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After a mini PR meltdown over DC editorial’s leaked plans to kill John Stewart, the long running Green Lantern character who is considered DC’s best known African American character, it is being confirmed on Twitter that he’s going to be okay after all! DC’s Executive Director of Publicity Alex Segura and Green Lantern writer Robert Venditti released the joyous news:

And Reddit went mad with relief.

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14 COMMENTS

  1. Many of the DC offices are in serious flux. While it’s clear they want to have “synergy” between their all mediums, this is a clear example of why they don’t have that. It can be believed that the reason WB green lit a GL film was due in large part to Geoff Johns rebooting of Hal Jordan, that success still paled in comparison to amount of fans who knew and liked John Stewart through the Justice League cartoons.

    Instead of using the more visible GL with a public awareness in the millions, DC/ WB went with the GL whose fans number in the hundred thousands. Just on numbers alone, that’s not smart business sense. Couple this with Ryan Reynolds recent comments that more than hint at the lack of direction that plagued the film and it’s easy to see why it didn’t work.

    DC has a wealth of good characters and great worlds. Despite that, it seems they people in charge, most of whom are “Hollywood types”, don’t know how to exploit that. And there is a certain amount of irony about “Hollywood types” not being able to exploit comic book properties.

  2. I’d love to see DC state “We did have plans of this nature but due to amazing fan support, we changed them”.

    But we know that would never happen because the companies can’t ever look like they listen to us. Then we’ll supposedly have leverage.

  3. What “leaked plans”? Nobody leaked a script. Nobody leaked any art. It was rumor. Anyone can say “I heard it from on high”. You wan’t it to be fact? Name your sources. Otherwise, no one knows anything.

  4. ” You want it to be fact? Name your sources. Otherwise, no one knows anything.”

    Nonsense. Executives and writers spinning this hard pretty much gives the PR game away. Unless, of course, some readers are just that gullible to believe anything from these guys. You want it to be fiction? Then let DC prove it with some quality comics, for a change.

  5. Is that Kyle’s mask at Johns feet? Bet one way or another they’re killing somebody off. DC doesn’t know anything else.

    ..not that Marvel does either.

  6. Talk about weasel words. Of course you’ve no plans to kill him off, that’s what DC wanted Fialkov to do. Then changed their minds (again) when they saw what way the wind was blowing.

  7. regarding killing john stewart then changing their minds (if thats the case?)

    who cares?

    the plan for lost was to kill jack in the pilot, and the plan for homeland was to kill brody in season 1, then in season 2….they didn’t…plans change (for better or for worse is open to debate, but the creative process is what it is)

    too much of the hivemind buzz detracts from the actual act of reading the published comics themselves…that’s all that ultimately matters…not the woulda coulda shoulda

    the question no one is answering is should john stewart (originally called black lantern btw) immune from death strictly because of the fact that he’s black?….

    or does simple nostalgia trump creative opportunities?

  9. @Gary I think the difference is where the idea comes from. You could ask why the death of Damian Wayne didn’t raise as many pitchforks as the eventual death of John Stewart and I think the reason is that Damian’s death makes sense within the story that Morrison is telling. The order to kill John Stewart came as a last minute modification on an already discussed and approved storyline, it’s maketing at its absolute worst.

  11. Yeah @Gary – I’ve been a GL fan for 40 years and that’s the first I heard of a “Black Lantern” reference. Information please.

  12. “does simple nostalgia trump creative opportunities?”

    Killing off a character has got to be the laziest “creative opportunity” around. And anyway I don’t see what the big deal is (or was) about killing John Stewart because every single person here knows that they’d kill him and just bring him back six months later.

  13. I spoke/interviewed Neal Adams at NY Comic Con two years ago and he had a very clear memory of the creation of John Stewart and it was NEVER considered that he would be called “Black Lantern.” He and Denny O’Neil both thought it was absurd that the only “back-up” GL on Earth — Guy Gardner — happened to be another white guy. Adams said they told DC’s editors at the time, “You mean to tell me that an alien ring just happens to ONLY find white guys-with-integrity-and-fearlessness. They then went on to create Stewart. Now, it is true that when they introduced him — keep in mind that this was early ’70s that they gave him something of a black-man-with-chip-on-his-shoulder. But, hey, no one’s perfect.
    Either way, he was NEVER going to be CALLED “Black Lantern.”

  14. “And anyway I don’t see what the big deal is (or was) about killing John Stewart because every single person here knows that they’d kill him and just bring him back six months later.”

    The eventual resurrections make these deaths even MORE gratuitous and stupid, not less. Eventually every character in both universes will have a convoluted death/return arc lodged into their back stories.

    DC and modern superhero comics in general have went to the well far too many times on character kill offs for any of them NOT to feel gimmicky and cheap (and the truth is 99.99 percent of them are).

    There are many ways to write a character out of a story but modern comics go to the same one all the time, every time. There just comes a point where people get very, very tired of seeing their favorite characters killed off or gored or raped or whatever. It has become beyond tedious and infuriating because it’s happening all the time.

    Death itself has become a gimmick and because of that death means nothing other than yet another eye-rolling attempt at being “edgy”. Cheap shock, cheap publicity, and a cheap sales fluff passing for a story.

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