Short Story Week 3: Green Lantern & Green Arrow

The Green Lantern and Green Arrow worlds have been interwoven since Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams's groundbreaking run that paired the two characters together, Green Lantern/Green Arrow the “Hard-Traveling Heroes” storyline. Those twelve issues explored the characters’ philosophical differences as they explored a rapidly changing America.

Both of their corners of the DCU were forever altered by this storyline. For Green Lantern the biggest change was the addition of the great John Stewart to the mythology. For Green Arrow, it was the ground-breaking revelation that his sidekick and ward Roy Harper was a heroin user.

Both characters had plenty of awesome comics before that storyline but for me…it’s where they start in my heart. And everything that came before was somehow forever altered by that storyline too. And without that comic, I could not have written the four stories that we are going to be talking about today.

Two focusing on Green Lantern. Two focusing on Green Arrow. And if you have heard the legend that I am a bit of a Green Arrow obsessive…you are really going to get a sense of how true that is by the end of this Newsletter.

Let’s get into the stories, starting with Green Lantern.

Green Lantern Short Story 1: In Gloom

Art by Kenneth Rocafort, Colors by Dan Brown, and Letters by Zakk Saam

In addition to the Walmart Giants focusing on individual franchises/characters, we had begun experimenting with doing one-offs. There was one called Ghosts that focused on DC’s horror characters, one called Villains that focused on DC’s supervillains, and there was one called From Beyond the Unknown that focused on DC’s science fiction corners.

From Beyond the Unknown would have three original stories. A sixteen-page story and two eight-page stories. Instead of doing one of the eight-page stories I was asked to pitch for the sixteen-page story that was to focus on Green Lantern, the Hal Jordan incarnation of the character. My editors were the incredible duo of Katie Kubert and Liz Erickson.

This was the first story longer than eight pages I got to write. I had finished my first three Superman stories, and all three of my Flash stories, and I was between writing assignments. Here was an opportunity to level up and show I could tell longer stories. And let me tell you…the difference between eight pages and sixteen pages is massive.

To date, writing in the sixteen-page format has been my favorite between this story and the Superman: Man of Tomorrow story I did with Jorge Corona. They are essentially one-shots, without the other four to six pages of a one-shot that would need to feed into the plot of an ongoing series.

Growing up I was a big Green Lantern fan. From various DC animated series first and then from the incredible runs on the Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps titles from my time as a reader. But it had been a long time since I had acquainted myself with that material. As an editor, I had edited a half-dozen Green Lantern short stories for various anthologies, and that was it. I was worried I was going to need to do a lot of homework before putting my pitches together but to my surprise, I remembered everything I loved about the mythology, and the pitches came quickly. I had also just written Hal in a team-up story with Barry Allen so I had a trial run with the character that had been successful.

In Gloom is the story Katie and Liz picked. The core of it was not dissimilar from the core of the Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories. I wanted to force Hal Jordan to ask a complicated question about himself as a deputized authority figure. And that question was, are you serving all of the denizens of your designated sector, or do you overly favor the planet Earth where you are from? The answer I knew ultimately was he serves Earth more than sector 2814. And that’s understandable to a degree, a lot of crazy stuff happens on Earth, but he needed to answer to other citizens of the sector whom he failed.

The Gloom is a group of aliens from various civilizations that were harmed or destroyed because a Green Lantern was not present to help them. They uploaded their souls into warrior bodies that also had cosmic surfboards capable of absorbing a Green Lantern’s energy. Their purpose is to punish Green Lanterns for failing to live up to their duty. This group of Gloom members specifically exists because of Hal Jordan’s inability to serve his whole sector. They capture Hal Jordan, and the intergalactic warrior Bolphunga, bringing them to one of their devastated worlds and putting both on trial.

This story was so much fun to write. I felt like I had the perfect amount of pages for it, the scenes all breathe well, and I liked writing the sci-fi stuff. I don’t consider myself a big sci-fi person, but having Green Lantern flying around space, shooting lasers, and going to other planets was fun. I am happy I got to write the story, stretch my legs, and do some things I wouldn’t normally do in other stories. Hal is also a character I can very easily wrap my head around. He is a good person at heart, he’s not always great at absorbing criticism, but he does want to be better. It sometimes takes him a while to get to that place, though. That was my biggest takeaway about the character from “Hard Traveling Heroes”.

In this story, I was paired with Kenneth Rocafort on art who ran wild with all of the cosmic stuff. The design for the Gloom and their surfboards look awesome and his take on the Green Lantern powerset both fit the character but I felt he also took it in some cool directions I wasn’t used to seeing. Dan Brown did a terrific job on the colors and Zakk Saam’s lettering was awesome, there are a lot of different balloon styles in this story and you can track all of them with ease.

WHERE CAN I FIND THIS STORY? This story was published in print as a part of Beyond The Unknown Giant #1. It is also available on Amazon/Comixology and the DCU Infinite App as Beyond the Unknown #1.

Green Lantern Story 2: Escape the Dark Fortress

Art by Pablo M. Collar, Colors by Wil Quintana, and Letters by Dave Sharpe

John Stewart was a character I wanted to write a story about. He was as much, if not more so, the Green Lantern of my youth, especially because he was the Green Lantern of the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited animated series. He was plenty of comics I read too, and I wanted him to have more great stories.

The Halloween anthology Are You Afraid of the Darkseid was coming up and I pitched a lot of ideas for stories, including one focusing on John. The editors, Andrew Marino and Michael McCalister came back and said they liked my John Stewart story but they also liked another pitch I had starring a character I had already written, they asked which one I would rather do. The John Stewart story was the one I picked, and both editors were happy I did.

Escape the Dark Fortress found Green Lantern John Stewart stuck inside an intergalactic haunted house called the Dark Fortress that was sentient. The Fortress shows John all of the disappointments, heartbreaks, and unrealized dreams from his life. Despite that, John remains unfazed and hopes that with his architectural prowess, he can convince the Dark Fortress to stop being a haunted house that tortures those who enter it, and instead become an intergalactic hostile for those who need a place to stay. But the Fortress, like all of us, is incredibly reticent to change and meets John’s hopes with violence.

When I remembered John was an architect, putting him in a haunted house story just made all the sense in the world. Also giving him a benevolent purpose of trying to heal the haunted house was a plot device I had not seen before. Despite writing a few stories in Halloween anthologies, I am not much of a horror person, so anytime I can think of some interesting twist on a horror trope, I get excited.

Then DC newcomer Pablo M. Collar drew this story. Pablo was an artist Andrew Marino had his eye on for a while. When this story got approved Andrew asked me if I would be comfortable with Pablo illustrating and I said absolutely. So many established artists worked with me when I was first beginning to write and I felt I would be a hypocrite if I did not pay that same spirit of generosity forward. Also, I liked Pablo’s art and saw his potential, I think for his first professional DC story, he did a tremendous job. He’s done other work for DC since, growing immensely with each story he takes on, I hope we get to reunite someday as collaborators. Wil Quintana colored this story, a longtime DC colorist who I had never gotten to work with until this story and he did a great job. Letters by the legendary Dave Sharpe who has maybe lettered more great Green Lantern comics than any other living letterer.

WHERE CAN I FIND THIS STORY? This story was published in print as a part of Are You Afraid of the Darkseid #1? It is also available on Comixology/Amazon and the DCU Infinite App as Are You Afraid of the Darkseid #1?

Green Arrow Short Story 1: The Birds of Christmas Past, Present and Future

Art by Scott Kolins, Colors by John Kalisz, and Letters by Tom Napolitano

Oliver Jonas “Ollie” Queen, the Emerald Archer known as Green Arrow. My favorite DC character. He’s the one I feel I understand the most, and the character in that universe with the clearest voice. Passionate, but struggles with intimacy. Will tell everyone else what they are doing wrong, but can’t stop his self-destructive behavior. A champion for the little guy, but can’t always see when the people in his own life are struggling. A compelling speaker, but a horrible listener. A spoiled rich kid who turned himself into what his vision of a working-class superhero would be. The original problematic liberal. I love him. I love the characters who have tried to follow in his footsteps, his children, the characters who try to call him a friend, and of course the great love of his life Black Canary.

My love of the character started with Green Lantern/Green Arrow and then was made eternal by the Kevin Smith/Phil Hester/Brad Meltzer/Judd Winick era of the Green Arrow ongoing series of the early 00s and the character’s stellar depiction in Justice League Unlimited. I always dreamed of writing him.

Enter the DC Winter holiday anthology DC’s Nuclear Winter Special, where we were going to see short stories that followed the possible futures of many of DC’s greatest characters. The origin of this story started with Judd Apatow’s HBO documentary The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling about the comedian Garry Shandling.

In the documentary, Shandling’s former girlfriend and Larry Sanders co-star Linda Doucett goes into great, wise detail about her relationship with Shandling. Doucett said that she felt that she and Garry were soulmates, but not meant to be together. She ended up marrying someone who loved her and she loved back, and she had a happy life.

When I heard this, I was twenty-six years old and raised on a steady diet of will-they-won’t-they sitcoms and romcoms, my reaction? “What do you mean you can have a soulmate and the two of you might not end up together?” It blew my mind. And because I was also raised on superhero comics I immediately thought of this concerning Green Arrow and Black Canary, one of DC’s most passionate couples, but a couple that doesn’t always stick it out. The idea that they would refer to each other as soulmates but maybe not end up together while sad made a lot of sense to me.

In The Birds of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, I didn’t give Green Arrow a Dark Knight Returns-esque future story. I gave him a smaller sadder one that made sense to me. Hawkman has invited Green Arrow to celebrate the Holiday Season with the current Justice League team. Green Arrow being an old bastard goes so he can yell at the young superheroes and tell them they don’t measure up to his friends. Instead, Green Arrow realizes Hawkman didn’t invite him to celebrate, Green Arrow was invited so he could reconcile with his old love Black Canary before life passed them both by. They spend the night together at the Holiday party and Green Arrow reflects on all the happiness in his life he pushed away.

This was my second short story, and I am so happy it was not my first. I had learned so much from my Robin & Solomon Grundy short story that when this opportunity came out I knew exactly how much I could do with the eight pages of comic book real estate I had and made the most of it. To date, this is the most fully formed story that has come to me and I got everything I wanted on the page. If this had been the only time I was ever to write Green Arrow I was thrilled with the results. It also struck a real nerve for me which is…I used to push away people who loved me. Their affection scared me, I didn’t think I deserved it, and I thought I was going to hurt them. It’s a thing I used to share in common with Ollie Queen and wish I didn’t.

My editor on this was the amazing Alex Antone. I say he’s amazing because I did not make his life easy here. Alex picked another story I pitched and I wrote the script for that story…and this one, I gave him both. It was a big Jerry Maguire moment I probably should not have done but...this story possessed me. And to Alex’s infinite credit, he saw how passionate I was about the Green Arrow story, read both scripts, and said “We’ll do the Green Arrow story, but I also really love this other story and someday we’re going to do that one.” And we did, we’ll get into that next week…

Alex asked the legendary Scott Kolins to draw this story. And man…I was a lifelong Scott Kolins fan, his work on The Flash with Geoff Johns and The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes mini-series with Joe Casey are two of my all-time favorite comics. Scott’s involvement encouraged me to swing for the fences and write something worthy of his time. He drew the story beautifully and was wonderful to collaborate with. John Kalisz beautifully colored the story and once again Tom Napolitano lettered this story.

Everyone who read this story could tell how important it was to me, they saw that I had left my heart on the field with this one. A few months after I wrote it DC Editorial team surprised me by buying all of the pages from the story from Scott and they gifted them to me. I have many of them framed in my apartment. Scott also drew me a sketch of Green Arrow in his classic Neal Adams-designed costume saying “Happy Birthday, Dave” That I will cherish forever.

WHERE CAN I FIND THIS STORY? This story was published in print as a part of DC’s Nuclear Winter Special #1? It is also available on Comixology/Amazon and the DCU Infinite App as DC’s Nuclear Winter Special #1?

Green Arrow Short Story 2: Earn it Back

Art by Mike Norton, Colors by Allen Passalqua, and Letters by Steve Wands

If you have read all the installments of this newsletter so far you can see that I get personal with my writing and with these characters. For a while, though, I was a little tired of how much of myself I was leaving on the page. I tried to pitch more light-hearted and funny stories for a while. With the anthology Saved by the Belle Reeve which focused on short stories that involved schools, I tried to pitch more light-hearted material.

The editor of this project was the amazing Ben Meares, who was also the assistant editor of the Man-Bat mini-series I wrote. Other than Andrew Marino, he’s the editor I have had the longest editorial relationship with, which is great because Ben is brilliant. He always gives the right note.

When Ben reviewed the pitches, he liked my light-hearted pitches, but the one he gravitated towards was my Green Arrow pitch which focused on the early days of the character and his issues with his sidekick Speedy AKA Roy Harper who was struggling in school.

Ben told me that he had a lot of great light-hearted short stories in this book, comparing this anthology to a musical compilation he said “I need a Bruce Springsteen song.” That was up my alley. Instead of running away from the things I had done well, I ran towards them faster than I had before, turned off my apprehensive voice, and wrote the damn thing. When I am writing is the only time in my life I can quiet my loud thoughts and just be present. I sat down and wrote the story with as little self-awareness as I could.

What came out was Earn It Back. Roy Harper is doing a great job being Green Arrow’s sidekick Speedy, but he’s doing a less-than-stellar job in the classroom. Roy’s grades are in decline and he’s at risk of being held back. When his mentor Ollie Queen AKA the Green Arrow hears this he tells Roy he cannot be a superhero again until his grades come up, and takes a stern approach to discipline. However, Roy does not respond well to this which leads the two to clash.

Of everything I have written to date, this is the story that people I know personally have reacted to the most. They saw the most of me in this story, I had been both Roy Harper and Ollie Queen. With Roy, I had been a son, student, and protege who had been let down by father/mentor figures who didn’t fully understand him. With Ollie, I had tried to solve a problem angrily without finding out why it existed in the first place, I had tried to help people I loved without asking what they needed from me because I was frustrated the problem existed in the first place. I was acknowledging my youth and adulthood in equal measure.

None of this was pre-meditated, when my friends pointed these things out to me, I was as taken aback as anyone. I knew I wanted to write a story that was dramatic and true, I just didn’t know how much of my truth was going to end up in there. When writing, I have to find the parts of my life a story reflects naturally. I don’t set a known course, I just go out on the narrative boat and follow the current.

Mike Norton drew this story. Mike is one of the most accomplished, excellent, and prolific cartoonists currently working in comics. This story swings between humor, sorrow, and superhero action, and all of the parts work and fit together because of Mike. His drawings can carry a joke, break your heart, and make you go “That is awesome!” Each page that came in was magical. Allen Passalaqua brought out the bright silver age joy of the story in his colors and the great Steve Wands managed all my monologues with grace and elegance.

WHERE CAN I FIND THIS STORY? This story was published in print as a part of Saved By The Belle Reeve #1? It is also available on Comixology/Amazon and the DCU Infinite App as Saved by the Belle Reeve #1?

And that’s it for Short Story Week 3, everyone. Please go check out these stories, subscribe to this newsletter, and let people know about both! I would greatly appreciate it.

Next week we’ll be talking about the other five short stories I wrote for DC that include the characters Robin, Chronos, Aqualad, and Frankenstein Agent of S.H.A.D.E

Also, I forgot to include my biggest Green Arrow statue in the leading picture. Let’s end on it instead!

Stay safe!

—Dave Wielgosz