5 Reasons The Emotional Spectrum Ruined Green Lantern Comics

Oh, the fabled “new reader.” Both DC and Marvel search for her high and low, like an explorer seeking the fountain of youth. Yet, their decisions always seem to contradict that goal. If you want to start reading Green Lantern right now, you need to read about a decade’s worth of comics before any of it will make a lick of sense to you. That’s a problem for many reasons, especially with this dying industry that will probably collapse entirely once the Baby Boomers shuffle off, but mainly because it prevents Green Lantern from once again becoming a smash success.

Rebirth had the benefit of being a reboot and provided a great jumping-on point for new readers - not necessarily people who were new to comics, but new to the character. Right now, Green Lantern is being written for people who are already invested in Green Lantern. When we think of a great run on a comic, we don’t often think of a lot of built-up mythology. Nobody says, “Here, read Brubaker’s run on Captain America… and here are the years of comics you need to read first for it to make any sense!”

This is not to say that long form storytelling is inherently bad. Look at Morrison’s JLA and Doom Patrol runs or Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men saga. But even though Claremont wrote the X-Men for like twenty years, he still found ways for growth and change to occur on the page. He found ways to encourage newcomers to stick around. It’s not like they fought the Sentinels for ten years.