Tuesday, April 10, 2012

On The Air: Green Lantern (2011-12)

The live-action feature film didn't really move comics fans as well as it should've. However, Green Lantern finally gets to star in his own animated series, a CGI entry from Warner Bros. Animation, airing on Cartoon Network as part of its mid-morning DC Nation hour on Saturdays.

Green Lantern launched with a primetime sneak peek before beginning a series run, the same formula that CN employed with Young Justice, which airs in back of Green Lantern these days. The only other CGI series on the CN roster presently is Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and due in a few months will be Beware The Batman, which wouldn't be a surprise if it also is part of DC Nation.

So far, the series is set in space, so there is zero room for Hal Jordan (Josh Keaton, ex-Spectacular Spider-Man) to head back home to Earth. Hey, it's early.

Following is a preview video from the network:



A little history lesson. Kilowog was introduced in the 80's. The Red Lanterns were a more recent creation of writer Geoff Johns, who was a writer-producer on last year's movie. DC felt that it was necessary to keep the Red Lanterns around as they relaunched the DC Universe last fall, and I suspect it was more as a favor to Johns than anything else. The expansions he's made with GL's supporting cast still have room to grow with long-time fans and readers, but the inclusion in the series may have been the ultimate goal all along, I don't know. What I do know is that this is the best presentation of GL to date.

Rating: A.

2 comments:

magicdog said...

I've seen the show and it's not bad but I'm not fond of the CGI animation. I prefer high quality 2D.

I'm not a comic geek so I didn't know about the Red Lanterns or the "color spectrum" of other Lanterns.

Other geeks have said the Red Lanterns are depicted very differently from the comics but I don't mind this. As a non-comic geek, I can appreciate the story the creators are trying to tell without having to make everything exactly as it is in the comics. Same thing for "Young Justice" which doesn't necessarily follow mainline DC storylines for its characters. Why watch something you know is going to happen?

This of course coming from someone who didn't know there were other GLs after Hal Jordan until Superman, TAS (in which they introduced us to Kyle Raynor) and Justice League (which introduced John Stewart).

hobbyfan said...

CGI isn't perfect all of the time. I think CN is taking this tack to draw the video game crowd.

As for GL's, Guy Gardner is the fourth Earth-based Lantern, and he appeared on JLU and Batman: Brave & the Bold. He's the red-headed guy with the Moe Howard tribute 'do.