WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Green Lantern: Season 2 #3, by Grant Morrison, Liam Sharp, Steve Oliff and Tom Orzechowski, on sale now.
Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp's The Green Lantern Season 2 has brought Hal Jordan back down to Earth -- literally -- for an ongoing assignment from the new Guardians of the Universe. While the superhero has continued to battle strange threats from across space and time on his home planet, his next threat could be building somewhere far, far away.
In the epilogue to The Green Lantern Season 2 #3, some shadowy, cosmic figures are planning something within Hal's jurisdiction of Sector 2814, and their sinister plans seemingly involve the Green Lantern. While the character's identity hasn't been fully revealed, her name, Lady Q, suggests that she may be a new incarnation of a classic character from Crisis on Infinite Earths: Lady Quark.
Lady Quark was created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez in 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths #4, where she hailed from the alternate universe of Earth-6. In this alternate reality, America lost the Revolutionary War, which led to a visibly more technologically advanced society ruled by Quark and her husband Lord Volt. The royal family possesses superpowers, and Quark was able to absorb and redirect nuclear energy as well as fly, possess superhuman strength, speed, and endurance to the level of being able to safely travel unimpeded through the vacuum of outer space.
Despite all that, Earth-6 and Quark's family, including her young daughter Princess Fern, are destroyed by the Anti-Monitor's antimatter wave, and Quark escapes to swear revenge against the cosmic villain and joins the surviving DC Multiverse heroes in defeating him.
On the reborn Earth-1, Quark still has memories of her lost family from the Crisis and romantically approaches the Will Payton incarnation of Starman only to be rejected. Going back to the cosmos, Quark is recruited by Vril Dox to join L.E.G.I.O.N., where she's ambushed and secretly replaced by a villainous shapeshifter. The real Quark would resurface years later as part of Alexander Luthor, Jr.'s plot to restore the DC Multiverse during Infinite Crisis, with the Earth-3 villain channeling the alternate universal energy of several figures from different realities living on Earth-1 through the Anti-Monitor's old tower. Quark was imprisoned within the tower, and Luthor's plot is successful before Quark breaks free and joins the heroes against the Secret Society of Super-Villains. Quark would last be seen in the pre-Flashpoint DC Universe during Geoff Johns and Perez's Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds, where she was reunited with L.E.G.I.O.N.
The New 52 incarnation of Lady Quark was seen in the Vibe comic book series, imprisoned with other alternate universe figures by Amanda Waller, including Pariah, the extra-dimensional figure that had rescued Quark from Earth-6 during the Crisis. In 2014, Multiversity: The Society of Superheroes - Conquerors of the Counter-World #1 by Grant Morrison, Chris Sprouse, and Karl Story established that Lady Quark and her restored royal family now resided on Earth-48 after a Flashpoint-initiated multiversal merger between the former Earth-6 and the Warworld of Earth-48.
The Green Lantern: Season 2 #3 concludes on the planet Kranaltine, the throneworld of the Crown Imperia. A shadowy figure referred to Lady Q is seen conspiring for a planned wedding between Hyperboy and Princess Illustra to continue at any costs, with Hyperboy himself a nod to Silver Age superhero from another world that possessed the same powers as Superboy erased from history by the Crisis. Warned of the danger, Lady Q shrugs off the possibility of having to kill off another Green Lantern to make this wedding proceed, acknowledging that she's killed at least one Green Lantern in the past.
With Kranaltine both a key location for the extraterrestrial Starman Prince Gavyn and a location of importance to L.E.G.I.O.N., there are more than a few clues that Lady Q may be a new incarnation of Lady Quark beyond her mysterious name. And with a willingness to kill Green Lanterns and nefarious plans based outside of Hal Jordan's sector, Hal's time back on Earth may take an unexpectedly dark turn in the very near future.