Today I want to help you get over one of the major hurdles of becoming a Green Lantern fan: figuring out where to start. A series with this many characters and this much history can be intimidating, and I wouldn’t blame anyone who looked at all of it and found it too overwhelming to dive into. So I’m going to do what I can to make the process as easy as possible for you, so that you can start enjoying Green Lantern with very little trouble.
First of all…and I can not stress this enough…there is no right or wrong way to start reading Green Lantern. We all tend to get really hung up on starting things from the beginning so we don’t miss anything, but this franchise has been going for 80 years and is full of so many good jumping on points that there’s honestly not much reason to worry about starting in exactly the right place. If anything, you should exploit that 80 year history to make sure the Green Lantern you start with is the Green Lantern most suited to your personal tastes.
Probably the best advice I can give you when starting with this franchise is to look up and see if any writers you really like had runs on Green Lantern, and then go read that. Don’t worry about anything that came before, any time a new writer takes over it makes for a good jumping on point. Just sit back and enjoy exploring a new franchise through the lens of a creator who’s work you already know you enjoy. Often times, the run you pick will give you an onramp into other runs by other creators, and keep expanding out from there.
For example, let’s say you were reading Strange Adventures, or Batman, and you really like the writing of Tom King. Well he wrote “Justice League: The Darkseid War: Green Lantern #1”, and despite its dumb title, it’s a fantastically well done self-contained one-shot that you could appreciate all on its own, or you could follow the branding and read the also-good “Justice League: The Darkseid War” storyline, in which Green Lantern Jessica Cruz earns her ring, which then leads directly into the ongoing series titled “Green Lanterns”.
Tom King also wrote “The Omega Men: The End is Here” which made excellent use of Kyle Rayner, and can be a really powerful way to get to know who this character is, at which point you might even want to go back to the beginning of his career and see what it was like. Conventional wisdom would tell you to read the old stuff first and then get around to the modern stuff that gives a different perspective on it, but honestly, looking back on old material with modern context is just as valid an experience as taking it all in publication order. These comics came out in the 90s, anyone reading them for the first time now would automatically be looking at them differently than someone who read them as they were coming out, so you may as well add the layer of introspection provided by the Omega Men to give you something to think about while you check out the old stuff.
Another big one is if you liked Superman by Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason, good news, they had one of the best runs on Green Lantern Corps pretty much ever. Or maybe you like Tomasi because you’re a fan of his “Super Sons”, but Gleason’s art isn’t your style. Well you’re in luck, because Tomasi had a SECOND run on “Green Lantern Corps”, as well as a spinoff series “Green Lantern Emerald Warriors” each introducing you to different characters and concepts from all over the Green Lantern mythos. “Green Lantern Corps” digs into how the Corps functions as an organization, while “Emerald Warriors” focuses on a smaller cast and starts to introduce you to the wider world of the Emotional Spectrum.
If you like Tom Taylor’s work on books like Injustice and DCeased, he did a two part story in DC Universe Online Legends called the Brainiac/Sinestro Corps War. If you read that and like the Sinestro Corps and have questions like “where did they come from” and “why is the Anti-Monitor on their team?”, then you can jump over to the Geoff Johns run and read the Sinestro Corps War storyline running through Green Lantern, with hooks to get you into Green Lantern Corps as well. Yes, there’s almost two years worth of issues leading into the War, but honestly don’t worry about it. Plenty of people jumped straight into the Sinestro Corps War storyline when they heard all the hype surrounding it, and had a great time with it. The worst that can happen is you’ll come out of it with some questions, and the best way to find answers is to just keep reading.
There are tons of examples. Did you read Future State Green Lantern? Because that same writer is doing the ongoing series that started right afterwards. That series is also bringing in the character of Teen Lantern, who first appeared in Bryan Michael Bendis’ Young Justice series, so fans of the character can follow her over to this book. This run of Green Lantern is also going to bring in Sojourner Mullein, star of the series Far Sector, so if you like her in Green Lantern you can go read her solo series.
Good starting points are everywhere. And If you don’t have any favorite creators that also worked on Green Lantern, then your best bet is to probably start with the Geoff Johns run. It’s a pretty massive multi-year epic that’ll introduce you to a ton of Green Lantern lore, mythology, and characters, while also giving you an easy way in to all of the other books I’ve already talked about. The only thing with this is it’s a much larger commitment than most Lantern series, and Geoff Johns’ work can be polarizing to some fans. You’ll have to pick what sounds best for you, just know that every series I’ve talked about today can each be read all on their own perfectly fine. Reading more would enhance the experience, but it’s by no means required.
Now before I finish up, I want to recommend one other way to start reading Green Lantern. The way I started.
One day I was in a store and saw the cover to Green Lantern #53, and everything about it confused me. This Green Lantern didn’t look like the one from Superfriends, I had no idea who he was fighting, I didn’t know why Superman was there, or why Superman had long hair. So I got the issue and I read it and it was awesome. The whole thing was one big fight scene, and none of the characters knew any more than I did. The other characters had no idea who this kid calling himself Green Lantern was, and Green Lantern himself knew just as little about the concept of Green Lantern as I did. And it ended on a cliffhanger that was equally confusing, because I had no idea who this character was or who he was talking to or what was even going on. All I knew for sure was that I had fun and wanted more of it, so I kept going. Sometimes I’d read issues in order, sometimes I’d jump around based entirely on what covers I thought looked the coolest…I didn’t care, I was having fun. And look at me today, now I know more things about Green Lantern than any one person should, and I got here by reading whatever I thought looked interesting and not worrying so much about the details. Hell, my first exposure to the concept of Emerald Twilight was Green Lantern #55, when Alan Scott showed up to explain it all to Kyle Rayner through two beautifully rendered images hitting you with the grander of a bygone era, as well as the intensity with which it fell. All while I was still trying to process just who Alan Scott even is, because I’d never seen him before either.
The most important thing isn’t that you start reading in the proper place, it’s that you have fun with what you’re reading. If you need to start from the very beginning to enjoy yourself, then you should do that. If you want to skip the Geoff Johns run entirely and just read “Green Lantern Corps”, then you should do that. If you want to start by reading a totally random issue, regardless of the number or its place in the story, just because you find the cover super interesting…then you should do that. Every single one of these is the right answer, don’t let anyone tell you different.
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