DC Comics’ Elseworlds line has boldly brought new interpretations of classic characters, and Green Lantern: Dark is the latest book in the Elseworlds imprint. Written by Tate Brombal (Batgirl, House of Slaughter, Behold Behemoth) and Werther Dell’Edera (Something is Killing the Children), Green Lantern: Dark stars a brand new hero named Rina Mori who is the last superhero in her universe. Unlike her traditional Green Lantern counterparts from the mainline DC Universe, Rina doesn’t use a power ring. Instead, she carries a physical lantern (in a nice nod to the first Green Lantern, Alan Scott) that lights her way through the post-apocalyptic world she lives in.
We sat down with Tate Brombal and Werther Dell’Edera to discuss the character design process for Rina Mori, the creative freedoms that the Elseworlds line has to offer, and why Rina’s story is so relatable in this moment.
I’m a big Green Lantern guy. Do either of you have a favorite Green Lantern?
Tate Brombal: My favorite Green Lantern is Rina Mori, our new Green Lantern. And I love Alan Scott, of course.
Werther Dell’Edera: Yeah, I have to say it. Hal Jordan is the greatest Green Lantern. I’m sorry, I love him.
It’s nice to have two different eras of Green Lantern bookended here. So Werther, what about Tate’s work made you ask him to invite you to draw this book? I was there at New York Comic Con and I heard the story.
WD: Well, everything, I love his work. What he has done on the Slaughterverse, House of Slaughter, Barbalien. So I think the way he thinks about the characters, sorry, I don’t have words. The way he goes through the characters’ feeling and emotions, and way he put it on paper, drawing, writing the lines, the dialog, the way the characters come out from the dialogs is so, so beautiful. And the flow he has when he writes a story is really good. I love the face of the story. So, yeah, when he started to tell me about this idea, I was totally in, because there were a lot of beautiful ideas, and I know that he was able to put it on paper in the best way, right?
With your work Tate, there’s just a rich interior and emotional life with the characters, it really comes through a lot. So I’m very excited to get to see kind of what a Green Lantern story will be like from your point of view.
TB: It’s gonna be a journey for Rina. She has a lot of struggles. I like my characters with struggles. And I think people will really relate with her and connect to her. We are so in love with her. We’re really excited for people to meet her.
And her design is just so gorgeous. There’s almost like an insect element with her wings. And so I wanted to ask, what was the process of designing her character and creating the visual language of Green Lantern Dark?
WD: We have talked a lot about the character before, to start drawing things. And, yeah, Tate has given me a lot of beats about about the emotion she expressed, her kind of style. Speaking of her power, Tate told me that it came from this lantern that could be just a shape of the power and the real [source of the] power. And he has got this idea to have some kind of moth, like the real moth that goes around the light that come out from this lantern, and floating around. The idea to go into something between a leaf and then the insect, for a costume. I would like to have something dark, really dark, in this costume. And so, yeah, we started on that stuff and arrived at the final character.
TB: The only thing I the only thing I requested was I wanted to have those big boots.
WD: Yeah! The big boots!
TB: I love that during the Mike Carey X-Men years, there was Rogue with her hood and she had these big, chunky boots. And I was like, ‘I love those boots, and I want our Green Lantern to have those boots.’ So that’s what I asked for.
She’s coming for Guy Gardner, in terms of being a Green Lantern with big boots.
TB: We have gotten a couple Guy Gardner comparisons.
WD: We were not thinking about the original Green Lanterns when we thought about Rina, but they came out some way, the haircut, the boots. It reminded me a lot of Guy Gardner.
TB: Which is cool. The DNA of other Green Lanterns are kind of in her, even though she’s totally new and totally separate from all of them.
I love that she’s continuing this core element, just in a completely different way. And Tate, your work often involves loners going through some type of epic journey, and experiencing lots of emotions at the same time. And so I wanted to ask, what drew you to making a Green Lantern story?
TB: It all comes back to the iconic core of what a Green Lantern is and how they function on willpower. And a lot of the inspiration came from post 2020 years of just struggling through like a world that felt post-apocalyptic at times. And then having to be a Green Lantern, where your powers function on willpower, when you’re struggling to even get out of bed. And every other superhero has been wiped out. She’s literally the only light left in the universe for a lot of people. And she’s become a symbol of hope for them. But she never asked for that. And it’s just a lot to have on your shoulders. So I think that’s what makes her very relatable and people really connect with her because a lot of Green Lanterns have that noble like, ‘We must do what is right’ [attitude], and seem to have this endless willpower, which kind of makes them a bit more unrelatable. Because I’m like, ‘It’s hard out here, man.’
So it’s really fun to tap into a Green Lantern where that’s her core struggle. And her ability to save the world hinges on if she has the will to do it. And then asking the question, ‘Where does willpower come from? Where do we find hope in times like this?’ It is going to be a long emotional journey, but also it’s going to be scary and it’s going to be funny, because we both just love little bits of humor and levity.
I love that. So many Green Lanterns look super athletic. But I love that Rina isn’t quite fragile, but she’s very slight, very small. I think her haircut also really accentuates that. She almost looks like she’s made out of glass a little bit.
TB: She’s edgy. She’s got these earrings like thorns. We wanted her to be a little bit witchy, a little bit goth. The punk aesthetic was totally Werther. As soon as I saw that, I was like, ‘This makes so much sense.’ Like, that haircut, those earrings, it’s perfect for who she is, yeah.
So Green Lantern: Dark is part of this Elseworlds line from DC. And could you tell us a bit about what it was like bringing your own creative and artistic sensibilities to an established character like this?
TB: It was so much easier because it was Elseworlds, where we could kind of just take everything we love about a character, about this world and then do our version. And it unlocked all the potential, and they let me do so much. I was like, ‘I want to change this character to be this way,’ or, ‘I want to kill this character.’ And [editorial] was like ‘Yeah, that’s great. This is Elseworlds, you can do what you want!’ And I’m like, ‘Oh my God!’
Obviously it needs to stay to the core of who characters are, but when you’re doing your own version, you’re showing them in a new light, and unlocking potential that they might not have in the mainline universe, where there’s just more rules constricting things. It allowed me to bring more of my voice and a lot of my story decisions to it, because I didn’t need to worry about whether a character sounded right, because of how they’re being written currently. So honestly, it’s a dream for my first DC project to be an Elseworlds thing. It’s like a dream come true. And I feel like really lucky to be doing it.
WD: I think this is like a win, win situation, you know, because you have the chance to do whatever you want, and at the same time you have the chance to set something new, something different, if you are good enough, obviously. But always with kind of stuff when the publisher is able to give the artists the right amount of freedom to express, it’s really good. Because [the artists] will give [the publisher] something really, really interesting, really new, at least a new point of view, that speaks about the ‘superhero’ idea.
It’s very heartening to see a big publisher like DC just be so supportive. We’ve spoken about this symbol of willpower within the DC Universe, are there any other characters that you would love to do your own take on?
TB: We got to do a few cool new takes on characters in our book. So I’m already having fun with that. I love our version of Grundy. I think readers will really love our Grundy. And there’s a few others I can’t spoil, and there’s some there’s one major new character, Rina’s main foe across the arc who we are obsessed with. It’s now the Rina show with this other character who’s just like, I don’t know, it’s all about them, and I love it. So I’m honestly really happy with what I’m what we get to play with now. It’s surprising when a character unlocks for me, that I didn’t know I had something to say with. I didn’t know I had something to say with a Green Lantern comic or character until this story came to me, like, ‘Oh, this is a Green Lantern story, and it can only be told with a Green Lantern.’ So it sometimes takes that click for me. So I’m always excited when that happens. And I can feel like this spark of like, ‘This is something good here, yeah?’
WD: There are a lot of characters that I love. I don’t know. I don’t have a preference. You know, basically, for me, the most important thing, more than character, is the writer. If I can work with someone really good that I love to work with, or that I think that is really good, I’m happy. I can draw basically everything if it’s a good story with a character in the right way. I’m so happy.
Green Lantern: Dark #1 is out now from DC Comics.