After ten years working on the character, and reigniting one of DC’s struggling titles into one of their most popular franchises, Geoff Johns has announced that he will be leaving the world of Green Lantern with the giant-sized issue #20 in May.
Johns’ posted a farewell note on DC’ Source blog today, to confirm the news. His run officially started with Green Lantern: Rebirth in 2004, which brought back Hal Jordan as the central character and re-purposed the Green Lantern mythos. Over the course of his run, some of DC’s more spectacular event storylines of the past decade grew into existence, from The Sinestro Corps War to Blackest Night. And it’s telling that, when the New 52 reboot hit the DC Universe, the Green Lantern franchise was one of the only books to be barely affected by the change. Because his stories were working.
Essentially turning the central concept of the franchise into ‘Power Rangers in Space’, Johns brought back a range of forgotten characters, created a load of his own, and managed to spin the book into three other titles, all of which have lasted the New 52 with little creative strife. It’s an impressive run, and makes Johns one of the few writers to maintain a 100-plus issue run in recent memory, alongside Robert Kirkman and Brian Michael Bendis. I particularly liked when he had a talking squirrel join.
The last issue of the run will be the 64-page issue #20 in May, and will be drawn by a host of familiar faces including Ivan Reis, Doug Mahnke, Ethan Van Scriver, and Joe Prado. The question now is — how the heck do you follow that?
Fair play to him, it was never my cup of tea but it is a highly success run that should be applauded.
I always wanted to like Green Lantern growing up but never did. When I first read Rebirth, I officially became a fan. I got lost a little afterwards, but when the New 52 started, I made sure to stay on board. Green Lantern, Corps, and New Guardian are all amazing books. Since Johns does not write the other 2, I still have high hopes someone good will take over. Thanks Geoff for the great years.
Johns nine-year run is something to be celebrated, even if there was a lot that didn’t appeal to me personally. Looking forward, I wonder if DC will try to maintain some continuity with the current group of creators — and have Tomasi and Bedard switch to different books — or pull a 180 and really shake up the line by recruiting a group of new writers. Can Jeff Lemire squeeze one more monthly into his schedule?
Honestly, I’d like to see some new voices get a shot. Creators like Jim Zub, Justin Jordan, Sam Humphries, Marjorie Liu, Joe Keatinge, Brandon Graham, Kathryn Immonen, and Jamal Igle (as a writer — his Molly Danger pages are fantastic) would all be choices that would get me excited about the GL line again. New blood, you know?
Bedard, Tomasi and Milligan are all ending their runs on their respective titles as well.
I read that Lemire would be co writing JL with Johns but i don’t know if that was confirmed.
Johns did some great work but I do think it was time for him to move on. Looking forward to whoever writes Hal next
With Morrison’s Batman run also ending, how about all of DC’s big writers just switch books? Snyder’s going over to Superman already, so Johns could take over Batman, Morrison Green Lantern. They could call the whole endeavor DC NOW! and then… um, never mind. Who’d ever believe such a gimmick?
Yeah, goddamn Marvel Now, curse them for using their quality stable of writers to put out a quality stable of books. What is their problem?
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