Green Lantern: Secret Origin

AUTHOR: Johns, Geoff

ARTIST: Ivan Reis (illustrator); Oclair Albert (inker); Julio Ferreira (inker); Randy Mayor (colorist); Rob Leigh (letterer); Dave McCaig (cover artist)

PUBLISHER: DC Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 2008

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2008

Publication History

Originally published in single-magazine form in Green Lantern, issues 29-35, Green Lantern: Secret Origin is a retelling of Hal Jordan’s origin story, in which he becomes Earth’s first Green Lantern. Serving as a lead-in to the DC Comics crossover event “Blackest Night” (2009-2010), Secret Origin introduced several story elements, including the characters Atrocitus and William Hand, that would be further developed in that later story line.

After its seven-issue run, Green Lantern: Secret Origin was collected in both hardcover and paperback editions. A new collected edition was published in April, 2011, several months before the release of the Green Lantern live-action film. This tie-in edition features an introduction by actor Ryan Reynolds, who portrays the Green Lantern in the film and appears in full costume on the book’s cover.

Plot

The story begins with a young Hal Jordan watching his father fly a plane. At the airfield, he meets a young, stuck-up girl named Carol Ferris. Sneaking through a fence for a closer look at the planes, he is horrified when he sees his father’s plane crash and explode. Despite this tragedy, Hal becomes obsessed with flying in subsequent years. He frequently sneaks onto airfields to see planes, which puts him in conflict with his family.

On Hal’s eighteenth birthday, he joins the United States Air Force. He is a somewhat reckless pilot, often willing to damage expensive planes just to prove a point. Eventually, his younger brother, Jim, visits him and tells him that their mother is sick. Upset about his mother’s illness and frustrated with his commanding officer, Major Stone, Hal punches his superior and is dishonorably discharged. When Hal visits the hospital, he discovers that his mother has died. Hal’s older brother, Jack, blames Hal for driving their mother to an early death.

Meanwhile, an alien police officer named Abin Sur, a member of an intergalactic peace force known as the Green Lantern Corps, interrogates another alien named Atrocitus. Over a communication channel, he reveals to his friend and fellow Green Lantern Sinestro his fears about the prophesied end of all life in the universe. He takes Atrocitus to where this evil is believed to begin: Earth. Atrocitus, after instilling fear in Abin, is able to overpower his ring’s energy and cause his spacecraft to crash on Earth.

Hal adjusts slowly to life in the private sector. His reputation for reckless flight preceding him, he is forced to become an airplane mechanic rather than a pilot. Working for an old friend of his father, he is horrified to discover that the company for which he works is being sold to Ferris Air, the same company for which his father worked when he died. Blaming its owner, Carl Ferris, for his father’s ultimate fate, Hal decides to quit. However, a grown Carol Ferris is now largely in charge of her father’s company. Although she dislikes the idea of Hal Jordan being one of her new subordinates, she allows him to fly after all of Ferris Air’s pilots resign upon discovering that she is really running the company.

When the alien spacecraft crashes, Hal investigates and discovers a mortally wounded Abin Sur. Abin informs him that his ring has chosen him; Hal Jordan is to serve as the Green Lantern in his place. Accepting this responsibility almost immediately, Hal takes Abin’s ring and glowing green lantern. He is then transported to the planet Oa, where he encounters hundreds of other Green Lanterns and learns about their powers, their history, and their leaders, the Guardians of the Universe. Transported back to Earth, Hal fights Hector Hammond, a former boyfriend of Carol who has been superhumanly transformed by exposure to the alien ship, as well as Atrocitus.

Characters

•Hal Jordan, a.k.a. Green Lantern, is Earth’s first human Green Lantern. A pilot who lost his father at an early age, he is a brown-haired all-American type who is somewhat reckless and hotheaded but is ultimately heroic.

•Sinestro a.k.a. Green Lantern, is a red-skinned alien humanoid who is regarded as the greatest of the Green Lanterns. As Abin Sur’s best friend, he resents Hal for taking his place. He and Hal form an uneasy partnership.

•Abin Sur, a.k.a. Green Lantern, is Hal Jordan’s predecessor in the role. Fearing a prophecy about the end of all life, Abin begins to doubt his abilities. This ultimately leads to his untimely death at Atrocitus’s hands.

•Atrocitus is one of the Five Inversions and an enemy to all Green Lanterns. An alien criminal who is powered by hate and fear, he has little regard for life and is responsible for killing Abin Sur.

•Carol Ferris is the de facto head of Ferris Air who struggles to hold her father’s company together after he becomes incapacitated. Despite their adversarial relationship, she is Hal’s love interest.

•Hector Hammond is a consultant to Ferris Air and the military and is Carol’s former boyfriend, still possessing feelings for her. After encountering Abin Sur’s spacecraft, he gains immense psychokinetic powers.

•Kilowog is a Green Lantern Corps member who is responsible for training new recruits. He serves as Hal Jordan’s drill sergeant when Hal arrives on Oa. Jovial yet firm, he resembles a humanoid canine pug.

•Tomar-Re, a.k.a. Green Lantern, is the Green Lantern responsible for a sector neighboring Earth’s. Tomar introduces himself to Hal and shows him the Book of Oa. He resembles a yellow amalgam of a chicken and a fish.

•William Hand is a mysterious young boy on Earth whom Atrocitus targets. A mortician’s son, he is morbidly interested in touching dead bodies. He steals an alien device created by Atrocitus.

Artistic Style

Ivan Reis was the primary penciller for Green Lantern: Secret Origin. While maintaining a traditional comic book style featuring bizarre aliens, monolithic spaceships, and epic, action-packed battles, he also captures the emotions and sense of wonder of each character. Reis has a distinctly soft style to his art; he avoids hard, jagged lines in favor of curved surfaces and soft facial expressions. This clean and expressive art is particularly effective in some of the full-page panels presented, including the dramatic scene in which Hal finds the dying Abin Sur’s spaceship. Reis has garnered praise for his action sequences as well as his depiction of character-oriented moments. This is especially evident when Hal rushes to confront Carol Ferris’s father, Carl, and discovers him bedridden and infirm. Saddened by her father’s physical state, Carol breaks down on her front porch, and Hal quietly comforts her. The panel’s vantage point shows them embracing, silhouetted beautifully from miles away.

Colorist Randy Mayor uses vivid color throughout the comic, but it particularly effective when used to accentuate the alien nature of characters and environments. The color is perhaps most vivid when Hal Jordan is transported to the alien world of Oa. After seeing several hundred Green Lanterns of varying appearance, he observes the surreal amber landscape of the alien world.

Themes

The story begins as a coming-of-age work, with Hal Jordan’s childhood clearly influencing his adult personality. His early life is examined, including his witnessing of his father’s death in a horrific airplane accident. Instead of giving up his dream of a life in the sky, he becomes obsessed with flying; it is the only thing he really wants to do. This obsession factors into his lack of hesitation when presented with the option of becoming a superhero. Given the chance to fly under his own power, Hal Jordan does not have to think twice.

Family also plays a significant role in Hal’s development. After the death of his father, Hal goes through life believing he has nothing to lose. This belief is shattered when his mother falls ill and dies suddenly, thus severing his already-tenuous relationship with his brothers. Hal’s antagonistic relationship with businesswoman Carol Ferris is also a form of denial for him, as he denies that he cares for her just as he does with his family. However, he selflessly protects her from the insane Hector Hammond and comforts her when she breaks down over her father’s illness.

Power also holds great significance in the story. Hal Jordan goes from being an ordinary man to having one of the most powerful weapons in the Galaxy: his ring. Several other beings are depicted as having similar weapons given to them by the self-proclaimed Guardians of the Universe. Atrocitus, an enemy to the Lanterns and to the Guardians, is revealed as having been victimized by the Guardians as they exercised their power and control over the universe; their creation of the murderous Manhunters, a precursor to the Green Lanterns, caused Atrocitus to become one of the last of his kind.

Impact

Originally created by Martin Nodell in 1940, the Green Lantern has experienced several reimaginings since the character’s introduction. In 1959, the first such revamp, by John Broome and Gil Kane, introduced Hal Jordan as the new Green Lantern. The story of Hal Jordan’s birth as the Green Lantern has changed little since: He discovers a dying alien named Abin Sur, who bestows upon him one of the greatest weapons in the Galaxy.

In the late 1960’s, Denny O’Neil reinterpreted the Hal Jordan character, making him the counterpart of another hero, Oliver Queen, better known as Green Arrow. While Oliver represents the antiestablishment and extreme liberal mentality, Hal serves as a perfect foil, an intergalactic police officer who represents law and order.

While other humans such as John Stewart and Guy Gardner temporarily take his place, Hal Jordan is arguably the most steadfast and heroic of Earth’s Green Lanterns. Despite this, in the three-part story “Emerald Twilight” (1994), Hal goes manically insane after the destruction of his hometown, Coast City. Unable to re-create it or his loved ones with the energy of his ring, he seeks power from the Guardians of the Universe, killing any Lantern who gets in his way. In a last-ditch effort, the Guardians pit him against his old enemy, Sinestro, but Hal is able to defeat him. The last surviving Guardian manages to give the final Green Lantern ring to a human named Kyle Rayner, who becomes the last Green Lantern. After trying to destroy the universe, Hal ultimately redeems himself when he sacrifices himself to save Earth. He is reborn as the avenging spirit the Spectre and returns to life nearly a decade later, as chronicled in Green Lantern: Rebirth (2004).

These various reinterpretations and story lines created a complicated continuity populated by several Earth-based heroes known as the Green Lantern and multiple incarnations of the Green Lantern Corps. Thus, with its reestablishment of the essential creation myth underpinning the character of the Green Lantern, Green Lantern: Secret Origin provided background information that increased the accessibility of the franchise for new readers and paved the way for both the “Blackest Night” story line and the live-action film adaptation.

Films

Green Lantern. Directed by Martin Campbell. Warner Bros., 2011. This film adaptation stars Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan and Blake Lively as Carol Ferris. While it is an origin story in which Hal Jordan becomes Green Lantern, establishes his tumultuous relationship with Carol Ferris, and fights Hector Hammond, the film differs from Green Lantern: Secret Origin in that it does not serve as a prelude to the “Blackest Night” story line. Neither Atrocitus nor William Hand appears in the film.

Green Lantern: First Flight. Directed by Lauren Montgomery. DC Comics/Warner Bros. Animation/Warner Premiere, 2009. This animated film adaptation stars Christopher Meloni as Hal Jordan and Victor Garber as Sinestro. While this is an origin story in which Hal Jordan becomes Green Lantern, the film differs from Green Lantern: Secret Origin in that it explores Sinestro’s history and his betrayal of the Green Lantern Corps.

Further Reading

Johns, Geoff, and Ivan Reis. Blackest Night (2010).

Johns, Geoff, and Ethan Van Sciver. Green Lantern: Rebirth (2005).

Marz, Ron, and Daryl Banks. Green Lantern: Emerald Twilight/New Dawn (2003).

Bibliography

Dryden, Jane, and Mark. D. White. Green Lantern and Philosophy: No Evil Shall Escape This Book. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley, 2011.

Flagg, Gordon. “Secret Origin: Green Lantern.” Review of Green Lantern: Secret Origin, by Geoff Johns. Booklist 105, no. 14 (March 15, 2009): 51.