*This transcript is produced using transcription software and reviewed for quality. Despite our best efforts, some passages may be incomplete or contain errors due to audio quality or software limitations.*
Matthew
…and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Friends, have you found yourself bathed in a warm green light? Have you found yourself wishing that people who were flying were bathed in a warm green light?
Do you kind of think that all cops are bastards, and so you’re not sure how you feel about space cops? Or are you just happy to see John Stewart and Hal Jordan on screen? Because the first two episodes of Lanterns have gone live.
I am here with DC comic book expert extraordinaire Jessica Plummer. And as always, this is not a review show. We’re not going to be just saying what we think of the show, but there’ll be a little bit of that. We’ll be diving into some of the questions the show is already bringing up. I can already tell this is going to be a great show that’s going to raise a lot of questions, and maybe, by the way they answer them, I won’t think it’s great. We’ll see. But it’s going to have a lot for us to talk about. So today I especially want to spend time both getting into those questions and also really setting the stage, helping us fully understand the context of what we’re talking about.
And so, having someone who’s read quite a lot of the stories of Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Manhunters, Sinestro, and all the other people involved in this universe: Jessica Plummer. Jessica, how are we doing tonight?
Jessica
I’m doing pretty good. Thanks for having me.
Matthew
We’ve talked about this before, and we’ve got a couple of episodes where we got into how we felt about the upcoming Lanterns show, but just a quick review: what was your background with these characters, and how did you feel going into this show?
Jessica
Yeah, like you said, I’ve read a lot of Green Lantern comics. I’ve read all the Green Lantern comics pretty much. If Green Lantern was on the cover, I have read the comics. So, hundreds and hundreds of comics starring John or Hal or both, and Guy sometimes. All of them together, the whole gang.
I was cautiously optimistic going into the show, mostly because I really loved this is part of our new DC TV movie universe, the Gunniverse, I don’t know that there’s an official name for it. I loved Superman, and we have Guy Gardner in that. He’s a Green Lantern. I thought it was an absolute note-perfect take on Green Lanterns, what they are, how they operate, and Guy as a character. There was such a deep understanding of everything about him. And I thought the casting of this show was really exciting.
I thought Kyle Chandler as an older Hal Jordan is brilliant, and Aaron Pierre as John, sorry, I wasn’t familiar with his work, but he’s a very handsome man. Yeah, pretty shallow. And he’s wonderful in it. I was dubious about the True Detective approach, and I remain highly dubious about it.
Matthew
Okay, okay, because I’ve got to say, I love the show so far. I have much less experience with the characters. I have almost nothing with Hal Jordan. Mostly what I know of John Stewart comes from the Justice League cartoons, some of the Superman cartoons.
I always thought he was an interesting character in those, but there wasn’t really much to his character other than strength and competence and stuff like that. I’ve been greatly enjoying this show so far, but I’ll admit, that is very little to go on. You could make it a red power ring instead of a green lantern, and I’d probably be enjoying it just as much. Talk to me about how you’re feeling about this as a Green Lantern show.
Jessica
Well, that’s exactly it. I don’t think it’s a bad show. I think it is, I’m going to say it, a bad Green Lantern show. There have been a lot of conversations lately about adaptations, with Wuthering Heights and the Odyssey, about how far you can get from not even necessarily the plot points of the source material, but the themes, the tone, and the substance, the heart of the source material, and still say it’s an adaptation. There’s absolutely something to be said for bringing something new to the table, but at a certain point you’re no longer adapting the thing you said you were adapting. You’re just capitalizing on an existing property to bring audiences into your random new other thing.
Matthew
If I can give an example of what you’re talking about: I think Fury Road is a fantastic movie. I think Mad Max: Fury Road is a horrible Mad Max movie. As far as I understand it, it was written to some extent to be a different take on Australian future dystopia, and the producers were like, okay, but you’re known for Mad Max, can we stick the Mad Max name on it and make this character Mad Max? And that’s what happened. It feels like, to your mind, that’s kind of where this is. If it was just two totally new characters doing this kind of thing in the DC universe, you’d like it a lot more than calling it a Green Lantern show.
Jessica
It’s not even the characterization so much. I don’t think this is a great Hal or a great John as characters, they’re perfectly fine as they are, but as adaptations of the characters. It’s really that Green Lantern is about a guy with a ring that can do anything, from outer space, who hangs out with aliens. It’s a colorful and imaginative property. That’s the whole point of Green Lantern. The ring can do anything you can imagine, and it’s full of weirdness. And I don’t necessarily mean the stories have to be in space, many hundreds of Green Lantern comics take place on Earth.
But I was like, can we not afford constructs? There’s a moment very early in the first episode where Hal is driving the car, he jumps out of it and tells John to save himself with the ring. The car goes over a cliff. A few minutes later, John catches up with Hal, and Hal says, “What did you make to save yourself?”
And John says, “Bubble wrap.” And I thought, wow, that sounds funny and fun, I would have liked to see that. Unfortunately, it reminded me of Kevin Smith’s stand-up bit where he talks about being asked to write a Superman screenplay in the ’90s for the movie that was going to star Nicolas Cage. It’s very funny if you haven’t seen it, but he says he was talking to the producer, and the producer says, “I don’t want him to have the costume, the costume’s stupid.” And Kevin Smith is like, “You don’t want Superman to wear the Superman costume?” And the producer says, “No.” And then he says, “And I don’t want him to fly.”
“Flying is stupid.” And Kevin Smith is like, “You want me to write a Superman movie where he doesn’t wear the costume and doesn’t fly?” And the producer says, “Yeah.” And that movie never got made, and I think there are reasons. You can have different takes on Superman, but if you don’t want certain things, I don’t think you want to write a Superman movie. This show, while being interesting, felt like it was made by people who had absolutely zero interest in Green Lantern as a concept, and were kind of embarrassed by it and thought it was stupid. There’s a bit where somebody asks Hal why he doesn’t wear the costume, and he basically says the costume’s stupid. It’s like, am I watching the first X-Men movie with Cyclops making fun of yellow spandex? I thought we were past that.
Matthew
No, I think that’s really fair. And I think this gets into one of the interesting ethical questions that I really care about: what are adaptations, what do you need to do when doing an adaptation, and who is it for? Because, honestly, when I heard the bubble wrap thing, I thought that moment was hilarious, and my immediate thought was thank God they didn’t show it, because it would have felt so cheesy. And I was so happy they didn’t. But I did feel like, I want to see something. So when I saw the twenty dollar bill, and the bottle opener, I love those, because those are pure green constructs. And when I saw him light the cigarette of the woman he’d just had this little foray with in his truck, who of course turns out to be an important character, I loved all that. To me, one of the hardest things with adaptations is figuring out what are stories, or story beats, that work in one particular medium and at one particular time, that are hard to translate. As an example, I often think about V for Vendetta and Watchmen as two comics that both faced a similar problem and handled it very differently. Both of them were originally told against the backdrop of the Cold War, and they had to say, we wrote this at a time when everyone thought the Cold War might never end, or might end in nuclear hellfire, and now we have to tell it for an audience that knows that’s not true. V for Vendetta said, we will modernize the story and tell it in a new and different way. Whereas Watchmen said, we’re going to ask you to imagine that nuclear war between the US and the USSR is very real, even though all of us who lived through it know it wasn’t, well, the threat of it was very real. All that’s to say, I’ve always been a big believer that it’s okay to modernize something, to tell it in a different kind of way.
We actually got into this discussion a lot with my friend Adam Kamisis on our Odyssey episode, which we did quite recently. But all that’s to say, I have no problem saying, we are in a, I don’t want to say dark and gritty, because the show doesn’t feel dark and gritty to me. But when you’re describing it as sounding a little cheesy or campy, I don’t think that’s bad, and I think there’s a time and place for it. But the idea of saying, can we take elements of Green Lantern but take that away? I’m all in for…
Jessica
Look, I think there’s a balance you want to hit between being faithful and changing things up, and I think Green Lantern is actually a fascinating example of that, because we had a rigidly faithful adaptation in the 2011 movie, and it was unwatchable. I remember sitting in the theater the minute it started, and we get this massive info dump about all the different lantern corps and how colors are emotions and whatever.
I was like, oh, I’m in for a bad two hours, and I was right. So I think you do have to reinterpret, but I think at a certain point there are things that are inherent to a property. There are Green Lantern comics coming out every single month, and they have rings and flying and constructs and aliens.
That’s what the story is. It’s like if you had a Star Wars movie and nobody was in a spaceship, and nobody had a lightsaber because that would be cheesy. That’s what Green Lantern is. I think Superman is a great example, I’m not saying it has to have the same tone as Superman, but I do think Superman showed how you can embrace that colorful, cheerful, and yes, admittedly often cheesy thing, and still make it feel modern and vital and genuinely emotional. But I do think at a certain point…
They’re cheesy, they’re comic books, they’re superhero comic books. You have to accept it, or it’s just a different thing. You don’t actually like the thing, I don’t mean you personally, but…
Matthew
No, that’s fair. I think it’s very fair. I’ll just say, because a lot of my audience who knows me is probably wondering why I’m yelling at the radio right now, or whatever you listen to podcasts on: I think Star Wars is a bad example, because I think Andor is one of the best Star Wars products we have right now. Andor has no lightsabers whatsoever, very little space combat, and is a lot less cheesy and campy than the originals. But I get your overall point. Okay, so let’s get into some of the specifics.
Let me ask this. At the end of the second episode, by the way, obviously we’re doing huge spoilers here, should have mentioned that up front, but big spoiler warning on all of this: we start in a very grounded way, with the whole first episode being, are there aliens at all? By the end of the second episode, we’re meeting Sinestro, we’re going to other planets. Do you have hope that they’re giving an on-ramp for people like me, and that we’re going to carry into a lot more of the wacky, zany stuff, or does the tone of it just feel off?
Jessica
I don’t think it’s ever going to get wacky and zany. I don’t think it should. I think that would be a betrayal of what the show has already put forward. When John made the bird, and the bird is there the whole episode, I was like, thank God. I don’t actually understand how the bird stays functional when he gets knocked out twice, and Hal says, “Don’t lose your concentration or the bird will go away,” but okay, whatever.
Matthew
Anyone who’s played D&D knows he did not continue to succeed his concentration checks.
Jessica
No, absolutely not. But fine, okay. That was also, this is nitpicky, but one of the things I watch for in adaptations is: are there Easter eggs, are they name-dropping stuff, or are they ashamed of their source material? Christopher Nolan, for example, is ashamed of his source material in those movies. He goes out of his way not to name-drop the things that would be obvious name-drops. I’ve complained about this on the show before, I’m pretty sure. But I think it’s in The Dark Knight, there’s a car chase, and a circus truck goes by, and it’s not Haly’s Circus, which is the circus Dick Grayson grew up in, it’s a different circus with an H. And I was like, now you’re just bullying your audience.
And so the whole first episode, I was like, who is this William Macon guy, who are these people, where is Rushville? Maybe it’s a real deep cut, but the only things that were comics references, from what I could tell, were the existence of Haling, John, and the Guardians, and a weirdly accurate backstory for Hal, but not for John, a not-comics-faithful backstory for Hal versus a random weird one for John. But in the second episode, it felt like they started to warm up, and they were like, all right, Manhunters, and I think they mentioned Abin Sur in the first episode, and Hal goes to what I assume is Oa, and we see the sign itself. The sheriff comes from Gotham, and I was like, okay, I feel like I’m willing to walk with you a little bit here. I would be shocked if I come away from this show saying, wow, I love that show. But I’m like, all right, you’re willing to play in the space a little bit.
Yeah, and I’m willing to meet you where you are. Because, like I said, I don’t think it’s a bad show, I think it’s telling an interesting story. I just think it’s a bad Green Lantern show.
Matthew
That makes sense. And it’s really, I know we’ve talked about how there’s a lot of conversation right now about John Stewart’s background being very different. Talk a bit about that, because clearly what they’re setting up is him as this abused kid with this crazy father. It kind of feels like if there’s anyone who should be afraid when pointing a gun at their kid, it should be the father, but he apparently is convinced he’s got perfect aim. It comes off a little weird to me, because what that feels like a commentary on is parents going to incredible lengths to push their kids into being athletes or theater stars or something like that.
Jessica
Yeah, he’s like a stage mom. He’s Rose from Gypsy.
Matthew
Yeah, so to me it’s like, wait a minute, if this is a metaphor for dads pushing their sons to play football, Kyle Chandler is a much better football coach, he would strike more fear in a minute.
Jessica
Maybe that’s what his beef is with John. He’s like, “I don’t appreciate your family’s philosophy toward football.”
Matthew
Exactly.
Jessica
It’s about heartwarming life lessons.
Matthew
Which, I will say the first episode felt a little weird, that there were so many football references. I wondered if that was, yes, college football and high school football is very big in Nebraska, but teaching the kid how to throw is like, okay, Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights, we all get the association. But yeah, talk a little more about it, because my understanding is there’s none of that in John Stewart’s original background.
Jessica
Oh god, no. Like I said, Hal’s is weirdly accurate. They went out of their way to be like, and he watched his dad die in a plane crash, and blah blah blah, all that’s very accurate.
John’s original backstory: he was an architect. He had no military background whatsoever, he was an architect. And I like the idea of Green Lanterns coming from creative backgrounds, because they’re creating, that’s what they do with the ring. Kyle Rayner is another great example of that. John was very engaged in the civil rights movement, and so was his mother, he really got that from her. There are stories about him going to protests as a kid.
I can’t remember off the top of my head, I think he might have had a brother, but he definitely had a younger sister who died as a child. So the two brothers we see in the show is not accurate. We don’t really see much about his father, his mother is the main figure. And I think that’s kind of a loaded dichotomy, we’re not really authorities to speak about this, but when you’re talking about a Black character, on the one hand we have the comics version where he has this really supportive mother but the father isn’t really part of the story, and the absent Black father is very much a stereotype, but on the show his father’s messed up, so not better.
Matthew
I will say I haven’t heard much commentary on that, but a number of the Black men creators I was speaking with about this issue kept bringing up a point I’d also agree with: that we so often see, when Black men come into these worlds, it’s from military, police, or working-class backgrounds. Folks who were really looking forward to having a Black man who is a college-educated professional before becoming a superhero, and not having that, is definitely feeling like a weird, “why’d you take that away?”
Jessica
Right, and I’ll say that has its origins in the Justice League cartoon. John was given a background as a former Marine in that cartoon, and the showrunner of that cartoon was Dwayne McDuffie, who is a Black man, not that, well, he said it was okay so everybody else should have no problem with it, but I also prefer John as an architect. They’ve folded that into his comics backstory, so he’s both a former Marine and…
He hasn’t practiced architecture in many years, but he trained as an architect.
Matthew
I mean, certainly people go to the Marines to pay for school and go on to have a different career.
Jessica
Sure, right, right. The two threads of his backstory don’t mesh very well in the comics. But John, Hal also didn’t have a military background until the mid-2000s.
He was a test pilot for a private company, and then his Air Force background, his brief time in the Air Force, got added in. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both of these men got military backgrounds added in shortly after 9/11. That makes sense. So I think that was a cultural response.
Matthew
Well, how does he become the Green Lantern? Because certainly a big part of the story is this idea of where does authority come from, and that Abin Sur was picked, how it was picked by Abin Sur and the ring, whereas John Stewart is being selected by the council of blue men far off, and the differences of that. How much does that line up with John Stewart’s story?
Jessica
I actually have a lot of questions. I don’t think the show has explained what the deal is there at all, because it’s very clear that John was being trained by his father to become Green Lantern as a child, and I’m like, what process, what was the audition circuit like for this, how did it go from whatever weird thing is happening with the apple to the Guardians knowing who he is? I assume that’s something we’ll get more information on, but it felt really bizarre. In the comics, Abin Sur crash lands on Earth, the ring just looks for someone who’s qualified, and it finds Hal and Guy, and Hal is closer, so Hal gets the ring. In 1971, when the creative team working on Green Lantern wanted to tell a story about racism, they introduced John exactly as he is in the show. He’s training under Hal in case something happens to him, and it’s the Guardians who say, “We’ve chosen this guy,” coming from the same source, the ring.
I don’t feel like there’s necessarily a difference between being selected by the ring and being selected by the Guardians, because the rings are tools created by the Guardians. The Guardians come to Hal and say, “We want you to train this guy,” and Hal’s like, I don’t know. The first time we see John, there are these old Black men playing checkers or dominoes on a street outside a store, and these cops come along and start hassling them, and John steps in and says, “They’re not hurting anybody, leave them alone.” He’s sarcastic about it, and Hal’s like, “I don’t want to train him, he’s got a chip on his shoulder,” and the Guardians say, “We’re not interested in your petty bigotry, Hal Jordan,” which is very funny.
Jessica
Hal’s like, “I’m not racist, my best friend is Inuit, and I’ve been calling him a slur since 1959.”
Matthew
I’m assuming the word “Inuit” isn’t used in the particular comic, but yeah.
Jessica
No, it’s not. And that’s not even, his best friend’s name is Tom Kalmaku, and he calls him “Pie Face,” that’s his affectionate nickname. So that’s why the Green Lantern team was like, we’ve got to fix some stuff here. But yeah, it’s similar, it’s not nearly as adversarial in the comic as it is in the show. Hal is shockingly hostile in the show. But it’s a very similar, “here’s the guy, you’re training him, but it’s just in case.”
Matthew
Let’s use that to start getting into the relationship between the two of them, because I think that’s one of the most interesting things. You talk about him being hostile toward John, and I didn’t read it as him being particularly hostile toward John himself, so much as he’s just kind of an asshole to everybody. He’s an incredibly charming asshole, but he feels to me like the person who genuinely thinks he’s doing a good job by John, because John’s getting to learn from his epic, wonderful wisdom, and all of this kind of stuff, and the way he deals with other authorities, the complete contempt he has for the sheriff and what she wants, until he finally realizes she knows what she’s doing, and the willingness to get himself arrested to talk to the alien, because he’s assuming the judge will just be like, “Oh, no, you’re Hal Jordan, go ahead.”
He’s an incredibly charming anti-hero, but he feels very much like an anti-hero in this, very much like the Punisher in some ways, not any of the motivations, but just in that way of relating to the world. Is that Hal Jordan in any way, or is that very off from Hal Jordan?
Jessica
No, it feels like if you took Hal Jordan and then you took one part of his personality and cranked it up to eleven, and kind of ignored everything else. It’s not so wildly off base, I’m not like, if we had a Superman like this, I’d be like, “That’s not Clark Kent.”
Hal is a character who really loves being in some kind of hierarchy. He feels safe and comfortable in it, while also having a massive problem with authority, which is not a good combination. He chafes under authority, he’s not a good employee, he can definitely be obnoxious, but there’s an anger to his interactions with John. I agree with you, he’s a jerk to everybody, but there are moments when his anger flares up, and he’s clearly angry that he’s being replaced, and he’s like, “You’ll never replace me.”
“That’s not going to happen.” He’s like, “Dude, you’re going to die someday.” That’s really what I was responding to, he’s really angry at John. Not all the time, but there are these flare-ups where he’s really pointedly nasty to him.
Matthew
Yeah, and that’s fair. I think it seems to me like he’s thinking, “I’m going to give the hardest possible training, and if John decides to quit because it’s too hard on him, I would not be sad about that in the slightest.” But in his mind, probably it’s, well, this guy needs to go through this or else he’s not good enough. It’s very much, “I’m setting an impossible standard because I just don’t think anyone can meet my standard, because I don’t want to be replaced.”
Jessica
It’s also very interesting that they brought Sinestro in, because guess who trained Hal? Sinestro. So maybe he’s either echoing the dynamic he had during his training, or responding to it in some way, which we won’t know until we see that relationship play out further. That would be an interesting thing to explore, as extensions and opposite directions of that dynamic, if in fact Sinestro trained Hal in this version of events, which we don’t know.
Matthew
And certainly in this version of events, the fact that he put on the suit to go see Sinestro, I feel like there are five different ways it could be significant, but it certainly feels very significant in ways that’ll be interesting to see how they explore.
This question of authority, and how he relates both to the authority of the organization he works for, but also how he relates to human law enforcement and the justice system, there’s obviously a lot to unpack there. So let’s get into that. Because to me, one of the overall frameworks of all of this is: we are telling a story where our heroes are cops.
And that is something that, for the most part, a lot of media, that’s not by the guy, I forget his name, who makes Yellowstone and Landman and a lot of pretty conservative-coded stuff, we don’t have many cops as heroes these days. In part, I think, understandably, because there’s a large part of the viewing audience, myself included, who have very negative feelings about police, given everything of the last ten, fifteen, twenty, one hundred, five hundred years.
You and I did an episode about, is Cyclops a cop, and is that therefore bad, and I was inherently bringing a, “that would be bad because we live in an ACAB world.” I think you and I had a conversation about how, when we were talking about this as a possibility, that so much of the police being bad in our world is very much tied to our world, and the idea that it could be a law enforcement global institution, a galactic institution, that’s not necessarily ACAB, how are you seeing the way they’re portraying them as space cops, and particularly, how they’re relating to, in many ways to me the most sympathetic character, and I think the character we’re rooting for most right now, is the actual human law enforcement, the sheriff. Oh, 100%. How are you viewing all that?
Jessica
Yeah, I mean, that’s a hard question to answer in a lot of ways, because we’ve seen so little of it. We don’t really know how the Green Lantern Corps as a whole operates. Hal seems to, it’s weird, because on the one hand, Hal seems to be able to act with total carte blanche on Earth, and presumably the rest of Sector 2814, which isn’t just Earth.
But at the same time, the minute he gets to Rushville, he has this jurisdictional battle with local law enforcement, which I’ve never seen in any superhero comic. It was a super interesting concept to bring in, that Green Lanterns might only have jurisdiction over matters relating to aliens, which isn’t really the point of a Green Lantern, but I’m fine with that particular change. One thing I like about him is that he does have that problem with authority, that he’s constantly flouting it, that he’s disrespectful to the sheriff and other cops, and it’s funny, these are at least funny scenes, that he breaks into the morgue and steals corpses, that he’s constantly, over and over again, doing things he’s either been told not to, or knows he’s not supposed to, or has promised he won’t do, or whatever. All of that is, as you said, making him an anti-hero, but I think this is one of those things we got into when we talked, when we had the previous discussion where you said Cyclops is a rule follower, but that doesn’t make him a cop. I am far more concerned about a cop, and the inherent copaganda in, a character who’s a cop who does whatever he wants because he’s decided it’s the right thing to do, than one who does things by the book. It’s supposed to make us like him more because he’s not being a stick in the mud and he’s breaking the rules. But that’s bad. The rules are what keep us safe from cops. That’s bad.
Matthew
It’s funny. I think this is one place where you’re close to my generation, but I think we’re separated by about a decade or so. Do you remember the Lethal Weapon movies? Those, I think, were the best example. But Die Hard, Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop, there was this, in the ’80s and ’90s, a lot of our heroes were cops, but weren’t, the bad guy was always the lieutenant who wanted them to get the warrant first, “can’t beat up a witness to get the information.” I’m willing to break, Dirty Harry is literally the living embodiment of “I’m going to be an abusive cop because we have to get the criminals.” They’re keeping the cop, they’re not wearing a badge, they’re not arresting people, and the fact that he was literally right about the alien, I think that pushes against it. But yeah, I am very nervous about exactly what you’re talking about, that we’re kind of heroizing this guy who’s a cop who doesn’t follow the rules, who thinks, “I can just do what I want, to hell with everyone else.”
Jessica
And that is what makes him heroic. I do have to stand up for my boy John McClane, though. In Die Hard, he’s trying so hard to contact the cops and do things correctly. He’s not trying to break the rules, he’s just the only one there, and he can’t get the word out. Not saying it’s not copaganda, but he’s not a renegade.
Matthew
Bruce Willis plays cops who are, I think Last Action Hero and other things are much better examples of him being a rogue cop. You’re right.
Jessica
And I’d say the further along the series gets, the worse he is in that department. Die Hard 5 is horrible on that front. But the first one, he’s trying.
It’s still copaganda. There’s that whole arc about, the, was it Reginald VelJohnson, the other cop, whose trauma is that he accidentally shot a kid, and he has to get over it so he can shoot more people.
Matthew
Yeah, yeah, and like, no, retire. Have you seen Beverly Hills Cop? One of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, and Eddie Murphy is hilarious in it, it’s a great movie, but the whole point of it is that you need a street cop from Detroit because the Beverly Hills cops do things like respect civil rights and warrants.
Jessica
And it’s so ridiculous.
Matthew
But anyway, taking it back to this, I am very interested in how that’s going to play out, because I did think, the whole idea of tricking a guy into figuring out he’s an alien with the “Barack Hussein Obama, you’re from rural Nebraska, and you have no reaction,” brilliant television. But I kind of wanted him to be wrong, because it was like, oh well, that is why we have to let him do it.
Jessica
Because the sheriff didn’t realize he was an alien when he really was. Yeah. Well, and they’re kind of having their cake and eating it too, because she always knows, every single time Hal’s like, “I figured out with my renegade ways,” blah blah blah, and he starts to say it, and she’s like, “The metal detectors are actually alien detectors,” and he’s like, “Oh, you knew the whole time,” and she’s like, “Yeah.” And that happens like five times over the course of both episodes. So the cop who’s played straight, and the cop who’s the maverick who doesn’t go by the book, are both always right about everything.
Matthew
And what do you think of what they’re doing with John Stewart? Because he comes across as very much, “I’m the one who’s going to play it by the book, by the rules.” He wants Hal to respect the sheriff’s jurisdiction and all that.
Although there’s a moment where he has a similar moment of, “I’m the only one who could figure this out, I should go warn the sheriff,” and the sheriff’s like, “You idiot, I’m already watching him, and now you’ve spooked him.” And then they have him get picked up by a woman in a bar and sleep with her, which I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with, by any means, neither one of them seems intoxicated, consenting adults, have fun.
But it’s played as though, it feels to me like it was played to say, “eh, don’t worry, he’s not too straight-laced either.” What did you think of how that was shown?
Jessica
Yeah, I don’t disagree. I think that was probably in part thrown in there to kind of humanize him, so he’s not just boring Mr. Rule Follower who doesn’t know what’s going on, and to make him look cool.
I’m very curious where that’s going, and what her whole deal is, and if this very male-dominated creative team is going to bother to give her a deal that’s coherent, or if all of that was just to make John look like a stud.
Matthew
You know, I’m all for open relationships and open marriages, and if that’s literally what they’re doing, and it’s just a coincidence that she picked up the guy who was coming to her husband’s house that day, sure. But it certainly feels like she had an agenda for seducing him that was connected to her husband.
Jessica
The husband doesn’t come off as someone with a cuckold fetish, but he clearly knows, and we can’t ignore the racial factor here, the history of white women sleeping with Black men in ways where the white men know about it and are either getting off on it in a racist way, or are kind of allowing it but getting ready to get mad about it because of the race, all of that’s in the room with us.
It creates this threat that John is now living under, that would happen no matter what race everybody was, but is specifically racialized here.
Matthew
Yeah, if it had been Hal Jordan left with her, it would have come across fairly different, in a way that I’m assuming the writers know, and I hope they know, but I’d be very curious if they don’t.
Jessica
Well, I think one of the showrunners, wasn’t he the guy, I’m blanking on his name, but he was behind the Watchmen show. Yes, and from everything I’ve heard, that handled race very well.
Matthew
I also did think, again coming at this from the ethics standpoint, it seemed like one of the things we set up pretty early is, what does it mean to properly use the literal unlimited power of this ring? It’s limited by its battery and all that, but you can do almost anything. There’s this moment where, it’s a couple of dollars’ worth of quarters, not a huge deal, but Hal Jordan is literally robbing the bar, using fake money to activate the jukebox. That’s not cool. And when John challenges him on it, there’s this moment of Hal saying, “No, you have to know that being able to use the ring for the right purposes, and not your own personal purposes, is the whole ball game.” He’s kind of saying, “I have to believe you won’t use it for the wrong purposes before I’ll let you have this ring.”
And he’s clearly doing it in a “do what I say, not what I do” way. So when John uses it to give the woman he’s just had sex with a light, it’s really cool. To me, the shot of the ash of the cigarette turning green for half a second before it turns red, give me that over constructs every day of the week. I know, I know, you’re killing me. I’m sorry.
But it also felt to me like John was doing that a little bit as an “F you” to Hal, like a little bit of, “You know what, I do have the ring right now, and I’m going to have a little bit of fun with it.” What was your take on that whole dynamic, and how much is that dynamic part of the original stories?
Jessica
Yeah, I think that’s absolutely, if nothing else, a moment where John, who knows if he’s directly thinking about Hal, is feeling good about himself, like, “I’m the man, and I’m going to use the ring, and look what a badass I am.” I’ll note that the jukebox bit is interesting, because they set it up like Hal is doing this very childish and selfish thing, but technically he’s doing it to provoke a bar fight, so he was actually using it for work, but he’s also, that’s Hal’s MO, “I’m going to be a huge asshole to everyone, and it turns out there was a method to my madness,” but he didn’t have to be an asshole about it.
Matthew
Well, right, because to me, playing the song five times to start a fight is being an asshole for a reason. Not using your own money, and using literal counterfeit money in the jukebox, is more the part I’m thinking of, like all he’s doing there is saving himself a couple bucks.
Jessica
Right, but can he expense those couple bucks? There’s a question raised in the second episode, where John asks how much do Green Lanterns get paid, and I don’t remember what Hal says, “not enough,” I think, but what is he even getting paid in?
Matthew
I’m very curious about that, because the implication I get is that they have a fairly good expense account, because him buying a ticket from Coast City to, I don’t think Rushville, Nebraska has a very active airport, he has to buy a same-day flight ticket, which isn’t cheap, and rent a car, which isn’t cheap. So to me it felt like there’s enough of an expense account that you could pay for your own damn jukebox songs. But who knows.
Jessica
Yeah, absolutely. But in terms of that being a dynamic: in the comics, when John is first introduced in 1971, it’s for a single issue, he’s not meant to be there as a regular member of the cast. Then they bring him back in the late ’70s as a recurring member, and there’s a period in the late ’70s, early ’80s, I don’t remember exactly when, when Hal steps down so he can live a normal human life, and John becomes Green Lantern. Hal feels a lot of ways about it, and he’s really mad that the guy he trained and was told would be his successor has become his successor, because he’s not doing the job anymore.
He’s a huge baby about it. There’s a certain amount of tension between them because of that, and similar to the show, John doesn’t start it. Hal is a jerk to John because of the consequences of his own actions, which he knew very clearly were going to be the consequences of his own actions, so John doesn’t put up with it. But that sort of, “I’m sneaking around and getting my own back at the boss,” isn’t really a dynamic they have, because Hal’s only John’s boss for a solitary issue, and these days they’re very close friends. Okay, that makes sense. Certainly in this universe, though.
Matthew
And granted, in 2016, my impression is that Guy Gardner hasn’t yet shown up, because they keep talking about Hal as the only Green Lantern. And I do get the impression that other superheroes are starting to filter in, because you said it seems like Hal, for most of his career, has been able to assume he could get away with anything. In this Nebraska town, they specifically say they’re trying to make an example.
Like it feels like this is a moment of the sheriff being the tip of the spear of the human world starting to say, actually, maybe we shouldn’t let these superpowered people walk all over us.
And we know…
Jessica
Well, it’s interesting. Hal, or Hal meeting Abin Sur, is first contact in this universe, or at least as far as most people know. And we know that Superman…
Matthew
The Superman movie established that he’d only been active for three years, and this is all, and granted, that was, I think…
I think what that tells us is that Superman shows up around 2020, 2021.
This is 2016. So I forget exactly what year did that Superman movie come out?
Jessica
’23, ’24?
Matthew
It was last year. So he would have started six years ago. And then the scene at the end of the first episode, that’s present day, that’s 2026. Okay, so I assume, we know Nathan Fillion is going to be in the show.
Jessica
I agree with you, I assume that when we see him, it’ll be in the present day, interacting with John, not interacting with Hal, which is a shame, because that version of Hal…
Matthew
Or, we might see his origin, we might see Guy show up. Either way, it feels like Guy is the one of the three who’s the most likely to be like, “You know what, I’m out of money, I’ll just Green Lantern some money to do this kind of thing.” Ten thousand percent. Okay, so I think that gives us a good framework for a lot of the questions. We’ve started to get into some of the questions I think are going to come up over the rest of the season. The last big one I have is, again, I’m coming at it, I feel like, in terms of dirty casuals, you really have three levels. You have the people who have just seen the movies, and I think there’s nothing wrong with that.
I want to be clear. There are also people who have seen a lot of the TV show stuff, who maybe grew up with Batman: The Animated Series and went into Justice League or Superman or stuff like that.
Jessica
Well, and there was a Green Lantern cartoon.
Matthew
Yeah, there’s a Green Lantern cartoon, and there’s also been Teen Titans and stuff like that, and Young Justice and all that. In a lot of those worlds, at least for me, when people hear “Manhunter,” what I think of, and I think a lot of other people think of, is J’onn J’onzz, where I knew he was referred to as the Martian Manhunter, but I never really understood, it was just like, well, the “Manhunter” part never mattered. But certainly he seems like a hero, not a villain. Here we’re talking about it in very negative terms. What’s going on there?
Jessica
Totally different character. DC uses “Manhunter” a lot, they’ve used the term Manhunter nine trillion times. I didn’t even consider that they might be using it for John here, but that would be some really awful character assassination. As you mentioned, there’s J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter, he’s the last survivor of Mars.
He’s a hero, he’s always been a hero. Then there are various vigilantes who’ve used the code name Manhunter, some of them have had powers or special gear, some of them haven’t, they’re more Batman-y. There’s like five of them. They’ve used the term a lot.
It’s a cool word. And then there are the Manhunters that are part of the Green Lantern franchise, and they’re robots from space. They were the Guardians’ first attempt at making space cops. They were like, we’ll just make robots, and they’ll do the space-cop thing, and everything will be great. But the Manhunters got too rigid with their programming, and it was interpreted as, “let’s kill everyone,” basically.
And the Guardians were like, oh, mistakes were made, we need a sentient living brain that understands fallibility and nuanced complexity, to have this power, we can’t just, which, in the world of AI, is a really interesting question the show could potentially explore.
The idea that you can’t give that kind of authority to a computer program, there has to be a thinking, living mind behind it, and that’s when the Green Lantern Corps was created. Every so often the Manhunters crop up and try to kill all the Green Lanterns. So I’d guess that’s where they’re going with this, especially because the alien who kidnaps John specifically says they’re not organic, they’re not alive. But he also said they’re shapeshifters, which isn’t a thing in the comics. So maybe that’s shifting.
Matthew
And it’s interesting, because I think they have to know their audience, that there’s a significant part of their audience who’s going to hear “Manhunter” and think of J’onn J’onzz. So we’ll be curious to see where that goes.
Jessica
Yeah, I hope they don’t go in that direction, because I love John, and he doesn’t deserve this.
Matthew
Yeah, but I think that’s very true.
Jessica
I think honestly, my bet would be, that’s not why they did it. I think they did it so they could just have a guy in a car heist jacket as their villain, like every other person on this show, and they don’t have to do a goofy-looking robot, because that wouldn’t be a tonal fit. They want a nondescript-looking dude as their villain.
Matthew
It was interesting to me that Hal talked about this pink-and-blue guy with blue goo for blood, but we didn’t see it.
Jessica
Yeah, it would have been cool to see that. Bubble wrap, and making giant fists to punch things…
Matthew
We did literally get that in the Superman movie.
Jessica
Yeah, and like I said, that was a note-perfect take on Guy Gardner, and on Green Lantern as a franchise. You can absolutely do grounded, quote-unquote “realistic” stuff in the DC universe. Obviously Batman is much further along that spectrum than Superman.
But something like, I think a True Detective movie or show with Batman and John Constantine would be amazing and hilarious, and I would watch every episode. Green Lantern as a franchise is much more aligned, I’d say, like Green Lantern, Flash, and Superman are all in that cartoony space, and then you have your Batman, and Green Arrow is further in that direction. So yeah, I think Superman is a better Green Lantern adaptation than this TV show.
Matthew
Well, it’s interesting too, because have you seen Creature Commandos, the TV show? No, I haven’t. That’s dark, but very, it’s very wacky, very zany. It feels a lot like, honestly, it feels a lot like The Crow, in that it’s dark and goofy but really over the top.
Jessica
Terrible, and there’s an episode of this on the podcast, but the first one was a comic book movie, it was ridiculous, it was so over the top.
And Creature Commandos was just very much like that. So James Gunn is in no way ashamed of the comic book material. So I’m now going to be very curious as to why this is the particular direction they’re going. Because, yeah, you said, I love it, but it does sound like it’s pretty far from what Green Lantern is supposed to be.
Matthew
Well, and it’s going to be interesting, and potentially bizarre, to see Nathan Fillion in this show, because, how do you translate that character. I did see they’re taking away the bowl cut for the next Superman movie, so maybe they’ll already have the hair change, but how do you translate that character into this new universe and have him still feel contiguous, I guess. The thing is, there are characters who have a lot of flexibility, you can have very different versions of them and they still feel valid and true. Batman is a great example, you can have something like Adam West or Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and then go all the way over to something like the Matt Reeves Batman, you can get really dark, or even Spider-Man, you can have something like Spider-Man Noir and something like Spidey and His Amazing Friends, the show for babies, and they’re both screaming at the same time, and they both feel like something that a character as big and well-known as Peter Parker can sustain. But I don’t think Green Lantern is there, and this is a big swing to make when you’ve just introduced, “this is what a Green Lantern is,” no, just kidding, “this is a totally different thing.” Interesting choices to me.
Jessica
Yeah, I hear that, I’ll be really curious to see how this all plays out. Well, I hope, if nothing else, this has been a great discussion, and I hope, if nothing else, the show doesn’t anger you so much that you stop watching entirely, because I know we’ll want to get you back, maybe once, maybe twice, definitely once before the end of this season.
Matthew
Foggy Nelson is not a character on Green Lantern, so they can’t kill him off and make me stop watching. So that’s fair.
Jessica
That’s the bar that’s been set, and there’s a game show…
Matthew
That’s my bar again, and that’s a good bar.
Matthew
I was the same way. So, Jessica, we love having you on here, where can people find more of your stuff?
Jessica
You can find me at JessicaPlummerWrites.com, I’m on Bluesky, I’m on Instagram, and I have a book coming out next fall, it’s a fantasy rom-com called Mage Struck. It’ll be published by Harlequin, and I know that’s very far in the future, but you should read it anyway.
Matthew
You definitely should, you definitely should put it on your pre-sale list. And you do have a short story featured in a book that’s already been published, Sword Stone Table, we’ve talked about it a bunch, sort of retellings of the Arthur stories, in a way that I love your short story in it, and I actually get to put a link to that book, assuming you can buy that book from bookshop.org, I’m gonna put that there, so we have an affiliate link, a little bit of the money will come back to here, unfortunately none of the money will go to Jessica, but the higher the sales for that, the more Jessica’s going to complain, look, I was in it, but we’ll definitely get you on, and certainly all her episodes, all her articles on Book Riot have been amazing, the old podcast you did, Flights and Tights, still lives online somewhere, I love it, I think you can find that on your website for anybody who wants to know more about Superman and wants to remember that it’s actually much more like what Superman is supposed to be in the comics, if you’ve only seen the Donner movies or the Snyder movies or whatever, definitely check out that podcast. So Jessica, thank you so much for being a part of this, myself and you and everyone else involved, thank you so much for listening, we have spoken.
