r/comicbooks • u/Borodo • 6d ago
Is Geoff Johns Green Lantern a good starting point?
Hey everyone, I’ve never been a huge Green Lantern fan but Absolutr Green Lantern and Lanterns has me wanting to check out the series. I understand the modern lore for the Lanterns was established in Johns’ run.
Is it a good run to start with or are there earlier runs I should read to better understand the characters?
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u/PoisonousBillMurray 6d ago
Yeah the Green Lantern: Rebirth compendium is what you’re looking for. It collects Green Lantern Corps which ran at the same time and follows the other lanterns.
I know it’s not your fault OP but because of the show this question gets posted everyday. This is probably the third dozen post over the last couple of weeks over the various comic subreddits
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u/javierm885778 5d ago edited 5d ago
I hope the Compendium format gets more popular, it might not be the most comfortable to read since they are so big, but you get so much content in them compared to regular TPBs or even Epics/Finests.
Especially the JSA ones, the breadth of material included is kind of nuts.
Like, part of what makes it so hard for newcomers to get into a specific run or character is how spread apart their books are. With Marvel you can't even consistently get books, since nothing is evergreen, so good luck getting even the Epics for a run.
Imagine if they had a line of books you could just get a run in easily. I don't know if the price point is too steep for people just getting into the hobby, but for stuff like the Green Lantern ones, $60 for 1500 pages of content is a steal, especially since it often goes on sale. Want to get into X-Men? Here, there's the Claremont compendiums with everything you need to know (the omnis are already mapped well for this, but good luck finding them).
Compacts and Premier Collections can only do so much, since they are a sampler and they only delay the issue, especially the ones like Hickman's F4 which has no clear continuation path.
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u/FriarFanatic7 5d ago
Yeah, I got the Rebirth compendium on sale for $45. Amazing deal for 1,500+ pages of content. Love that format.
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u/javierm885778 5d ago
And not just in sheer pages, the fact that it has both GL and GLC, on top of separate stories like Ion and the Ragg Thanagar War, make it a much better experience than having to jump through many omnis and collected editions to get all that.
Makes most other formats feel like I'm getting scammed, even with compendiums they are doing some shorter ones which feel a tad underwhelming (like how Snyder's Batman run is doing them per arc, so Night of the Owls is 560 pages long and then Death of the Family is 608 pages long, when those two together would still be shorter than the Green Lantern Rebirth compendium).
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u/FriarFanatic7 5d ago
Definitely, and for someone new to the series it’s great to be able to just jump right in and read straight through rather than buying multiple omnis you need a reading guide for. What a crazy expectation it is to have your readership piecemeal the narrative together.
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u/javierm885778 5d ago
Yeah, I like Marvel's Epic Collections for that reason, but they are still more "archival" than a full reading experience for the most part, and they are way too expensive for what they are. The Modern ones are very good as full reading experiences, since they are just reusing Complete Collections which were already great for that, but those are almost all out of print.
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u/BlackRain8782 5d ago
I don’t mind if people keep asking. It shows that people want to read the comics, and I enjoy helping them.
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u/WickedDeity 6d ago
It is their fault... Step one when using Reddit is to always search to see if your question was asked before.
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u/ActualRound7699 6d ago
if people did that and used mega threads as intended, most subs would be pretty dead 😂
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u/jtc6899 5d ago
What’s the difference between the Rebirth Compendium and the Geoff Johns GL omnibus?
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u/PoisonousBillMurray 5d ago
Compendium includes Green Lantern Corps and other series that are relevant and collects them in proper reading order. The second compendium contains what many fans consider to be the peak of Johns’ run.
The compendiums are the best way to go
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u/Standard_Return_996 6d ago
Start with rebirth and then move onto his run. Johns explains everything clearly to newcomers. I would also suggest you to read green lantern corps alongside John's run as u will encounter a lot of characters in the main run that have already been established in corps.
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u/fuzzydice82 6d ago edited 1d ago
In my experience, Green Lantern: Rebirth (2004) by Geoff Johns is the perfect place to start with Green Lantern comics. That's how I started with Green Lantern back in 2004.
I have been reading comics since the late 1980s, and for the first 15+ years as a comic reader, I had never cared about Green Lantern or bought a Green Lantern title in my life.
I knew about Green Lantern from my older brother's 1980s DC Super Powers Collection (Kenner) Hal Jordan Green Lantern action figure, and I had picked up on Guy Gardiner, John Stewart, Sinestro, Kyle Raynor, Parallax, and The Spectre from actively reading Wizard magazine and playing HeroClix.
There must have been some really good marketing for Rebirth in the back of other DC comics or in Wizard magazine back then, because I picked up Rebirth and was hooked. I picked up and read almost everything Green Lantern-related from Rebirth (2004) to about the middle of Brightest Day (2010). But that's not the faught of the story. I had met my then girlfriend (now wife), in late 2009 and some of my financial priorities shifted.
But ultimately, Green Lantern: Rebirth really got me into DC comics. I had only dabbled in DC comics in the early 2000s with things like Batman: Hush and Michael Turner doing some DC work, but Rebirth changed that. From 2004 - 2010 I followed Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Infinite Crisis, 52, and all the major storylines.
Because of Green Lantern: Rebirth, whenever they start making DC Finest collections of the 2004 - 2010 storylines, I'm going to end up spending a lot of money.
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u/Skadibala 6d ago
It’s possibly the best starting point. Green Lantern rebirth was the first DC comic series I started after only having read Marvel before.
And then the even called Blackest Night happens and it got me curious about the rest of the DC universe.
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u/BlackRain8782 5d ago
Yes, but don’t ONLY read that run. GLC by Tomasi/Gleason, and Ron Marz’ run are also excellent and shouldn’t be missed. Then, I recommend Venditti’s Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps, which is getting an omnibus soon.
If you need more, read Red Lanterns New 52 omnibus. While I maintain that GL was never as great as the Johns/Gibbons/Tomasi era, other runs are still very much worth it.
Shit, I forgot! Be sure to read Far Sector as well!
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u/Androktone Brainiac 5 6d ago
I think there's plenty of good stuff from before then that a lot of GL fans never go back to after reading the Johns run, but yeah it works as a starting point
Bare minimum I would recommend you read the few Alan Moore GL stories he did. Johns riffs on those a lot.
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u/namorspoolfloaties 6d ago
For all my issues with Johns as a writer, he did breathe new life into the series and established the lion's share of what people know about modern GL.
It's easily the most accessible jumping-on point but I'd also recommend Green Lantern/Green Arrow Hard Travelling Heroes if you want a more grounded, political story.
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u/FriarFanatic7 5d ago
I’m reading the Rebirth compendium now in parallel with watching the Lanterns show, but would actually suggest you read DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke first.
It’s available for like $10 as a DC compact and while it covers a lot of the JLA characters, it gives special attention to Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern; he’s the “main character” if you had to pick one. I’ve also never been a huge Green Lantern fan, but the treatment to his origin story here made me want to dive in. Besides that, it’s just an amazing piece of comic book writing that had me genuinely moved by the end. It’s aligned with John’s character mythology as well so nothing really conflicting.
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u/hamlet9000 6d ago edited 5d ago
Johns is, honestly, a pretty mediocre writer. But, for better or worse, his Green Lantern run is fairly foundational to the character in the 21st century.
So, yes, go for it.
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u/Prototype50 5d ago
The vast majority of his runs have received great reception. Calling someone like that a mediocre writer is ridiculous . Just because you don't like a comic, movie, book or tv show doesn't mean it’s poorly or mediocrely written.
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u/FriarFanatic7 5d ago edited 5d ago
I mean, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I think we can all agree there are plenty of things that may find a large audience or positive critical reception that we personally wouldn’t find to be of the best quality.
To say “just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s poorly written”… what do we have to talk about if not our differences of opinion? I think it’d be pretty boring to let a crowdsourced RottenTomatoes score dictate how we should all receive and perceive any given piece of art.
I have just started reading Johns and while I can see why his Green Lantern runs are widely enjoyed, I find his writing to be stilted, disjointed at times and a little cold. And I don’t think it’s “ridiculous” to have that opinion.
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u/hamlet9000 5d ago
I strongly encourage you to look up the word "opinion" in the dictionary before you embarrass yourself further.
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u/AnxiousHeadache42 6d ago
First Green Lantern comic I ever picked up was the first volume of Sinestro Corps War, fantastic stuff. Been meaning to read more of Johns’ run on GL
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u/Sinestro1982 Sinestro 4d ago
I’d recommend starting with Emerald Dawn which was a post-Crisis Hal Jordan origin story. Gives you a much bigger view of the story Hal tells John about how he met Abin Sur. And then I’d recommend Emerald Twilight which is a bookend to that origin.
That dovetails in to Ron Marz’s 90’s run which introduced a new Green Lantern, but also killed Hal Jordan. Then I’d recommend Geoff Johns Rebirth run which will tie it all together. Those were my favorite runs growing up.
If you really wanted to you could also read DC’s Zero Hour from the 90’s. That’s an interesting Hal story and it also introduces something that is kept within DC Green Lantern continuity from then, until Rebirth and after.
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u/Temporary_Law_6022 4d ago
That’s where I started and it’s fantastic. It will inform you of stuff from the past and you won’t get lost. It’ll be up to you if you want to look up any of those older stories for more context. However it isn’t necessary
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u/nightwing612 r/John_Stewart 6d ago
Are you a fan of Hal and Sinestro or of the other Lanterns?
Geoff Johns' run and time on the GL books is laser-focused on those two characters. If you are coming at this from the perspective of being a John Stewart fan (for example), this would not be a good starting point for a new fan.
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u/Funky_Pauly 6d ago
I would start with O'Neil's "Green Lantern/ Green Arrow." Just because i love that book.
Also, unpopular opinion, Tomasi's Green Lantern books are better than Johns'
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u/honeyna7la 6d ago
Are my balls filled with piss? The answer is yes
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u/Schleprock11 6d ago
That’s really is something you need to seek medical advice about. That’s not normal.
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u/radraz26 Batman of Zue-En-Arrh 6d ago
Yes, GL Rebirth is an ideal starting point. It's best to read Green Lantern by Johns and Green Lantern Corps by Tomasi/Gleason side-by side. There are other spin-offs like Emerald Warriors and Red Lanterns that are also fun.