Green Lantern: Why John Stewart's Story Was A Big Responsibility For Phillip Kennedy Johnson - Exclusive Interview

Contains spoilers for "Green Lantern: War Journal" #1 by DC Comics

John Stewart has long been a fan-favorite Green Lantern, and in the new "Green Lantern: War Journal" series from DC Comics, the hero deals with significant life changes. Between the former Guardian of Sector 2814 departing the Green Lantern Corps to finding out and dealing with who is in charge in his absence — not to mention trying to adjust to life on Earth away from his past cosmic adventures — his life is at a crossroads.

Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Montos, and Adriano Lucas are teaming up for the new comic series spinning out of the events of "Dark Crisis: Worlds Without a Justice League – Green Lantern" and the backup stories in "Green Lantern." The series will explore Stewart's new normal while also taking a deep dive into the Multiverse, introducing another version of the Green Lantern hero who has had a drastically different life than John. We spoke with Johnson about penning the new book, John's journey from space cop to being off-duty, and what readers can expect in the upcoming book.

First of all, where does this book find John and his family?

John is in transition in his life. He's just gotten back from this big, crazy adventure that we saw in the Geoffrey Thorne run. The Green Lantern Corps, as we've seen in the pages of the Hal Jordan book, is under new management. The Guardians are gone, and now it's being run by the United Planets, and John does not believe in the new direction.

On top of that, his family's going through a tragedy — and he is needed at home, in his opinion, more than anywhere else. So he hangs it up. He's at home caring for his mom, who is his own self-professed hero. John has always said his mother's his hero, and we see why. He's trying to be with her and ease her last days. In his own mind, he's done with the Green Lantern Corps, but as we'll see, the Corps is not done with him. The universe still needs him.

Can John Stewart ever live a life of normalcy after being with the Corps for as long as he has?

He thinks so. That's what he expects, and that's what he insists upon. As an ex-military guy, he knows that when somebody falls or leaves, others step in and carry the flag forward. He knows that. He's lost plenty of comrades in his superhero life as well as during his military service, and he knows how that works, and he knows that they will carry on without him. He doesn't think he's special in that way. But he also knows that there's nobody there to pick up the slack if he fails his own mom. His mother needs him, and there's no one else.

To him, his sense of duty is now fixed on his own family, and he'll hear no alternative. But as we'll see, John is unusually gifted and has this higher calling that will never — in my opinion — leave him behind. Even his own mother tries to tell him, "You're going to waste here. I'm holding you back. You shouldn't be here. I'll be okay. Get out there and do the thing that you were born to do." He won't hear it, but that door's going to keep getting beaten down.

For those who don't know, what is his current relationship with the Green Lantern Corps?

Well, right now, he's an ex-Lantern. As we've seen in the pages of the other series, Earth has currently been quarantined. There are no Green Lanterns of Sector 2814 right now. Some of them have been reassigned elsewhere, so there are still some members of the Corps from Earth that are now out in the far regions of space. But Earth is a no-fly zone, and John is needed at home, so he's out. He's out; Hal's out. That's his status. The first issue shows his first run-in with the newly organized Green Lantern Corps of the United Planets and how that all goes down.

Who is Green Lantern Zarron, and what's their role in this book?

He is a Durlan, and the current Lord Premier of the United Planets is also a Durlan. He's a famously corrupt Durlan named Lord Premier Thaaros, whom we saw in the "Warworld Saga." He's calling the shots right now, and now he also is in charge of the Green Lantern Corps. We're going to see some new members of the Corps that are of the Durlan Elite — the ruling class of Durla are now becoming members of the Green Lantern Corps, and [Zarron] is one of those. He's a nepo baby. He thinks he's the big tough guy right now, but he's going to see what an actual Lantern looks like.

The "Green Lantern" stories have always been pretty wide-ranging in terms of exploring the cosmic side of the DC Universe. What was it like to open up the "Green Lantern" story in an even grander fashion, in terms of this book exploring the Multiverse and other versions of Green Lanterns? Was that daunting to open it up that big, and what storytelling possibilities did that open?

Multiverse stories are so unbelievably fun. You get to see the characters everyone knows and loves but ask yourself these huge "what if" questions, like, "What if we did it differently? What if this person was a Green Lantern? Or what if this Green Lantern was this other person? Or what if ...?" [You're] imagining what might've gone differently and the crazy ripples that would change that universe. Multiverse stories are unbridled fun, and the Green Lantern Corps is the Wild West of the DCU. It's millions of years of mythology that we don't know about.

I also love how all the mythology over the many generations that DC has been around sometimes contradicts itself a little bit, because there've been so many hands crafting it for so many years. That's how real histories read. That happens in actual Earth history, so it has been fun to play with that and contradict some things myself. I changed some things from old Green Lantern lore and made some additions. I tried to give this big payoff at the end of the backups in Issue 3 and show readers that things that you thought were true were lies, and you don't actually know how the Green Lantern Corps got started. I can't wait to show the way we've been expanding the lore and blowing out the characters and changing things in really exciting ways.

Is it fun to put your own stamp on established characters and take them in different directions without affecting the main continuity, even if they appear in it?

Yes — it is a big responsibility. I don't want to undermine anyone else's work. I know that every one of these characters is deeply beloved by somebody out there, and certainly John Stewart. For an entire generation of DC fans, John Stewart is Green Lantern. Anyone who grew up with that animated show — he's the guy. I am older and grew up with Hal, and I did have books with John in them. I always knew him as the architect; that might be the origin of my own issues with him being portrayed as the ex-marine all the time. He's the architect, and boiling him down to just his military service does him a disservice.

He's the perfect Green Lantern, not just because of his service, but also because of his mind for building and his need to create things — as well as the leadership and combat experience that he got elsewhere, and his devotion to his civil rights leader mother, and the haunting in the deep recesses of his brain by his sister who died. There's so much to him, man. There's so much to that character, and I want to bring it back all out on the page.

How was it to craft a story where John Stewart is on two opposite ends of a spectrum, in terms of ... He's done with the Green Lantern Corps for now — he's perfectly happy living out with his mom — but at the same time, he's about to encounter another version of himself, one that is ... I don't want to say the best version he can be, but maybe the most powerful version he can be. How do you approach an inner conflict like that when you're dealing with two different versions of the same character?

It was a play on the "Terminator" setup. This book was most inspired by 1980s action movies, most clearly "Predator," "Terminator 2," and "Aliens." John Stewart is John Connor, in a way. I want to see that version of himself in another universe where there was no Justice League. There's no Superman, there's no Wonder Woman, there's no Batman — there's just John Stewart, and he becomes Green Lantern. Everything goes horribly wrong — as we'll see — and he becomes the Guardian. He becomes the one who rescues the battery, brings it to Earth, and now always Earth and Green Lantern Corps is a Justice League-esque team of Green Lanterns, and that's all there is. There are no other heroes. I want to see that version of John, that thing that he can potentially become contrasted with the version that we see — who is not by any stretch lame, but he's also not in that place in his life.

He's super experienced and super capable, but our world has never relied on him as the sole hero the way that other world did. I want to see that contrast ... We've also got a Kyle Reese-type character, somebody who grew up idolizing the Guardian and the Builder version of John, that other version of John. He comes here and has to help our version of John. I can't spoil why, but something happens, and John is in a place where he needs to be shown and reminded of who he's supposed to be. So we've got this green but extremely talented Green Lantern from this other world who's going to show him the ropes even as he's talking to his own hero.

When you were doing the "Green Lantern: World Without a Justice League" storyline, did you know from the get-go that you were planting the seeds for what's coming currently?

Yes. In fact, the Radiant Dead — I refer to the Radiant Dead and the Revenant Queen as far back as the "Warworld Saga" in "Action Comics." I've been planning this a long time, and that was before I got the call to do this book. I knew what I wanted to do with Green Lantern; I wanted to introduce this whole new thing. Not long after that, I got the call to do it. I was like, "Well, that worked out."

There's a scene on the Warworld in which there's a storyteller telling stories to these slave kids, and some of them have not happened yet. Some of them have. He tells the story of Superman and Doomsday, and he also tells the story of the Revenant Queen. I've been planting these seeds for a long, long time.

What can you say about the Radiant Dead and the threat that they pose?

They represent that cool, fun, but scary threat that I love seeing in genre stuff like the contagious cosmic horror — the thing that makes you like them if it gets too close, the thing that is horrifying, but consumes you and makes you one of them. Things like the Borg and the Reavers are really cool. I wanted to see a version of that for the Green Lantern Corps — and not literal zombies like the Black Lanterns were.

This is something else. We don't know what yet. We don't know how yet that it's different, but it is. In a way, when we see their origin, what they are, and what they can do, you'll understand how it ties into some of my earlier DC work and how it's all been one big story this whole time.

What can you say about Shepherd? He's a cool character in this world, especially given where he comes from.

Thanks. Well, he's like the Kyle Reese character. He's somebody who grew up idolizing the perfect version of John, and then he comes here and sees a much younger version of John who's in a very different place in his life. He's not used to seeing John in the position of caregiver. He's used to seeing John as the ultimate leader of all warriors in the universe who could never be defeated. Anyone who opposes John Stewart — there's no chance.

Seeing John in a more vulnerable place with no interest in being a Green Lantern ever again is not what this guy expected to find at all. It's cool. I like the idea of John interacting with the character who knows what he's capable of, who looks up to him like crazy, but also has a leg up on him as far as what they can do as Lanterns.

What was it like seeing pages from Montos and Adriano Lucas? This book does a cool job of blending the realism of Earth and the epicness of space and beyond. It's a nice parallel. 

I gave Montos such a wide variety of stuff to do. There are all these very intimate personal moments that rely on facial expressions and quick frenetic panel transitions, and there's other pages that are covered with cosmic horror or body horror and all these super dynamic action scenes. He crushes all of it consistently. He has a great mind for horror and for action, for machines.

Because John is who he is, a lot of the constructs that John makes ... I admit, I'm a little tired of seeing Green Lantern constructs that just looked like big green versions of something that is very common, like a big green bow and arrow or a big green boxing glove or goddamn jet. I've seen plenty of that. Coming from John specifically, I want to see things that blow my mind. John is the perfect Lantern, so I want to see things that only an architect or even an engineer could think up — to see machines constructing themselves in real-time all around us. And man, Montos brings it.

There was one page in particular in which I asked him to draw John doing an uppercut and this gigantic construct bursts out of the ground and strikes. John doesn't physically punch the guy — this huge model thing pounds out of the ground and does it. But it's this crazy constructed image that we would never think to build. Montos said, "It's not translating as a punch like that. Let me try something different." In the thumbnail, it did look more like a big fist, and I was like, "We got to find something in between. Let's find a way to make it; again, he's the architect. We have to make that super clear."

He found the perfect balance. He made this gigantic fist-like object made of machines forming itself in real-time, and it completely communicated what I wanted to communicate in a way that my original concept didn't. It also sets it apart from other Lanterns that would make the big boxing glove or the big projection of his own arm or that kind of thing. John thinks differently than we do, and I want that to be expressed in his construct.

What do you hope readers get from this book, and how exciting is it to see this story get a full-sized comic series?

I've been looking forward to the release of this issue for months. Montos is born to draw this book. Adriano is crushing it on colors. [It's] a huge honor to be a part of it. As far as what I want readers to take away from it, readers fall in love with characters through detail — through seeing details of who they are, what they care about, what they're afraid of, their virtues, and their flaws. We're going to show all that in John through these intimate moments but also in battle. There are these huge visual elements I cannot wait for people to see. I want people to understand how much more complicated John and the Green Lantern Corps are than we've seen up till now. You're going to see a much more complicated dynamic, a fascinating version of John, and a Green Lantern Corps that's going to feel ageless in its scope.

The new Green Lantern series is a much-anticipated comic book, with Phillip Kennedy Johnson's previous work on books like "Action Comics," "Alien," and his current run on the "Hulk" for Marvel Comics showing he understands how to write both larger-than-life characters and showcase their adventures in deeply personal stories. "Green Lantern: War Journal" seems to be blending those two concepts, offering both a character study of the hero while telling his larger story at the same time involving the DC Multiverse. Check out the text synopsis for the issue, which arrives in comic book stores and online retailers on September 19, 2023.

"John Stewart's time as a Green Lantern has come to an end ... or so he thinks. A family tragedy calls him back home, and as John begins to reclaim the career he once left behind, he tries to embrace a peaceful post-superhero life. But when a terrifying and contagious force with a mysterious connection to Oa appears on Earth, the last Green Lantern of another Universe comes seeking the only warrior to face this threat and win: the immortal "Guardian and Builder," John Stewart himself! Can this brilliant but brash young Lantern help John discover the qualities that made him one of the greatest Lanterns of the entire Multiverse? Featuring the first appearance of an iconic and terrifying new villain!"

This interview has been edited for clarity.