Green Lantern Coloring Page: Free Printable PDF Sheet

Green Lantern: History & Fun Facts

All-American Comics #16 and the Original Lantern

The first Green Lantern debuted in All-American Comics #16 in July 1940, two years after Superman launched the superhero genre. Created by writer Bill Finger (who had also helped create Batman) and artist Martin Nodell, this original Green Lantern was Alan Scott, a railroad engineer who survived a train crash by chance and discovered a magical green lantern made of meteoric metal. He carved a ring from the lantern and used both to fight crime in Gotham City. Alan Scott's powers were technically magical rather than alien, and his weakness was wood — a fact that aged poorly when later writers tried to integrate him with the Silver Age space-based Green Lantern.

The Silver Age Reboot and the Corps

In Showcase #22 in October 1959, DC editor Julius Schwartz and writer John Broome rebooted the concept completely. The new Green Lantern was Hal Jordan, an Air Force test pilot who received the ring from a dying alien named Abin Sur. Hal's version introduced the Green Lantern Corps — an intergalactic police force of thousands of members, each policing a different sector of the universe, all overseen by the Guardians of the Universe on the planet Oa. The new Lantern's weakness was the color yellow rather than wood. This Silver Age version is the one most readers picture when they hear the name.

John Stewart and the Animated Era

John Stewart was introduced in Green Lantern #87 in 1971 as the first Black Green Lantern of Earth. A former Marine and architect, he was originally created as Hal's backup but became a major character in his own right. For an entire generation, John Stewart is the face of Green Lantern thanks to the 2001-2004 Justice League animated series and its 2004-2006 follow-up Justice League Unlimited, in which he was the team's resident Lantern. The animated version emphasized his military discipline and architectural precision in the constructs he created — a style that influenced later comic depictions.

Constructs and Willpower

The ring's central feature shown in this coloring page — the green energy it projects — is unlike most superhero powers. The ring channels willpower into solid green energy constructs limited only by the user's imagination and discipline. Hal Jordan tends to construct vehicles and weapons drawn from his Air Force training. John Stewart builds architecturally precise structures. Kyle Rayner, an artist, creates the most fantastical and detailed constructs. Guy Gardner usually settles for a giant boxing glove. The fact that every Lantern interprets the same tool differently has given writers eighty years of stories without the power getting stale.

Yellow Fear and the Emotional Spectrum

The Silver Age yellow weakness was eventually rewritten in 2004 by writer Geoff Johns as the result of an ancient creature called Parallax, the embodiment of fear, sealed inside the central Green Lantern battery on Oa. This led to the introduction of the full Emotional Spectrum: green for willpower, yellow for fear, red for rage, blue for hope, orange for greed, indigo for compassion, violet for love, and black for death. Each color has its own Corps. The 2009-2011 storyline Blackest Night, in which the Black Lanterns reanimated dead heroes, became one of the best-selling DC events of the 21st century.