Review by Tim Robins
SPOILERS AHEAD
Lanterns is a decidedly adult take on DC’s Green Lantern IP. The eight-part superhero series from HBO stars Kyle Chandler as a profane Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre as Jordan’s sexually promiscuous substitute, John Stewart. Both men have been picked by The Guardians of the Universe to wield a power ring that allows them to materialise green-coloured constructs by force of will. This power permits the men to join the Green Lantern Corps, an extra-terrestrial police force run by The Guardians of the Universe.
There’s a good deal of sci-fi silliness in the Green Lantern comic continuity, and it hasn’t always played well to audiences. The ambitious 2011 Green Lantern film, DC’s answer to Marvel’s Iron Man, was a box office disappointment and left fans hungry for the character to get the on-screen respect he deserves.
James Gunn’s Superman (2025) wetted appetites, by including Guy Gardner, a fan favourite ring bearer, as a member of the so-named “Justice Gang”. The film successfully balanced Gun’s enthusiasm for the absurdity of superhero comics with an action adventure capable of tugging on the heart strings.
Lanterns is the fourth entry into the Gunnerverse, following The Creature Commandos cartoon, PeaceMaker (season two), the recent, live action Supergirland the aforementioned Superman movie. The new series has been lionised by online fandom, although there are nay-sayers. Some claim to find Chandler’s Jordan – sweary, abrasive and world weary – a “disrespectful” portrayal of a beloved hero. Then there are the usual rage baiting grifters and racists who at least feign to be upset at the mere presence of Stewart, an African-American, in the series, let alone stories that treat him as a human being also worthy of respect.
For me, Lanterns intelligently relocates Green Lantern to the demands of quality, television, drama – part of HBO’s brand identity. The money is up there on the screen but not, as yet, in the service of a CGI slugfest. Instead, we get an X-Files or two, of small-town gothic characters and layers of mist and mystery, including a murder, or two, or more.
What Lanterns respects is the audience’s ability to toggle between different generic conventions. One minute Jordan is interrogating a suspect in a mass shooting at a small-town stadium, the next that suspect reveals himself to be a walking energy weapon on a mission to exact revenge on a genocidal race known as the Manhunters.
In prepublicity, showrunner showrunner Chris Mundy described the series to the US TV Guide as being “as much of a buddy cop show as a superhero show“. While co-creator Lindoff has spun Lanterns as a take on another HBO drama, True Detective, itself a new spin on the buddy cop genre.
Lanterns opens with a flashback to Steward’s childhood. We see him being trained to grow up without fear. This means dad shoots an apple off his head, William Tell style. We then flash forward to Stewart and Jordan bickering their way along a highway until they are directed to Rushville, Nebraska and a field of nightmares – a stadium with five dead, alien, bodies.
From that point, the two Lanterns are drawn into the incestuous power dynamics of small town life. Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) tries to assert control over the stadium crime scene, but anything alien falls within the cosmic jurisdiction of Jordan. Kane’s irritating husband, Billy Macon (Jason Ritter) pops up to defend Jordan in court after the Lantern deliberately starts a bar brawl to get thrown in jail next to a suspected alien.
Meanwhile, Kerry’s father-in-law and leader of a local militia, William Macon (Garret Dilahunt), wines and dines the Lanterns even after Stewart bonks his wife (Zoe Macon, as played by Poorna Jagannathan). I’m not sure the Green Lantern comic ever dealt with adultery or polyamorous relationships.
I’ll say here that episode two’s sex-in-a-car scene is poorly staged and abruptly edited to the point of being funny. Never mind, Google’s AI assures me that, the phrase “Green Lantern adultery”, “most commonly refers to real-world internet rumours regarding actor Ryan Reynolds filming the 2011 Green Lantern movie while still married.” Thank heavens for that. Er…
Fortunately, when it comes to writing, Lanterns places us in skilled hands. The show’s writers include three-time Primetime Emmy award winning Damon Lindoff (for TV’s Lost and Watchmen) and Tom King, the writer of the acclaimed Supergirl – Woman of Tomorrow comic and Eisner award winner for Batmanand Mister Miracle.
The script weaves comic book references into the naturalistic drama. So we get a reference to Mogo, a sentient plant and member of the Green Lantern Corps, alongside an exploration of how a Black potential recruit to the corps might perceive the Guardian’s question “are you afraid?” differently from a white candidate. The time establishing Stewart as a rounded character is time well spent.
I didn’t find addressing the politics of “race relations”, a diversion from the spirit of Green Lantern comics. In the late 1950s, Hal Jordan was created very much in the mould of a square jawed hero whose whiteness was taken for granted. DC editor Julie Schwartz drew inspiration from E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s popular Lensman space opera book series about, among other things, humans (the Samms and the Kinnisons) bred to control the lens, a gem worn on the back of their hands, that granted them extraordinary powers.
Artists on the title, including Carmine Infantino and Gil Kane, placed Green Lantern in a world befitting the streamline stylings of the 50’s Atomic Age. But the world itself was very white, with the exception of a mechanic friend, an “eskimo” Jordan nicknamed “Pieface” (“Pie” for short), after eskimo pie. This state of affairs was to change in the 1970s.
Lanterns draws on the spirit of the 1970s ‘Hard Traveling Heroes’ story arc (Green Lantern-Green Arrow, issues 76 to 89) by writer Dennis O’Neil and artist Neal Adams. This sees Green Lantern being rebuked by a Black man, “I been readin’ about you…how you work for the blue skins and how, on a planet someplace, you helped out the orange skins and you done considerable for the purple skins! Only there’s skins you never bothered with … the black skins! I want to know how come? Answer me that Mr Green Lantern.” Jordan can’t.
The Hard Travelling Heroes arc also introduced the character of John Stewart. Designed by Neal Adams, Stewart was a college graduate, an architect and a supporter of the Black Panthers. He was modelled on Sidney Poitier and very much written as an “Angry Black Man” stereotype. He broke the mould of comic book representations of African-Americans by being darker in colour and, in terms of superheroes, refusing to wear a mask.
DC’s treatment of Stewart contrasts sharply with Marvel’s approach to Black Panther. In the 1970s, that character was renamed Black Leopard to distance him from the Panthers, while his full facial mask was designed to hide his skin colour for retailers in Southern States. Stewart’s background was changed to that of a US Marine for the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited cartoons.
In Lanterns, Pierre’s performance gives us a man who may well be without fear but is also anxious and uptight. He is the perfect foil for Chandler’s Jordan, who can be an unlikeable task master. In episode one, Jordan deliberately drives their car off the road in a sink-or-swim test of Stewart’s abilities. Those abilities seem to exceed Jordan’s own. When Stewart tries to use the power ring to fly, he instead manifests a small bird. It’s a funny moment but also a disturbing one, particularly when we find out, in episode three, that Stewart’s mother brought Stewart up believing birds were the watchful eyes of the Guardians.
After watching the first episode, a senior contributor to Forbes, Eric Caine, noted “it was a rather ballsy move to market Lanterns as a superhero detective story inspired by True Detective Season One. And perhaps not altogether wise”. He confessed that he was, “really not sure what to make of it at all”
So far, what I’ve valued is the series’ pervading sense of ill-ease. Somewhere in the town is a murderous Manhunter in disguise and somehow Jordan appears to end up dead, sitting in the stadium’s bleachers with a bullet wound to his head. It becomes clear that the town has been a battle ground between alien races, and we are far from clear about what role the Lantern and the Guardians play in this war.
For me, the series has also provided a model of what audience engagement could have been for Doctor Who if it had been successful on Disney Plus. Coming Soon. net reported that, According to Variety, the first episode of Lanterns “recorded more than 9.3 million views during its first three days on HBO and HBO Max. HBO said the series reached 6.6 million viewers in the United States over the same period, giving the DC Studios production its strongest three-day premiere on HBO Max so far”.
I’ll leave tomatoes to rot. More interesting than viewing figures and ratings are the secondary commentary channels on YouTube. A lot of these are entertaining and thought provoking in their own right:
For Green Lantern comics and continuity, I’d recommend the back catalogue of Owen Likes Comics and Comics Explained.
For micro analysis, burbly commentary and wild speculation, I’d go for Heavy Spoilers (this episode, for example).
For thoughtful discussion of Lanterns’ representation of John Stewart, head to Mr. Know-It-All and this episode about Episode Three.
And for ragebaiting criticism of wokeness and Libtards, please go somewhere else.
For now, I’ll end with an anecdote. Back when the 2011 Green Lantern film was in production, actor Mark Strong strode into my Local Comic Shop, picked up some Green Lantern Comics and, at the till, asked about the popularity of the character.
I put two and two together and realised Strong must be in the forthcoming film, although I didn’t suspect in which role. In the event, his performance as Sinestro, Jordan’s former mentor turned villain, was praised. Critics wondered why the film focused on a big CGI cloud instead.
I still feel disappointed on Strong’s behalf. The actor was alive with anxious anticipation. As a comics reader, I’m glad Lanterns is receiving a warm reception. And, so far. Ulric Thompson is fine in the role of Sinestro. But I can’t help wishing Strong was reprising the role.
Tim Robins
Lanterns is streaming in the UK through NOW’s HBO Max Channel
Links below are AmazonUK Affiliates
Green Lantern Volume 2 #87, published in 1972 is collected in several trade paperbacks and hardcover editions, most notably Green Lantern: John Stewart – A Celebration of 50 Years and Green Lantern/Green Arrow: Hard Travelin’ Heroes Deluxe Edition and Green Lantern/Green Arrow: Hard Travelin’ Heroes Deluxe Edition.
• Green Lantern: John Stewart – A Celebration of 50 Years (Green Lantern (1960-1986)
ISBN: 978-1779513885
Fifty years after John Stewart’s debut, this collection highlights the character’s greatest moments over the decades-both spacefaring and earthbound-from his first appearance in the legendary O’Neil/Adams Green Lantern run, to taking over from Hal Jordan as Earth’s Green Lantern, to being rechristened as the first mortal Guardian of the Universe.
This volume includes Green Lantern Vol. 2 #87, #182, and #185, Green Lantern Vol. 3 #74 and #156, Green Lantern Vol. 4 #49, Green Lantern: Mosaic #18, and Justice League of America #110
• Green Lantern/Green Arrow: Hard Travelin’ Heroes Deluxe Edition
ISBN: 978-1401280420
Over 40 years ago, writer Dennis O’Neil and artist Neal Adams raised the expectations for and expanded the idea of what could be accomplished with mainstream commercial comics. Now presented in a beautiful, oversize edition, with an introduction by Dennis O’Neil himself, the relevance of those stories can still be felt in Green Lantern/Green Arrow: Hard-Traveling Heroes Deluxe Edition.
What does it take to be a superhero? Where should a superhero stand in society? What is important to a superhero? These are all questions Green Arrow aims to ask Green Lantern by forcing the space cop out of the stars and onto the ground where real issues are festering. Together, these hard-traveling heroes traverse America, and a few alien landscapes, to understand how the world is not black-and-white. Poverty, corruption, pollution, racism and drug addiction are only some of the issues the emerald warriors face.
Collects Green Lantern #76-87 and #89 and the backup stories from The Flash #217-219 and #226.
• Green Lantern/Green Arrow: Hard Travelin’ Heroes Omnibus Edition
ISBN: 978-1779525734
The Emerald Archer and the greatest space lawman who ever lived team-up to take on problems in society right under their own feet on planet earth.
Should a hero be concerned with the galaxy when they can’t help their own planet? It’s a pointed question that Green Arrow asks to Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) point blank in the Green Lantern/Green Arrow: Hard Travelin’ Heroes Omnibus. Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams tackle subjects in this superhero story that had never been seen in mainstream comics prior. Travel across the United States with Oliver Queen and Hal Jordan as their superhero alter egos to understand the subtleties of issues that our country was facing in the 1970s.
- About the Author
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A freelance journalist and Doctor Who fanzine editor since 1978, Tim Robins has written on comics, films, books and TV programmes for a wide range of publications including Starburst, Interzone, Primetime and TV Guide.
His brief flirtation with comics includes ghost inking a 2000AD strip and co-writing a Doctor Who strip with Mike Collins. Since 1990 he worked at the University of Glamorgan where he was a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies and the social sciences. Academically, he has published on the animation industry in Wales and approaches to social memory. He claims to be a card carrying member of the Politically Correct, a secret cadre bent on ruling the entire world and all human thought.
Categories: Comics, Features, Other Worlds, Reviews, Television, US Comics
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