Green Lantern: Doomed Cosmos Turns Humanity Into the Villain

WEPAAAA! Imagine a universe where the Green Lantern Corps is fighting for survival, not against some alien tyrant, but against humanity itself. That’s the twisted premise behind Green Lantern: Doomed Cosmos, a six-issue DC Elseworlds series from writer Dan Watters and artist Kyle Hotz, launching January 20, 2027. In this world, human beings have spent centuries conquering planets, and Hal Jordan is the one human willing to stand against them.

The Empire of Humanity has carved a bloody path across the galaxy, forcing world after world to submit. The Green Lantern Corps is the last major force capable of resisting the empire, but these Lanterns are not the polished intergalactic peacekeepers readers usually recognize. They are exhausted soldiers, fighting a losing war with damaged armor, patched-together weapons and little reason to believe the next battle will be any easier.

Hal’s place in this nightmare is particularly interesting. He was once a soldier fighting for humanity’s empire, until his own battle-brother Oliver Queen betrayed him and abandoned him on an alien planet. The Green Lantern Corps rescued Hal and deprogrammed him, transforming a former imperial soldier into the Corps’ first human warrior. Now the man who once served humanity’s conquest is one of the strongest weapons against it.

That betrayal by Oliver Queen is a nasty little twist for longtime DC fans. In the regular DC Universe, Hal Jordan and Oliver Queen have one of the great friendships in superhero comics, even when they disagree about almost everything. Turning that bond into the spark of Hal’s downfall immediately tells us we’re not visiting a familiar version of the DC Universe. This Elseworlds story is ready to make things personal.

DC describes Hal’s journey as a blood-soaked odyssey through the ruins of a very different universe, eventually taking the war to the shores of Hell itself. Familiar heroes, villains and alliances will be reimagined as the conflict escalates. That gives Watters and Hotz a big playground, but the most compelling question is what happens when Hal has to choose between his own species and the people trying to stop it from destroying everybody else.

Hotz says he’s drawing inspiration from classic war films while balancing enormous space-opera visuals with the emotional toll of the conflict. He wants the Corps to look battered and desperate, with cracked armor and weapons practically held together with tape. That’s a great visual direction. A Green Lantern ring can create just about anything its wearer imagines, yet these warriors still look like they’ve been pushed beyond their limits.

Watters has been delivering some wonderfully unsettling work across DC’s line, including Batman: Dark Patterns, and Hotz brings an appropriately monstrous visual sensibility. Together they have an opportunity to explore the uglier side of cosmic conquest without being tied to the usual continuity. Elseworlds works best when a familiar character is placed in a situation that forces readers to reconsider everything they know about them.

The debut issue features a main cover by Kyle Hotz, with variants by Björn Barends, Steve Beach and Ashley Wood, plus a foil edition featuring Barends’ artwork. Dan Brown provides colors and Steve Wands handles lettering. The 32-page first issue is priced at $4.99, with cardstock variants at $5.99 and the foil cover at $7.99.

I’m curious to see how far DC takes this one. Hal Jordan is usually defined by his willpower and courage, but here he’s fighting the civilization he came from. Put that conflict inside a galaxy-wide war and you’ve got more than a simple superhero-versus-villain setup. You’ve got a chance to tell a genuinely ugly, complicated space epic.

Credits: Writer Dan Watters; artist and main cover Kyle Hotz; colors Dan Brown; letters Steve Wands; variant covers Björn Barends, Steve Beach and Ashley Wood.
Publisher: DC Comics.
Format: Six-issue Elseworlds miniseries.

Issue #1 on sale: January 20, 2027.