John Stewart may be famous as the primary Green Lantern of Earth for an entire generation, but he’s about to trade that role for a Yellow Lantern ring instead. Except in the reality of DC’s Earth One… that doesn’t mean what the readers will think.
Yes, at long last the arrival of Green Lantern: Earth One Vol. 2 has been announced by DC Comics. The wait has been longer than fans expected, but that has quickly come to be expected with Earth One stories – re-imagining beloved DC heroes in entirely new origin stories. In the case of 2018’s Green Lantern: Earth One, that meant a version of Hal Jordan who stumbled upon a Lantern ring in his work as an asteroid miner, and being thrust into a war to return the entire corps to the galaxy. But with Volume 2 now announced, it sounds like a brand new war is only beginning.
The confirmation lets fans mark their calendars for the release of Green Lantern: Earth One Vol. 2 on June 9th, 2020. The creative team of Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman are also set to return, with the first cover art and plot synopsis now available. The artwork shows the stronger, nobler, bearded Hal Jordan that returned to Earth-One on the final page of Vol. 1. But the plot synopsis teases two surprising twists: that John Stewart will be introduced as a Yellow Lantern… and that he’ll be working with Hal Jordan, not against him. Check out both below:
The plot synopsis has been carefully constructed to keep fans’ questions unanswered, for now. For those who missed the first installment of Green Lantern: Earth One, the story relied on Hal Jordan returning to the planet Oa a slave, witnessing how the birthplace of the Green Lanterns had been invaded, dominated, and contained by the Manhunters. Only in this version of the story, the Green Lantern were created first. As the last surviving Guardian of the Universe informs Hal (from the safety of another dimension), the Manhunters ended up wiping out the Corps and the rest of the Guardians. According to the Guardian, only the total obliteration of Oa – along with thousands of innocents, the Manhunters, and the Green Lanterns – was the answer.
Hal Jordan and John Stewart must team up to save the last Green Lantern Guardian from an evil force!
Manhunters, alien races, rings of power–it’s a lot for the people of Earth to absorb. Especially when an interplanetary incident forces their protector, Hal Jordan, to leave on a rescue mission that results in the discovery that there’s a new player in the galaxy: Yellow Lanterns!
While they seem a benign force for peace, Jordan can’t get comfortable with how much power they wield, or their bizarre, lockstep behavior. When fellow Earthling John Stewart ends up with a yellow ring, he and Hal must work together to confront the being who destroyed the original Green Lantern Corps–the last surviving Guardian.
Hal and the Lanterns found a better way, of course, and set about creating a new corps. A development which vexed the Guardian in secret, revealing his hope that all of his mistakes would be erased from the galaxy. But his new, re-designed solution would still be perfectly capable of granting his “return” – and entire army of yellow Lanterns.
The tease of this Guardian’s return remained the obvious premise for a sequel, should one ever be written, and that seems to be the case. Untrustworthy Guardians, schemes to keep past mistakes quiet, and a Yellow Lantern army massing in another dimension are all familiar to longtime fans of Green Lantern. But this new reveal of John Stewart being recruited into the supposed antagonists is an intriguing one. However, the Green Lantern rings of Earth One did away with the idea of being “worthy” of the weapon, or its explicit link to “overcoming fear” or “willpower.” So it shouldn’t be assumed that their Yellow variation has the explicit ties to fascism or fear as the typical ones, either.
The full story of John Stewart’s selection, and his partnership with Hal Jordan (at least to start) will be told when Green Lantern: Earth One Vol. 2 arrives in your local book store and comic shop on June 9th, 2020.
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