The Green Lantern is getting an all-new comic series this November that plans on grounding the emerald hero as, effectively, a space cop.
Prolific comic writer Grant Morrison and artist Liam Sharp plan on making their series like a police procedural: “Instead of the big, epic, 12-part stories,” said Morrison to IGN, “we’re focusing down on the everyday life of a space cop. Basically, it’s no more apocalypse-ending storylines.” In a matter of speaking, they’re bringing the interstellar hero down to earth.
This follows a typical trend of superhero stories: the longer the hero lives, the greater the stakes must become. They saved the city, but they must now save the world. They saved the world, but now they must save the universe. We see this progression speed up for heroes not bound to any home planet, too. Think about in the recent Black Panther movie, when T’Challa had his country to save. Now think about the original Guardians movie that sees our heroes traveling through space to different planets. For that movie, the stakes were an entire planet’s destruction.
All in all, this is a very smart move by Morrison and Sharp to ground their hero and make compelling small-scale conflicts. The relaunch of the Green Lantern series comes this November.