NYCC 2014: Robert Venditti And Van Jensen Pit Lanterns Against New Gods In Godhead

Following Geoff Johns on Green Lantern was always going to be a difficult gig. DC’s Chief Creative Officer set a high bar with his expansion of the Green Lantern Corps mythos and exploration of the other areas of the emotional spectrum, not to mention huge, sweeping stories like Blackest Night.

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Despite the seemingly daunting task in front of them, Robert Venditti and Van Jensen jumped in eagerly with a series of dangerous threats for the GL Corps, including the ring-hunting Relic in “Lights Out” and an alliance of alien races in the “Uprising” crossover. But while the Lanterns took their lumps in both of those stories, they’re up against an even more unbeatable foe in the Godhead event currently running through Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: New Guardians, Red Lanterns and Sinestro: the New Gods themselves, determined to prepare for war against Darkseid by any means necessary, even if that means claiming the power of the various lantern corps’ rings for themselves.

It’s the first time we’ve seen Jack Kirby’s creations to this extent in the New 52, and while Venditti gave credit to Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang for their work with Highfather and Orion on Wonder Woman, he told Bam Smack Pow at New York Comic Con that for the New Gods, the impending threat of an attack from Apokalips is something they’d go to any length to prevent.

“As with anything that we try to do, you want the villains to be sympathetic in their own way, and I wouldn’t even call them villains in this arc, they’re antagonists,” Venditti said. “They have very clear motives, and they’re dealing on a large scale, because Darkseid’s going to ruin everything guys. They’re looking at it from the top down. The Green Lantern Corps is more from the bottom up. They’re the ones down in the trenches with the civilians. It’s just those two competing ideas going at each other. Who’s right and who’s wrong, you know?”

If it’s difficult to imagine ring-wielders as the beings “in the trenches,” reading the first few chapters of Godhead puts things in perspective in a hurry. In a straight-up fight against the New Gods, even the Lanterns don’t really have a chance.

“The Green Lantern Corps is thousands of aliens armed with the most powerful weapon in the universe, so it’s really hard to continually come up with new, viable threats for them,” Jensen said. “Characters are at their most compelling when they’re put in a situation where whatever their power is doesn’t really work. That’s what we’re seeing with all of the corps. Everyone who wields a ring, they’re going up against gods. This is not the most powerful weapon, this is a relatively weak weapon to the New Gods, and they’re getting trounced. So then what happens? How do you fight this unassailable enemy? Not to spoil where it goes, but a big part of this is our characters both within and without discovering the means to take the fight to the New Gods.”

That sense of desperation has already led Hal Jordan to suggest that the Green Lanterns look to ally themselves with Sinestro. It’s the kind of tactical decision that Venditti has been using to showcase more of the character’s growth during his time as leader of the Green Lantern Corps, going from the gut instincts that served him well as a fighter pilot to a true leader who needs to consider every move.

Still, there’s only so much the lessons of the previous arcs can teach Jordan when he’s up against Highfather and company.

“No matter how good of a leader, how good of a strategizer you are, if you’ve got the Bad News Bears and you’ve got to go take the field against the Yankees, you ain’t going to win, you know what I mean?” Venditti said. “So how does he deal with that now? And that’s what it’s all about as a writer, just trying to come up with new conflicts and put your characters in new positions so that they can always grow coming out of it.”

Along with familiar faces like Highfather, Orion, Metron and Lightray, the pantheon of New Gods also received some new additions for Godhead. Characters like the warrior Uggha and the weaponsmith Hyalt are now side-by-side with Kirby’s creations, adding another layer of intrigue to the overall tale.

Tinkering with the King’s work sounds like even more of a tall order than following after Johns, but Jensen — who did most of the brainstorming for the new New Gods along with New Guardians writer Justin Jordan — explained that the process was simply one that required distilling the Fourth World concepts down to their essence.

“The approach that we had, and we talked about this as a group of writers, is that you look at the Kirby New Gods stuff and the whole Fourth World, everything that’s collected in those great omnibus editions, and he based those characters and those stories in archetypes,” he said. “They’re these very primal stories, but then he took it in this weird new direction. And so we kind of took it and said, ‘Well, what are the archetypes that are already filled by existing characters, and then what are some of these ancient character archetypes that aren’t filled? You want characters that, almost the moment they show up on screen, you recognize, like, ‘Oh, I get what that is.’ You know, that guy’s a destroyer, he’s just going to come in and wreck everything. She’s more of a cunning fighter who’s going to be striking in a more methodical way. And I think that’s why the Fourth World resonates today is it’s rooted in these things that are based in the very origins of human history.”

Both writers said that the collaborative process between them, Jordan, Cullen Bunn and Charles Soule has been a strong one, and that the writers have been pushing each other to make this the biggest possible story they can tell. Venditti added that the seeds have been planted in every book to have the main characters in place for Godhead, and that going back and re-reading the issues since they took over the books would show how everyone with a role to play has been put on the board in a very organic fashion.

Most of all, though, they want readers to have as much fun with the high concept of Lanterns vs. New Gods as they seem to be having writing it.

“It’s the two biggest, most powerful cosmic groups in the universe that are colliding head-on,” Jensen said. “So if people don’t like that, I kind of don’t know what to tell you.”

Godhead continues this week with Act 1, Chapter 4 in Green Lantern: New Guardians #35.