We chat with the writers about a fractured spectrum and shipping certain Green Lantern Corps members.
Welcome to Creator Corner, our recurring interview series in which we chat with the industry's coolest and most thought-provoking creators. In this entry, we're conversing with Jeremy Adams and Morgan Hampton about Green Lantern Corps. Listen to the unedited audio HERE.
The emotional spectrum is fractured. The Green Lantern Corps is battling against universal armageddon. Writers Jeremy Adams and Morgan Hampton have inserted [REDACTED] into the team! Things are about to get extremely complicated and stressful in the new Green Lantern Corps series launching on February 12 from DC.
The new comic, illustrated by Fernando Pasarin and Oclair Albert, colored by Arif Prianto, and lettered by Dave Sharpe, finds the Lanterns carrying tremendous responsibility. Not only do they have the universe to protect, but they're also now charged with distributing the rings instead of the Guardians. Do they have what it takes to select worthy Green Lantern Corps applicants? It's gonna get dicey.
Once again, we're chatting with Jeremey Adams about a bunch of his favorite DC characters, and this time, he has his writing pal Morgan Hampton with him. We discuss the fractured emotional spectrum, The Sorrow looming over everything, and touch on a spoiler without revealing the spoiler.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Jeremy Adams, Morgan Hampton, Green Lantern Corp, and the Fractured Emotional Spectrum
Brad: All right, here we go, gentlemen. Fractal Lanterns. I want to talk about it. Reading the first issue, it was exciting to see how this is really going to put a lot of responsibility on the Corps itself. Can you talk a little bit about giving them the power to give a ring out?
Jeremy Adams: I talked about this with Morgan a little bit ago. It's like, I don't think the artificially intelligent version of just going like, "Well, you got great willpower, here you go," is the best/satisfying way to deal with a resume. You know? I think there needs to be a little bit more depth of character. I feel like the empathy of these Green Lantern Corps will hopefully have a better track record than random rings that appear and drop themselves in people's hands. That seems less problematic to me overall. And I love that the Guardians were probably over quantity, not quality. They're probably like, "Listen, the universe is a big place. Whoosh." I think it's an interesting thing that people are picking up on, and it's one of those things that we should probably explore a little more, Morgan. Write it down!
Morgan Hampton: Yeah, I think what's been really fun to flesh out is how it puts a new onus or responsibility on the individual Corps members to actually make a good judgment call on who they're recruiting, and how maybe that could pay off or not pay off. Just in this first issue, not to spoil anything, we really get into the nitty-gritty of what makes somebody worthy. I think that's a lot more interesting to flesh out, and see play out, than just a ring flying to someone telling them that they're worthy.
Brad: Tell me if this is too much of of a spoiler, but [REDACTED!] features in this issue.
Jeremy Adams: Too much of a spoiler! Too much of a spoiler!
Brad: Too Much of a spoiler? Okay, All right.
Jeremy Adams: After it comes out, we can talk about it then.
Brad: Cool. Well, then, this is how I will continue to talk about the fractal lanterns and the ring thing. We do see a ring be given in this issue, and the Corps is made up of a variety of personalities, and in this issue, someone with a certain personality suggests that this new person - this person who's suffering from the results of the fractal emotional spectrum, should have a ring. And another person's like, "Yeah, okay." I just imagine that would also cause some situations down the line, some tensions down the line.
Jeremy Adams: Yeah, I think so. I think there are characters - that shall not be named. I think part of the Green Lantern Corps in general, our mission statement, is to explore the depth and variety of characters and to see how they've changed, how they've matured and how they've grown. No one is just generally, "Oh, he is evil." Or take somebody Sinestro, for instance. That guy ran a planet, that guy had responsibilities. In the Green Lantern book, when he manifested the red energy, it was basically as a result of not being able to get back to his planet, the people that he cared about. So, there was some sort of moral compass and maturity there. And I think what we're trying to do is take a lot of characters that are known, a lot of characters that have led different Green Lantern books over the years, and we're trying to plumb the depths of them emotionally, but also trying to see where they've gone in maturation.
Jess is a big part of this book, and you can see that she's gone from, "Hey, I'm somebody who deals with fear, too. I have to deal with a different type of fear, responsibility, and fear over people." So there is this growth: "I'm not so paralyzed here; I figured out how to conquer that." But you're never just conquering it, that it is always something a little more. I think that people aren't blind to it.
I don't think it's just, "Hey, let's give this guy a ring." At the end, John has a very poignant monologue: "Hey, this is how it needs to be done. This is how we need to reconstruct this thing. This is what we need to shine the light." And they'll make mistakes, but it won't be so unemotional. I think that's weird about when the Guardians were doing it; they were so devoid of emotion that it became their weakness in a way. Our guys are grappling with that, especially in light of the universe's emotional spectrum being so wonky.
Morgan Hampton: I think a lot of it just boils down to game recognizes game.
Jeremy Adams: I could never say that, Morgan. I could never be that cool.
Morgan Hampton: it's just like they know what they've been through to get the ring, and they can recognize that in other people that they think are worthy. And then being able to make that judgment call on a just human level or sentient level is, I think, really important.
Jeremy Adams: And we're also talking about, at the core of this, willpower isn't necessarily an emotion; it's an anchoring facet of how to deal with your emotions. So, if somebody can have the willpower to control an out-of-control energy source, that is a big indicator that they could be something more.
Jeremy Adams, Morgan Hampton, Green Lantern Corp, and John Stewart
Brad: A character says at one point in this comic, "Willpower is not about dampening emotions, pushing emotions away, it's just being aware of them and having some kind of control over them."
Jeremy Adams: Right. And that's basically born out of the fact that if I really did what I wanted to do, I would just eat a lot of Costco pizza. But I have the willpower to back up and not go totally crazy, which is what I really want to do all the time.
Brad: But also then, I understand that there is something in you that will be satisfied by all that pizza. So, let's address what that is.
Jeremy Adams: That's right, that's right. I'm the Larfleeze of Costco Pizza.
Brad: There you go. That's what I love about Green Lantern Corps books: you have this collection, this group, this team. You have this Corps that consists of a lot of people who are dealing with their own issues. John coming off of War Journal, I mean, he's got a lot on his shoulders right now.
Morgan Hampton: Yeah, I think John is very interesting to explore at this point on his timeline because from the Geoffrey Thorne run, and the Philip Kennedy Johnson run, he went through a lot, and he made a lot of questionable decisions that I think Jeremy and I are going to have him reconcile with, for better or for worse. He's very much a character who's always presenting like everything is really well put together. But I think you'll see that under the surface, things are not as well put together as they may seem. And how's that going to manifest down the line, is what's really been interesting to flesh out with him.
Brad: The issue begins with him and sort of ends with him. Is he the main thrust of the book?
Jeremy Adams: Well, yes, but no. We will rotate the A plot for the first couple of issues. Okay, it'll focus on one particular person, and then the B plot will focus on another person. And then after a couple issues, we'll bring in a couple of others and focus on them. And we're not going to go away from those guys. They'll be there, their plot points will be there, but as Morgan stated before, it's like Star Trek. It's like, "Oh, this is a Worf episode, this is a Picard episode, this is whatever those episodes are." Then the rest of the cast will be there. We just want to make sure that everybody gets a little bit of the time to shine and a little bit of a moment that we can plumb the depths of them, character-wise.
So, as we lead up to some bigger problems in the universe, we're invested in those characters. We did that with the Green Lantern book. The backups were individual characters, so it wasn't such a shock to the reader when they showed up in the main book. It was like, "Okay, we've caught up to them. We kind of know what's going on with them. We kind of know where they are." And so they integrated seamlessly into the main story. And I think that's kind of what we're trying to pull off here.
Jeremy Adams, Morgan Hampton, Green Lantern Corp, and Cosmic Deep Cuts
Brad: It's always a treat to read a book like this because so many people are in the background. It gets you wondering, 'Well, how deep are the deep cuts going to be? Who are we going to spotlight within the Corps? Are we going to get weird with our perspectives on this book?"
Jeremy Adams: Yeah.
Morgan Hampton: I think that's the goal for sure.
Jeremy Adams: Also, we're lucky because the artist, Fernando, is so passionate and gung-ho about Green Lantern. He's more excited about it than I think we are, and we're pretty excited about it. So he's going to be checking and doing stuff in the background we're probably not even aware of for a while. But it's fun because I have a list somewhere. I know Morgan and I have populated a list of who's dead, who's alive, who exists. I asked on X, "What Green Lanterns do you want to see?" And I got some weird answers about characters I've never heard of in my life.
Morgan Hampton: We got a note the other day that was like, "Actually, this character died in 2009. Take him out of your street."
Jeremy Adams: That'll be a constant issue. "It's another one of his race. Moving on. Moving on."
Brad: But you get to that last page, which I won't talk about, other than to say that there are people reacting to that last reveal in the background. And I found myself going, "Well, what's their deal? Who are those folks?" I want to know who they are.
Jeremy Adams: Yeah, man, listen, our job is to keep McFarlane Toys in business. I think that's one of the cool things about Green Lantern, in general. Even traditionally, there would be weirdo aliens, and then you would say, "That guy's weird. I kind of want to know more about him," and we could bring him in. There's going to be some new alien characters. We're writing one now that I'm just like, I don't know who this guy is, but it's fun, and he's weird.
Morgan Hampton: Yeah.
Brad: And now, with this issue, it seems like the threat is The Sorrow. Can you talk about putting that character looming over everything?
Jeremy Adams: Even in the Green Lantern - I'm not spoiling anything because of the Fractured Spectrum Special and Green Lantern before, but The Sorrow is somebody that has been affected by the breaking emotional spectrum, and he just wants the pain to stop. Unfortunately for him, he's found himself at the doorstep of an emotional vampire, DC's Starbreaker, a villain that's been around for a long time. And I think Starbreaker will use that desire to eliminate the pain to his advantage.
And so now we have this kind of race against time to stop him because what our characters think now is just like, "Man, if this guy's able to make a power battery that's part of this fractured spectrum, it's going to destroy the entire emotional spectrum." And that in turn is like a thread that runs through all the universe. And that could fracture not just the emotional spectrum but the entire universe. And I think that's interesting.
Morgan Hampton: And we'll leave it at that for now.
Jeremy Adams: Yeah, I know. It's like, "What can we say?"
Green Lantern Corps #1 is on sale 2/12 wherever rad comics are sold. And don't forget, you can listen to this unedited conversation on the CBCC Patreon.
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