hal Jordan’s villain arc and the introduction of Kyle Rayner

In the hugely controversial 1994 “Emerald Twilight” story arc, Jordan’s mental health spirals after finding his home, Coast City, destroyed by the alien supervillain Mongul and Superman impostor Cyborg Superman while Jordan was away on a mission. In his rage, he attacks the Guardians of the Universe, massacring several members of the Green Lantern Corps and taking their rings. He then kills Kilowog and apparently Sinestro before absorbing all the energy from the Lanterns’ central power battery and becoming the villain Parallax. As such, in the subsequent “Zero Hour” storyline Jordan gains incredible reality-altering powers that he plans to use to regain what he has lost—at great cost to the existing universe. He is eventually defeated by a collection of heroes and then appears from time to time in other comics as a villain for a while. Later comics treat Parallax as a distinct entity, a manifestation of fear that possesses and corrupts Jordan, leading him down the path of destruction. Jordan redeems himself to some degree by sacrificing his life to reignite Earth’s sun in The Final Night no. 4, but he was resurrected several years later as a spirit of vengeance known as the Spectre. During Jordan’s villain arc, young artist Kyle Rayner was made a Green Lantern in Green Lantern vol. 3, no. 50 (March 1994), and served as DC’s main Green Lantern for much of the next decade. Alive and sane once more, Hal Jordan reassumes the mantle of the Green Lantern in the comics series Green Lantern: Rebirth (2004–05), written by Geoff Johns and drawn by Ethan Van Sciver. Johns’s run is also notable for leaning more heavily into the moral ambiguity and increasing authoritarianism of the Guardians of the Universe, who had thus far been mostly well-intentioned, if aloof.

Johns oversaw the massive “Sinestro Corps War” (2007–08), “Blackest Night” (2009–10), and “Brightest Day” (2010–11) crossover events. Those stories introduce eight additional “Lantern Corps,” each associated with a different color and emotion or metaphysical concept. The association of yellow with fear is used to explain the power rings’ long-standing ineffectiveness against the color, and the idea is further developed through villains such as Sinestro and Parallax, who are tied to the yellow energy of fear. As part of its “New 52” continuity reboot in September 2011, DC Comics launched four new Green Lantern-related comics series: Green Lantern, starring Hal Jordan; Green Lantern Corps, featuring Guy Gardner and John Stewart; Green Lantern: The New Guardians, starring Kyle Rayner; and Red Lanterns, about the rage-fueled Red Lantern Corps, led by Atrocitus.

Green Lanterns made appearances in numerous animated features; indeed, the animated series Justice League (2001–04) and Justice League Unlimited (2004–06) provided the John Stewart incarnation of the character with what was arguably its widest exposure. A live-action Green Lantern (2011) film starring Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan met with a tepid response from critics and disappointing box office results. In James Gunn’s Superman (2025), Nathan Fillion played the Guy Gardner version of Green Lantern. As part of Gunn’s DC Universe cinematic franchise, the TV show Lanterns, created by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King, debuted in 2026. In the series, Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) becomes a reluctant mentor to John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), who has been picked as his replacement by the Guardians of the Universe.