Becoming the Black Green Lantern: John Stewart (#SFWApro)

As I’ve mentioned before, the rise and fall of some characters’ fortunes over time, and the random way in which they reach success and visibility, fascinates me. Even when a character’s good (or like early Green Arrow, mediocre—check out the link for details), they may not get a rocket-ride to success. Case in point, Green Lantern John Stewart.

Stewart debuted in Green Lantern #87 back in 1971. Hal Jordan’s masters, the Guardians of the Universe, tell Hal he needs to train a successor for the day he doesn’t come back, and they’ve found black architect John Stewart is the man for the job. This was during the Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams period of “relevant” comics stories (discussed here) but it rereads way better than most of them.

In the first place, Stewart isn’t a nice, clean-cut black man (making a black character clean-cut and all-American was a popular tactic back in the day to make them acceptable as possible to white audiences). He’s cynical, a little angry, just short of being militant.

He’s also right in the issue’s big controversy, about whether a George Wallace-style segregationist politician is to be trusted (short answer: no). Completely right. It would be much more typical to have the series’ star turn out right, or have them meet somewhere in the middle (Hal’s a little bit right, John’s a little bit right …) but Hal’s completely in the wrong, and realizes he’s also misjudged his protege as just a black guy with a chip on his shoulder.

If the book had continued, I imagine we’d have seen more of John, but it only lasted a couple more issues. John’s next appearance was three years later in Justice League of America: Hal’s knocked out in an accident, so when he gets a JLA signal, the ring goes and gets John to fill in. It’s an implausible set-up, but it was a kick to see John return.

Then when O’Neil started writing Green Lantern again, John made a few appearances while Hal was once again out of action. O’Neil didn’t do much more with him, but Len Wein did when he had Hal quit the ring-slinging gig and John took over (details here). Under Steve Englehart, John continued as a GL even after Hal got his ring back (the link goes into that too). He also marries another GL, the alien Katma Tui.

Then DC decided rather idiotically that having lots of Green Lanterns was a bad idea, because Hal wasn’t special (by which logic, cop movies are a bad idea, as the hero isn’t the only cop in the world). In a contrived plot, almost the entire Corps loses its power, leaving Hal as sole hero. John got to hung around, but Katma was gratuitously murdered in a classic example of “fridging” (female characters getting murdered to provide angst for the men).

When the Corps started up again, though, John got a ring again, and with it his own series, Green Lantern Mosaic (though I didn’t care for it much).

And then came the real game-changer. When Paul Dini and Bruce Timm launched the Justice League cartoon back in the 1990s, they used John rather than Hal, thereby relieving the all-whiteness of the JLA. This version of John was a tough, no-nonsense ex-Marine (a characterization that eventually bled over some into the comics). For people who’d never read the comics but loved the ‘toon, he became the Green Lantern. He’s been a starring player in the various Green Lantern books ever since, though not in his own book (surprising when Sinestro and the Red Lanterns both get a series [EDIT: Check out the first comment]). I think at this point he’s become a high-enough profile character he won’t be going away. Which is quite an achievement.

(Cover art by Neal Adams, all rights to current holder)