Something that’s made Green Lantern books so exciting in the past fifteen years or so has been the constant, significant additions to the mythology, many of which were made by Geoff Johns over the course of his run that lasted for nine years. In the time since, several other writers have run with the torch by making their own valuable contributions, one of which is Sam Humphries, the guiding hand of Green Lanterns.
To this point, I personally have not been shy about showing my appreciation for what Humphries and company have done with rookie Corps members Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz. In fact, being able to play around with characters who aren’t Hal Jordan and John Stewart are but a few things that make his title so thrilling.
More recently, we’ve begun to learn about the Green Lantern Corps’ earliest days and, believe me, there’s a lot of wiggle room when it comes to storytelling, especially when you consider they’ve been policing the cosmos for billions of years.
Aside from recently unveiling Alitha, Humphries revealed another of the first to don a ring in Z’Kran Z’Rann, whom he spoke of in a recent interview with Comicosity:
“The Z’Kran character comes from Mars. He is a White Martian. These are things we’re all familiar with in the DC Universe. But I wanted to give him something that would make him stand out from what we know about White Martians. To do that, I gave him that a bit of ‘Batman remix.’ When he was young, his entire village was massacred by a bunch of vagabonds. It set Z’Kran on this path to become someone who could overcome great fear. And we all know that the ability to overcome great fear is the #1 prerequisite for becoming a Green Lantern — today or 10 billion years ago.”
When it comes to who drew up the character design, the scribe had the great fortune of being able to work with a fan favorite:
“We worked with Joe Prado on the design. Joe is an old hand in the Green Lantern legacy, having designed all the characters for Blackest Night. He was a natural choice for these seven characters who we will be doing a huge storyline with — and have great plans for. When you want really striking, visually impressive character design, Joe Prado is the man.”
Green Lanterns #24 is now available in comic shops.