Green Lantern January 2027 Solicitations: Is the Corps Worth Rebuilding?

League of Comic Geeks has DC’s January 2027 solicitations up, and 5 Green Lantern comics are on sale that month: new issues of all 3 ongoing series, Doomed Cosmos #1, and a facsimile of Tales of the Green Lantern Corps #1.

The November solicits left Hal Jordan missing, with Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner going after him and Krona back on the board. Green Lantern #43 says Hal has turned the Corps upside down, and it asks whether the Corps is worth rebuilding. The same month, DC reprints the 1981 comic where Krona blows up the Central Power Battery.

On sale dates:

• January 6: Absolute Green Lantern #22 and Tales of the Green Lantern Corps #1 Facsimile Edition
• January 13: Green Lantern Corps #24
• January 20: Green Lantern: Doomed Cosmos #1
• January 27: Green Lantern #43

The copy in the quotes is DC’s, as listed by League of Comic Geeks.

Absolute Green Lantern #22

On sale: January 6, 2027
Price: $4.99, 32 pages
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Jahnoy Lindsay
Covers: Jahnoy Lindsay, Homare

Jo and the lanterns work to hunt down Mark Shaw and get one step closer to the Manhunters. But will the new head of Hammond, Carol Ferris, let them take her personal security so easily?

The cover is Jo Mullein alone, in a jacket and jeans, with a blade of green light between her hands. The solicit is a hunt for Mark Shaw, and a problem named Carol Ferris. Neither of them is on the cover.

Read straight, Mark Shaw is working as Carol Ferris’s personal security, and Jo wants him because he’s a step toward the Manhunters. Carol running Hammond is the part I didn’t have. In the mainline comics she still has Ferris Aircraft.

On #22 Lindsay is drawing the issue again, and he’s on the main cover. #20 had him on the cover only, with Sid Kotian on interiors. If you’re behind on Absolute, our review of Volume 1 covers how it started.

Tales of the Green Lantern Corps #1 Facsimile Edition

On sale: January 6, 2027
Price: $3.99, 32 pages
Plot: Mike W. Barr
Script: Len Wein
Pencils: Joe Staton
Inks: Frank McLaughlin
Cover: Brian Bolland

All 3600 of the current Green Lanterns Corps members are recalled by the Guardians to Oa because there is trouble stirring in the universe. Hal’s story of how he came to be the successor of Abin Sur is retold, together with how Krona was first banished from Oa, and the resulting formation of the Corps. Krona’s new powers are revealed and a minor skirmish takes place that results in the demise of a few Corps members.

That paragraph is the old catalog copy. The story is called “Challenge!” It ran 25 pages in a comic cover-dated May 1981. DCU Guide has it on sale February 5, 1981, for $0.50.

Barr plotted it, Wein scripted it, Staton penciled it, and Frank McLaughlin inked it. Brian Bolland painted the cover, and his signature runs down the left edge.

DC’s solicit names Wein, Staton, and Bolland, and it puts Staton on the cover line too. The painted cover is Bolland’s.

All 3,600 Green Lanterns get called to Oa. Krona crashes the meeting, and the Central Power Battery explodes. Arisia makes her first appearance, and the issue retells Hal taking the ring from Abin Sur.

The Manhunters show up in a flashback. Absolute #22, on sale the same day, has Jo hunting them. I doubt anyone scheduled that on purpose.

“A minor skirmish” is a funny description of a story that blows up the battery.

There’s a 2027 foil variant. The solicit doesn’t list a price for it.

November brought Krona back. This reprint is the issue where he blows the battery apart.

Green Lantern Corps #24

On sale: January 13, 2027
Price: $3.99, 32 pages
Writer: Morgan Hampton
Artists: Fernando Pasarín and Oclair Albert
Covers: Fernando Pasarín and Oclair Albert, Nathan Szerdy, Rian Gonzales (paper doll)

All the good the Green Lantern Corps has done, all the lives they’ve saved, the lives they’re now protecting: Is that worth more than the life of one friendless child? What about the lives lost along the way? What do the Lanterns owe them? John Stewart and the Darkstars, Jessica Cruz and the Alpha Guardians, the brave, the bold, Black Hand, and the Light of Life all collide in a confrontation that changes the way the Lanterns operate forever.

John Stewart led the Darkstars in the ’90s, after Emerald Twilight, when there was no Corps left for him to lead. Jessica Cruz has been standing up the Alpha Guardians since #21. Hampton puts both camps in one issue, and Black Hand is on the card with them.

Black Hand speaks for death. “The Light of Life” is the other end of that, which is where Blackest Night ended up: black rings, then the white light. I don’t know yet if Hampton means the Entity, or a name that belongs to this run.

“Changes the way the Lanterns operate forever” is standard solicit hype. The question in front of it is better. One friendless child, set against every life the Corps has saved and the lives it lost along the way. I hope #24 actually argues that.

Green Lantern: Doomed Cosmos #1

On sale: January 20, 2027
Price: $4.99, 32 pages
Writer: Dan Watters
Artist: Kyle Hotz
Covers: Kyle Hotz, Ashley Wood, Björn Barends, Steve Beach

For centuries, the Empire of Humanity has swept across the universe, laying siege to the cosmos planet by planet until all kneel before the might of the human race. Only the heavily militarized Green Lantern Corps dares oppose the human crusade.

And no human has ever fought for the Corps against the Empire. Until Hal Jordan.

We already ran the announcement. The solicit matches it, and it locks the date: January 20, $4.99, 32 pages, Watters and Hotz. The main cover is the war from that piece. Hal is in heavy armor with a construct minigun, and the Lanterns around him are armed, alien, and on fire.

If you want Hotz talking about war movies, and the variant prices, that’s the writeup.

Green Lantern #43

On sale: January 27, 2027
Price: $4.99, 32 pages
Writer: Jeremy Adams
Artist: Scott Godlewski
Covers: Scott Godlewski, Dustin Nguyen, Karen S. Darboe

Hal Jordan has once again turned the Green Lantern Corps upside down, and Kyle Rayner has looked into his heroic origins and seen darkness. Do they return to Oa to help rebuild? Is the Corps worth rebuilding? And if they return to Earth, will Carol or Jade be waiting?

“Once again” is the part I’d underline. Hal has broken the Corps before. Emerald Twilight was the time that stuck: he tore the Corps down, and Rebirth spent 6 issues building it back. I don’t have December’s solicits, so #42 is a blank from here.

#43 says they found him, and the Corps came out of it in pieces.

Kyle has looked at his origin and found darkness there. That origin is the alley at the end of Emerald Twilight: Ganthet, the last ring, and “You shall have to do.” I’d guess the darkness is Parallax, or Hal.

Carol is Hal’s. Jade is Kyle’s, and Alan Scott’s daughter. The solicit asks if either of them will be waiting on Earth. That could be a status check, or it could mean the two of them are in the same place.

Godlewski’s cover stays crowded and skips the question. Hal is in front, wrapped in a torn blue-white sheet with faces in the cloth, grappling a figure in white armor. Flash and Green Arrow are on the rocks behind him. A woman in a violet uniform is in the air, an orange cat with Dex-Starr’s face sits in the corner, and a black silhouette hangs in a rift over all of it.

Karen S. Darboe’s variant picks a side. Hal hangs upside down inside the lantern symbol, and Carol stands in profile in the Star Sapphire uniform, with a star on her chest and a gem on her forehead.

The solicit asked whether Carol or Jade would be waiting. Darboe drew Carol.

Corps #24 comes out 2 weeks earlier, with John, Jessica, Black Hand, and a question about what the Corps owes the dead. Read that one first. Then see what Adams thinks is left to rebuild.

Lanterns in other books

A few other January comics drop a Lantern, or a Lantern villain, into somebody else’s book.

January 13, Supergirl #21, $3.99. Sophie Campbell writes, Ig Guara draws. Bleez is in the pile of friends trying to get Kara’s powers back.

January 13, Legion of Super-Heroes #5, $3.99. Joshua Williamson and Hayden Sherman. Princess Imra runs into “the Emerald Empress of the Green Lantern Corporation.”

The Empress is a Legion villain. I have no idea what a Green Lantern Corporation is. The name is why that solicit is on this list.

January 20, Deathstroke: The Terminator #11, $3.99. Tony Fleecs writes, Carmine Di Giandomenico draws. Slade teams with Vath Sarn, the Rannian Green Lantern, against a cartel selling a designer drug with galactic consequences.

January 27, Superman #46, $4.99. Joshua Williamson and Xermánico. Superman has to fight a resurrected Nekron, and the solicit promises Black Lanterns to go with the zombies. Put that next to the compendium further down.

Collected editions

3 Green Lantern books in this batch go on sale after January.

March 16: Green Lantern: Blackest Night Compendium, $59.99, for 1,480 pages. It collects Blackest Night #0-8, Green Lantern #39-52, Green Lantern Corps #33-46, plus tie-ins that include the JSA, Flash, and Wonder Woman minis. That’s the end of Geoff Johns’s War of Light.

1,480 pages for $59.99 is a lot of comic. The Blackest Night reading order is there if you’d rather have the path than the brick.

April 6: Green Lantern: Destiny, $12.99, 144 pages, by Minh Lê and Andie Tong. It’s the last of the Tai Pham books, after Green Lantern: Legacy and Green Lantern: Alliance. Tai is still training under John Stewart, Sinestro is headed for Earth, and Tai wants a seat with the Justice League. DC announced it for readers ages 8 to 12.

June 1: Green Lantern: Rebirth, in the DC Compact line, $9.99 for 352 pages. Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver. It collects Green Lantern: Rebirth #1-6 and Green Lantern #1-6, the No Fear arc.