DENNIS O’NEIL: Green Is The Color Of My Lantern

Dennis O'Neil

Dennis O'Neil was born in 1939, the same year that Batman first appeared in Detective Comics. It was thus perhaps fated that he would be so closely associated with the character, writing and editing the Dark Knight for more than 30 years. He's been an editor at Marvel and DC Comics. In addition to Batman, he's worked on Spider-Man, Daredevil, Iron Man, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, the Question, The Shadow and more. O'Neil has won every major award in the industry. His prose novels have been New York Times bestsellers. Denny lives in Rockland County with his wife, Marifran.

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8 Responses

  1. AdamYJ says:

    The color-emotion match was created by Geoff Johns. For the record, red is rage, orange is greed, yellow is fear, green is will, blue is hope, indigo is compassion and violet is love. Thus, creating what I like to call the “Lucky Charms Corps”. :p

    • Martha Thomases says:

      Um, no. Denny was writing GL long before Geoff Johns was old enough to read, so his explanation is way older.

      • Kids today can’t imagine a time before Johns and Bendis, apparently!

      • AdamYJ says:

        Except there was no explanation for it until lately. And I don’t recall a significant explanation being given in this article.

        I honestly think the color and emotion thing is stupid, myself. Personally, my favorite GL stuff goes back to the John Broome ’60s stuff before all this stuff.

      • Lou Hoffman says:

        Yep, the color = emotion stuff is recient-ish. My personal favorite GL stuff was during the Kyle vs Nero storyline(s), and it was never mentioned that Nero’s yellow ring was related to fear. Although he certainly seemed to cause a fair amount of it…

  2. Russ Rogers says:

    Do the Guardians of the Galaxy remind you at all of Yoda? Little body, BIG head, floppy robes, incredibly old, wise and inscrutable. Look homely and cuddly, but in a fight would probably kick your ass fourteen ways to breakfast.

  3. Jonathan (the other one) says:

    On the ol’ grade-school color wheel, green was always directly opposite from yellow. That’s the only reason I could see that the weakness of the rings, which make constructs from green energy, was something colored yellow. And of course, since the Lanterns were supposed to be selected for their bravery*, what’s the opposite of “brave”? Class? Come on, let’s not always see the same hands…

    *That was my nit from the first time I read it. Even as a kid I knew that never being afraid wasn’t a sign of courage – it was a sign of stupidity or insanity. To quote Heinlein, “Courage isn’t not being afraid. Courage is when you’re so scared you want to wet yourself – but you go on anyway.”

    • Jen in Oz says:

      uh, no, Other Jonathan, Green is opposite RED on the colour wheel. Because the primary colours of Yellow and Blue make up Green when combined, so the other primary colour is opposite. (Similarly, Purple is opposite Yellow, and Orange is opposite Blue.)