On the eve of what looks to be a pretty amazing Green Lantern/Star Sapphire confrontation on tomorrow’s “In Love And War” episode of the Cartoon Network’s Green Lantern: The Animated Series, we’re finally breaking out our Green Lantern interviews from Wondercon which was held in the middle of last month. Look for one today, and another next Friday.
Today, we’re going to share what show producer Giancarlo Volpe had to say. Volpe has quite an impressive resume, with shows including Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Avatar The Last Airbender on his resume. In other words, he’s worked on a lot of cool stuff. He begins by telling us that there are 26 episodes of Green Lantern produced, and those will be spread over two different “season arcs.” “In short, the first 13 episodes tell a story. The second 13 episodes tell a continuation, but a slightly different storyline. I suppose you could see it as two different seasons,” he explains.
As we’ve seen in the show, the Green Lantern in question for this series is Hal Jordan, the most prominent Green Lantern of comics from the past fifty years, and the GL chosen to star in last year’s Green Lantern film. Does the animated Hal differ at all from other takes on the character? “I hope that they [the audience] feel that he’s more or less the same. Often in cartoons, cartoons are better the more you caricature; not only just in the way you draw them, but even in their personalities. I think what we assessed from reading the comics is that Hal is kind of a cocky jock in a way. Just with basic things: He was born and raised in California. That tells you something about his personality. He’s kind of a military brat. He’s also kind of cocky, especially when you contrast that to Kyle Rayner, for example, who’s probably a little more like me. He draws for a living, and his constructs might be more giant mechs and stuff like that, whereas Hal is more possible, and he’ll hit you with a baseball bat, or a giant Air Force engine or something. We’ve tried to just pick up on that and exaggerate it. We’re very inspired by Han Solo, too. To kind of make him a ladies’ man, if not a little bit of a womanizer. He always leaps into trouble head-first,” Volpe explains.
Although there are a lot of Green Lanterns seen in the show, there is some limitation based on the computer generated aspect of the show. “Because of CG, you can’t really load a show with a lot of characters, so the reality is that you have this very long list of characters that you want to use, and then this very short list of ones you can actually use. It can get very tricky. We end up picking the ones that we want the most, with a few exceptions where it’s like ‘well, gosh. You know what would be perfect for this?’ Hopefully the hard-core fans will be surprised by the combo of beloved characters that we stuck in, and really random ones, like, ‘oh, why did they use that one?’ But there’s always a fan who’d appreciate that,” he explains.
With that said, could fan favorites like Guy Gardner or Kyle Rayner be seen on the show? “I’d love to get the Earth Lanterns in, especially. I think they make like a cool team. But again, it’s one of those things that we’d have to roll out slowly. One of the orders when we started the show was to really emphasize Hal Jordan’s character, because of coming out of the movie and everything, Hal Jordan is THE Green Lantern, at least for now. So we put a lot of time on him, but as time progresses, I’d like to get the rest of them in,” he explains.
Variations in characters also show that there are different things they do with the constructs made from their rings. “We try to put a little bit of logic behind that, too,” Giancarlo ays. “Again, this is not reinventing the wheel. It’s something we’ve picked up from the comics. Hal’s constructs would be very much from Earth, whereas Kilowog’s might be a little weirder and more alien. The Red Lanterns, for example, they can make constructs on our show. They’re more sharp weapons. You probably would never see a Red Lantern Feather Duster or something like that. [laughs] The inspiration is basically ‘what is the culture they come from?’ What are they used to seeing around them all the time, and that would be what would come to mind, right away.”
When this interview was conducted, there was no sign of Star Sapphire, though Giancarlo was offering some teases before confirming that everyone’s suspicions would be right. “It’s curious that Carol Ferris is in the first episode, because if you look at it from a story structure standpoint, that segment doesn’t really pay off, other than he stood her up, and he left behind a loved one. So, yeah. There’s more to say about Carol as the season progresses. I believe Animation Magazine has already released an image of the Star Sapphire, so, I don’t think it’s rocket science to put the two together,” he laughs. “She’s actually going to be an Orange Lantern,” he jokes.
And what about guest heroes – might we see any? “There’s tricky ones like Superman and Batman, they are owned by an estate of their creators, and so, it actually costs more money to get them in the show. So I wouldn’t keep my fingers crossed for the big, big names, but once you start to get into the secondary and tertiary characters, sure. It’s kind of open game. To us it’s fun to make sure that this still feels like a DC show and not just some kind of odd spin-off, where it just lightly feels like Green Lantern,” he explains. So what about a character who has been co-featured in Green Lantern’s comic, like, say, Green Arrow? Giancarlo laughs. “Let’s put it this way: You might see a character like Green Arrow. In space!”
Don’t miss a new Green Lantern episode tomorrow morning (April 28) on the Cartoon Network! Here are images from this week’s show:
