MEGACON: GREEN LANTERN

By Billie Rae Bates

ORLANDO -- DC's Green Lantern panel on Saturday at MegaCon featured Mike McKone, Ron Marz, Geoff Johns, Tony Bedard and Ethan Van Sciver.

The hour began with panelists sharing their thoughts on why Green Lantern is so popular right now, particularly in light of world events.

Johns touched on the idea of fear and how it impacts the Green Lantern realm. "Until fear doesn't exist, Green Lantern will be relevant," he said. "He (Sinestro) basically used fear to manipulate the Green Lantern corps. If people fear the Green Lantern corps, he thinks that the universe would be a more orderly place. ... Even Blackest Night is about death. There's a primal fear of death, I think as you get older. But you deal with it. That's what Green Lantern does. You don't hide in your bedroom. You cope with fear, go out there and overcome it, if you need to."

Another emotion that's key to the corps and relating to human nature is anger, particularly in motivating human behavior.

"Has anyone in here never been angry?" Johns said. "So we've all been Red Lanterns at one point in our lives. I get Red Lantern whenever I'm in my car in LA. ... I think the more that you're self-aware of why you really do things, why other people do things, I think you understand yourself and other people a lot better. If you can understand where that pain is coming from or loss or whatever that is, I think you can relate to people much better. I think that's why people responded to different corps lanterns."

VanSciver joked, "We help make wearing orange shirts cool again. That hasn't been the case since the 1970s. Come on, now."

Johns continued, "I just think everybody's constantly trying to figure out what life's about, what they're about, what the world's about. ... We help bring the world to peace. We want good things to happen. I think people are in a constant state of high emotion."

VanSciver added, "You want to take control of bad things happening. Bad events happening."

Johns said, "It's just life, I think. There's always something, right? From road rage, which is ridiculous, to someone hurting someone you love."

When asked about the explosion of multiple corps, Marz said, "I'm glad that it's different. One of the cool things about Green Lantern is that it's cyclical and it does go through different periods."

He continued, "I'm tickled that the corps is back, because I think that it's the only franchise in comics that works both as a superhero franchise and as a space opera. Frankly, I think it's the most visual property that DC has, the most visual property that Marvel or DC has. When I was writing the book, I thought of it as a special effects book. We fought like hell to get the nice shiny paper."

He said, "Now I think with the movie coming out, special effects have made it possible to show the kinds of stuff we've been showing in comics for 30 years. ... I think this is the right Green Lantern for this time. The fact that it's cyclical. Everybody has their favorite Green Lantern. Whoever that happens to be, it's their spotlight."

Bedard weighed in on dealing with large casts of characters like the Corps: "I think first of all we have focus characters, even though there are so many different ones. ... Any given issue is going to focus on one of those guys. Or if it's all of them, you give one of them sort of the voiceover narration. Then you just, I think, from month to month move that spotlight around. I don't have a favorite character when it comes to Green Lantern. I like the overall concept of it. The variety is part of the fun of it. It's great to keep jumping from one guy to the next."

McKone was asked about drawing special effects. "It's special effects, but it's just drawing. Generally, it's easier to do special effects than it is to draw. ... That's generally why the special effects take up a whole page ... The joy of the book is that I get to draw literally anything."

With the War of the Lanterns storyline coming up this summer, what will fans see? "Tony and Pete (Tomasi) and I met for a couple days in New York, and started to outline all these things. And we actually said, like, alright, let's throw out the craziest ideas," Johns said. "Let's really make this something that no one will expect."

He said, "So far, Chronos put Parallex back in a central power battery. He's infecting everyone with the ring again, but because Hal and Jon and Kyle and Kilowog and Guy have been infected, they kinda feel it, but they can fight it off. They're the only five, and yet they're the only ones that have a chance to escape. So they can't use their rings. Hal and Guy are gonna -- I don't want to spoil it. ... Hal and Guy, they just don't get along, ever. We decided to do a story to bring the Green Lanterns back to the forefront, and particularly these four guys. It's all about these four guys. We kept saying every scene, every major scene, has to be about these four guys."

In addition to the Red Lantern series coming out soon, and the Orange Lantern special, there will be a Dex-Starr special. This news drew applause. VanSciver joked that they should do the Legion of Superpets.

"Give Ace a Green Lantern ring," Johns added.

Panelists were asked what were their favorite Green Lantern moments, whether they created them or not.

Marz said, "My first Green Lantern moment, probably my favorite, was seeing that last Gil Kane costume on Hal, in the Super Friends. That was my first exposure, even though, you know, it was animation. I thought, oh man, I don't have to look at the five characters that are always the Super Friends -- there's another guy? I just thought it was the coolest thing going."

Johns said that since he's read every issue of Green Lantern it's all like one big issue to him, but his favorite is probably the first issue he bought, #188.

One fan gave Johns a drawing done by his 7-year-old son of the different color Lanterns, explaining that he'd used the Lantern corps to explain different emotions to the boy.

"I think it's nice to tell kids, too, that it's OK to be angry," Johns said. "It's normal. Sometimes we beat ourselves up for all these things."

What's up with the Alpha Lanterns, and where did that idea come from? Johns said, "Grant (Morrison) actually introduced the Alpha Lanterns in Final Crisis, and then Mike and I explored that idea further and made it more about like Manhunters and Green Lanterns kind of combining. There's a lot of foreshadowing in War of the Green Lanterns. There's already a bunch in the first part. The first part tells you, if you look close, there's a scene that actually tells you where it's going to end."

What are they hungry to do? Johns talked about his next Green Lantern story, in the next two years. "It's focused on a completely different side of the corps, kinda the underbelly of the Corps. Exposing some of that, getting into the history of the Corps. People that have been a part of the Corps, where the corps evolved. ... What's the next level for the Green Lantern Corps? Are they going to be around? There's a lot of things we're talking about."

Bedard said, "If you went five years back, I would've said Green Lantern, Legion of Superheroes, and Aquaman are the three that I'd love to do. ... So it's a little scary, actually, to be checking off that list, so maybe I'll be unemployed next year."

He added, "A lot of times it's the things you don't think of doing that just fall into your lap that turn out to be a joy."

Marz agreed. "The one you read as a 10-year-old never quite turns out. ... Green Lantern was a book that I never really thought about doing. The call came at like 9 o'clock on a Friday night. And it's the one that'll be on my tombstone. ... I think a lot of the time it's the ones that you don't have an attachment to, and can maybe look at with fresh eyes, are the ones that end up being the best fit."

One fan asked about the way Green Lantern is being told lately, less centralized and more spread out.

"It's all linked together," Johns said. "All the books tell their own stories and when the bigger stories happen, the books will come back together."

Johns mentioned the movie coming out, as well as the animated series. "The animated series is awesome, too. I've read 24 scripts, and they're just amazing. Ethan, you're going to be very happy. So if that catches on, you'll get a whole new generation that's exposed to Green Lanterns, Red Lanterns, from the animated series."

Van Sciver said, "I've always said it's DC's X-Men in the sense that it's just unlimited potential, it's directly relatable to the audience. ... Any one of you could get the ring. Any one of you could be green, red, blue ... Green Lantern is more about adherence to a code, which I think people can relate to. It's structured. It's like being a police officer. I think it's just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger."

Bedard said, "I feel like the audience is more receptive to things with greater complexity than they were before. ... I think right now people are really open to going deep."

When panelists were asked if there were any other characters they'd like to explore, Marz said, "I think the character that has the most untapped potential at this point is Aquaman. He rides a giant seahorse -- that's about as cool as it gets."

What would be their color of ring?

Van Sciver: "I want the red ring, because I just want to vomit all the time."

Bedard: "I want the blue ring, and you and I sometimes argue politics on Facebook, so that's red and blue right there."

Johns: "Green."

Marz: "Plaid. No, I think, honest to God, blue."

McKone: "How about burberry. It's like plaid, but it's a little nicer."