VENDITTI LEADS AN "UPRISING" IN "GREEN LANTERN"

From Comic Book Resources

When Robert Venditti took the reigns on "Green Lantern" last year from Geoff Johns, his primary goal with the series was to make a leader out of Hal Jordan. Mission accomplished.

As the current arc, "Uprising" comes to a close this week in DC Comics' "Green Lantern" #33 and next week in "Green Lantern Corps" #33, Hal has proven indispensable and absolutely capable of leading the Corps against a full-scale Durlan invasion utilizing a wide range of tactics including a Stonewall Jackson-like field assault and a bait-and-switch covert operation that would leave Jack Bauer grinning. And Jack Bauer doesn't grin.

But it hasn't been all Hal all the time with Venditti, The increasingly busy writer -- he is currently working on "Green Lantern," "The Flash" and "X-O Manowar" while completing his debut novel "Miles Taylor and the Golden Cape" -- has also delivered new heroes and villains to the Green Lantern mythos including game-changing Zezzite Gorin-Sunn.

With the Billy Tan-drawn "Uprising" Part 5 in stores this week and the final chapter coming next week, CBR News connected with Venditti to discuss Hal's growth as a leader, Gorin-Sunn's unexpected, yet well-received, prominence in the current arc and the upcoming return of one villain he created for the series (Relic) and an undead army that he didn't (Black Lanterns).

Venditti also teased that as big as "Uprising" was for Hal Jordan and the Corps, what's coming this fall is even bigger.

CBR News: When you are writing characters with a long history like Green Lantern, obviously developing a threat not only worthy of a confrontation but who is also fresh and exciting for readers, is of the utmost importance. Can you talk about the big bads of "Uprising," the Durlans, and how you were able to build them up into such a worthy adversary for the Green Lantern Corps this time around?

Robert Venditti: It started in "Green Lantern Corps" with a story featuring the Durlans and the Khunds -- two alien races with a history in the DCU so we didn't create them as villains. They were working in the background in "Green Lantern Corps" and at the same time, Hal was going up against the Outer Clans, which is like the Wild West on the fringe of the DC Universe. Van [Jensen] and I were talking because there are certain things we want to do with the two books and those are going to continue to come to fruition throughout the rest of this year and this is one large piece of it. What we want to do with Hal and John is have a storyline that if you read both books together, you would get a larger story but each individual one stands on its own, too. For example, the three "Uprising" issues in "Green Lantern" are about Gorin-Sunn and the people of Zezzen and the energy aspect of Durlans; and over in "Green Lantern Corps," it's about Sodam Yat and the Daxamites and finding out about DNA aspect of the Durlans' plan. There is two individual plots that you didn't really realize were connected until the very end and everybody ends up in the same spot for the final big battle. That was the challenge that we set for ourselves -- to tell a story that would do those things and have big moments in both books and sew them together to make something even bigger.

Read the full interview here.

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