Even though both of the respective Big Two companies in comic books have been around for almost 100 years at this point, the mantles of their biggest superheroes don’t really change around all that often. Before Miles Morales stepped onto the scene there had never really been a long-term Spider-Man other than Peter Parker (the closest was the clone Ben Reilly); conversely, while lots of alternate universe versions exist (as well as four distinct “impostors” from the 90s Death of Superman era), there had never been a mainline replacement for Clark Kent as Superman until his son Jon Kent adopted the mantle in 2021.
But unlike most other superhero properties, the core conceit of the Green Lantern Corps is that thousands of heroes all operate under the name simultaneously. There are, of course, the seven human Green Lanterns from DC’s mainline Earth (Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, with a few more before and after), but there are at any given time over 7,000 active members of the Corps in different sectors across the universe. Episode 2 of Lanterns included a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to one of those 7,000, an incredibly iconic member to faithful readers and a character who might earn an “I’m sorry, what?” from the uninitiated.
