The Green Lantern concept was first introduced with the Golden Age with Alan Scott, and has since been a title passed down and around the DC Universe ever since. Even in the last ten years alone, two new Green Lanterns have been introduced and given prominent roles in A-list titles like Justice League while starring in their own series.

But for many fans, Hal Jordan is the Green Lantern. A major DC player from the early days of the Silver Age superhero revival, to his fall from grace during the mid-1990’s Emerald Twilight and subsequent resurrection and rehabilitation, Jordan has never really left comics. While other Green Lantern characters may be reduced to smaller roles as others take more distinctive arcs, Jordan has remained a constant presence in the DC Universe as a Green Lantern, Parallax, the Spectre... and Green Lantern, again.

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After being brought back to life by Geoff Johns in 2004’s Green Lantern: Rebirth, Jordan spent the next nine years at the center of a multi-series arc that saw him essentially serve as the premiere member of the Green Lantern Corps. While recently there have been exploration of characters like Kyle Rayner and John Stewart, along with new players like Jessica Cruz, Jordan has also been consistently a presence in Green Lantern and Justice League books.

But despite that constant role as part of the forward momentum of the DC Universe, he’s also been seen by a sizable portion of fandom as an exceedingly boring character. Compared to characters like Cruz, Simon Baz, Rayner, Stewart and Guy Gardner, he can be, well, dull. While the others have specific personalities and journeys to overcome their own fears, Hal is typically defined by simply being "the best."

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He was never as defined as a person beyond that, leaving creators to recontextualize him over the years. As a result, he's been simplified, to the point where it seems like there’s five different versions of the same drab, unremarkable character across DC continuity. For new readers, there's nothing at first glance that makes him stand out, especially compared to the more diverse members of the Green Lantern Corps.

Leave it to Grant Morrison to focus on that and make it Hal’s defining characteristic. During a recent round table interview at the DC Entertainment offices in Burbank, CA, Morrison shared what drew him to Hal in the first place, and what he believes makes the character unique.

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Space Man

Morrison’s version of Hal is disconnected from the world on a fundamental level, playing into his broad interpretations and character changes. When he’s Green Lantern, he’s confident and assured. But when he’s Hal Jordan, he’s babbling without realizing it. He’s odd. That lack of personality, instead of being a result of his lack of character, will become his character in Morrinson and Liam Sharpe's The Green Lantern.

Speaking about Hal’s growth over the years, Morrison said, “The Hal Jordan character has been around since the 1950s, and he’s one of the few characters whose history has gone pretty much unchanged through that whole time… [H]is personality has changed quite radically through that time. He’s gone from being this test pilot, this man without fear. Then John Broome came… basically DC’s own version of the Beats generation back in the 60’s. He looked at Jordan and obviously wanted to bring him on a similar kind of journey he was on. It was kinda the whole Jack Keroic The Dharma Bums, the Beat on the road trying to find yourself. I think that has always wrung through the various iterations of Green Lantern.”

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Morrison also elaborated on the different interpretations of the character over the years, from the “bone-headed right wing cop” of the Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams run all the way to his stint as the Spectre (DC's biblical Spirit of Vengeance), and how they're all part of the character's psychological disconnect from the rest of the world.

The Green Lantern #1 (Morrison/Sharp)

“At that point, it goes from being a test pilot to suddenly he’s an insurance investigator,” Morrison explained. “But then he gets tired of that and becomes a toy salesman. None of these things seem to relate to each other at all. I love that sense of disconnection, of dislocation. Some of the American astronauts, Buzz Aldrin and people have talked about having coming back from space and finding it really difficult to deal with the life on Earth after seeing this giant perspective. And that’s only from the moon.

“This is a guy who’s been to the other side of the galaxy," the writer continued. "He’s seen planets where it’s a utopia, where people live for thousands of years, where the political system is perfect, where they don’t use money and capitalism is a distant memory. And he comes back to this and it’s like coming home to the village, you know, the mud hut that is Earth. How do you reintegrate? And I loved the way Broome played that… to just try different versions of himself.”

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That disconnect fuels much of Hal’s worldly connections, Morrison explained. “He’s embraced a kind of diversity beyond anything we even have on the planet Earth. When he comes back, he thinks we’re all just one species, and he doesn’t see the differences. He doesn’t know how to talk about that. He doesn’t know how to talk about the things that are important to earth because he’s so far in another place, even with other living creatures intelligent creatures. And I think that’s an important aspect.”

The Green Lantern #1 (Morrison/Sharp)

It’s an interesting means to engage a character often accused of blandness, creating a tangible human core to his experiences and his reaction to them. Morrison ultimately compares his take on the character to his epic run on Batman. “Taking all those contradictory aspects of the character, like with Batman, if you combine them as one person, it’s like a real person. Cause all of us have these shades , these contradiction in us.

“We’re very much playing with that. In the first four issues particularly people’ll be saying ‘Hal Jordan wouldn’t do that Grant, you don’t understand this character!’ and then you’ll see what we’re aiming for.”

The Green Lantern, written by Grant Morrison with art by Liam Sharp, is scheduled to be released Nov. 7.