10 Green Lantern Comics You Need to Read If You’re Loving Lanterns

The first Green Lantern, who debuted in 1940’s All-American Comics #16, had nothing to do with the characters in Lanterns. Creators Martin Nodell and Bill Finger drew inspiration from the Aladdin myth, creating a superhero with a wishing ring that he made from a magical green asteroid. But in the 1950s, DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz led an initiative to reimagine their heroes, giving characters such as Flash and the Atom a science-fiction spin.

Green Lantern’s turn came in Showcase Comics #22 by writer John Broome and artist Gil Kane, in which alien Abin Sur crash-landed near a California air strip and summoned test pilot Hal Jordan to become his replacement in the Green Lantern Corps. A group of intergalactic police, the Green Lanterns patrol space sectors, using their power rings to create whatever they will. Although the mythos of the Green Lantern would grow more and more over the next decade, it all begins with “S.O.S Green Lantern.”

Throughout the 1960s, Green Lantern comics introduced various other members of the Corps, including the veteran Katma Tui and the wise fish/chicken man Tomar-Re. Occasionally, another human would get the chance to wield the ring, such as actor Charlie Vicker, or the kind-hearted gym teacher Guy Gardner, who met a tragic end (more on that in a minute). But the most important new addition came in 1972, as part of Hal Jordan’s legendary extended team-up with Oliver Queen aka Green Arrow. In Green Lantern #87, by Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams, a new back-up for Hal Jordan is chosen: A brash young Detroiter named John Stewart.

John Stewart would go on to become one of DC’s best characters, even outside his co-starring role on Lanterns. But his first appearance hasn’t aged particularly well. O’Neil and Adams rightly wanted to diversify the very white stable of DC heroes, but this first depiction of Stewart as an angry young man who picks fights with cops and businessmen reads like the work of two well-meaning, but uninformed white creators. Still, “Beware My Power” set the stage for what would become one of the more layered and nuanced superheroes, as demonstrated by Pierre’s incredible performance on Lanterns.

“Beware My Power” doesn’t actually begin with John Stewart. Instead, it begins with Guy Gardner, the first man picked to be Hal Jordan’s back-up. Guy first appeared a few years earlier, in Green Lantern #59 by Broome and Kane. “Earth’s Other Green Lantern” reveals that Abin Sur considered two people to be his replacement: Hal Jordan, obviously, but also Baltimore-based gym teacher Guy Gardner. Hal got the nod because he was closer, but “Earth’s Other Green Lantern” lets him peak into an alternate reality where Guy gets chosen first.

General audiences met Guy Gardner in the 2025 Superman film, where Nathan Fillion played him as a brash doofus with a ridiculous haircut. That interpretation comes directly from the comics, but not from Guy’s first appearances. In “Earth’s Other Green Lantern,” he’s a more traditionally heroic character, a good guy who—in the other reality where he gets picked over Hal—dies a young death saving a planet. Worse, when he finally gets a shot in our reality, an accident leaves Guy brain-damaged and in a coma. And when he awakens from the coma in the mid-1980s, he arrives with the goofy haircut and brash attitude, becoming the character we know and love today.

Lanterns picks up late in the career of Hal Jordan, who has been Green Lantern for at least two decades in the show’s main timeline of 2016. In that time, it’s clear that Hal has had a host of adventures that make him a beloved public superhero. But, for the most part, we don’t actually see any of those feats; we just hear about his wacky exploits, some of which make their way into episode plots. The show fills in all the gaps, but some viewers may want to see Hal’s weird travels.

Those fans would do well to check out Hal’s early Silver Age adventures from the first fifty issues of his solo series. Each issue, writers John Broom and Gardner Fox put Hal into high-concept stories, often inspired by catchy covers that editor Julius Schwartz commissioned to catch the eyes of readers. Broom and Fox fill the pages with all manner of alien and supervillain, but the real appeal is the artwork by penciler Gil Kane, who draws Hal as if he’s hurling himself through the sky. Stories such as “Power Rings for Sale” might not be the most sophisticated superhero tales of the era, but they show why Hal Jordan is so beloved.

Early looks at Lanterns drew some criticism for the show’s lack of, well, green. Not only does the title drop the color from the title, but trailers only briefly featured Hal Jordan in costume, and instead showed the heroes walking around in rustic locations instead of distant planets, wearing plainclothes and rarely using their rings. While fans are certainly within their rights to want more space opera from a show about intergalactic space cops, the fact is that Green Lantern comic books have lots of stories about Hal wandering around the United States in his regular clothes.

The most influential of those wandering stories came when DC paired Hal Jordan with Oliver Queen, briefly giving the book the title Green Lantern/Green Arrow. Writer Dennis O’Neil used the team-up to tell socially-relevant stories with superheroes, sending Hal and Ollie—along with Old Timer, a member of the immortal Guardians of the Universe, disguised as a human—on a cross-country trip to discover America and right some wrongs. The series definitely shows its age today, especially in its habit of making Green Lantern a sad-sack authoritarian to be mocked by the lefty Green Arrow, but there’s no denying that it changed the face of comics in the ‘70s.

When they’re not searching for bad guys, Hal and John spend much of Lanterns bickering with one another. It’s not hard to see why the two don’t get along. There’s never been a human Green Lantern before Hal Jordan, and the appointment of John Stewart—someone chosen by the oft-duplicitous Guardians—raises suspicions. Earth doesn’t seem big enough for the both of them.

While John and Hal did chafe in the comics, they eventually got used to there being two GLs on Earth and became good friends. And it’s a good thing too, because in the mid-80s, Earth became crowded with Lanterns. Under writer Steve Englehart and artist Joe Staton, Green Lantern was renamed Green Lantern Corps, in which a whole host of ring-slingers—including the lovable galoot Kilowog and the cartoon squirrel Ch’p—relocated to Earth. The change in mission allowed the book to become a team series instead of a solo, and it also raised the stakes for the ultimate threat, an invasion of Manhunters. What are Manhunters, you ask? Well, read on!

HBO is keeping a lot of the plot of Lanterns under wraps, but the final trailer gave fans a sneak peak at one of the problems Hal and John will have to deal with this season: Manhunters. To the average person, anyone saying “Manhunters” in a DC project must be referring to Justice League mainstay J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter. But Manhunters are in fact longtime Green Lantern villains. Before the immortal Guardians of the Universe formed the Green Lantern Corps, they created a team of android peacekeepers called the Manhunters. When the Manhunters took their work too far and decimated an entire sector, the Guardians went back to the drawing board, taking steps that led to the creation of the Green Lanterns.

So fundamental to the Green Lantern mythos are Manhunters that writer Geoff Johns decided to use them in his first proper story after relaunching the series in 2005. “Airborne,” penciled by Carlos Pacheco, gets Hal back to Coast City, California, and back to flying planes and fighting bad guys. But his happy days come to an end when a Manhunter shows up, wreaking all sorts of havoc in pursuit of a twisted idea about justice.

Within the first twenty minutes of Lanterns, viewers understand that Hal Jordan might be a charming guy who has saved the world time and again, but he’s also got too much ego to share the ring with anyone. Making matters worse for Hal, there’s clearly something special about John, something that goes beyond his excellence as a Marine and his aptitude as an artist. John Stewart was chosen by the Guardians for a reason, and that reason becomes one of the most compelling mysteries in the show. That mystery stands for comic book readers too, as the show takes some liberties with John’s comic book backstory and family connections.

However, for those just interested in John Stewart as a character, there’s Green Lantern: War Journal by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Montos. War Journal picks up from a previous Green Lantern run, in which Stewart gained ultimate power as a Green Lantern and became something akin to a god. He’s retired from the Corps and wants to simply spend time with his mom, when the universe calls him back into service… sending John on an adventure that reveals that he may not have lost all of his old abilities. More than a mere power fantasy, War Journal looks at John as a complicated human being, demonstrating why he’s one of the most interesting characters in the DC Universe.

Lanterns borrows a lot from the comics, far more than one might expect from the initial advertising. But it also certainly goes in its own direction, changing elements about the characters’ backstories and even the central mythos. Such changes may chafe some fans, but Green Lantern lore is always mutating in the comics. Moreover, sometimes a strong redefinition can lead to some exciting stories, even with an established property.

Case in point: Absolute Green Lantern by Al Ewing and Jahnoy Lindsay. Part of DC Comics’s wildly successful Absolute Line, in which familiar heroes are redefined in extreme ways, Absolute Green Lantern takes place in Evergreen, Washington, where the arrival of a strange alien called Abin Sur forever changes the lives of toy salesman Hal Jordan, sensitive architect John Stewart, sheriff Guy Gardner, and other familiar but changed characters. A mind-bending tale of sci-fi horror, Absolute Green Lantern probably won’t inspire anything in Lanterns, but it does show what can happen when an interesting artist gets to play with a concept.

Even if Lanterns didn’t hit HBO this week, 2026 would still be a great year for Green Lantern fans, thanks to the work done by writer Jeremy Adams in his delightful, throwback take on the main Green Lantern series. Working with Xermanico and other artists, Adams takes Hal Jordan back to basics, telling old-school adventure stories with big sci-fi ideas, ideas that take into account all of Green Lantern history and bring them up to the present.

In Back in Action, Hal Jordan returns to Earth and Coast City, hoping to stay a while. He gets what he wanted, but not how he expected, as Earth is quarantined by the Guardians, cut off from all other alien life. To solve the mystery, Hal’s going to need the help of his one-time closest friend and forever arch-enemy, Sinestro—the renegade former Green Lantern. The story is pure Green Lantern goodness, and a great reminder of everything wonderful about the concept, even at its goofiest.