The Green Lantern Corps is a coalition of intergalactic peacekeepers that come from all walks of life and every nook and cranny of the ever-expanding galaxy. Each one is carefully selected by their sentient power rings that search the cosmos for beings who possess incomparable willpower and the ability to overcome fear. This is just about how it went for Hal Jordan, with a few minor differences.
Who Is Abin Sur?
Before becoming a Green Lantern, Abin Sur was a history professor on his home planet of Ungara. It wasn’t until the 1860’s that he would be recruited by Green Lantern Starkaðr and chosen to be the next protector of Sector 2814.
Abin would visit Earth on multiple occasions working with Justice Society members like Starman and Bulletman to fight Mr.Mind, or seeking aliens like Tybalt Bak’sar alongside Martian Manhunter and even working with an ancestor of Hal Jordan, Henry Lee Jordan to find the alien who killed his predecessor, Starkaðr.
Post-Crisis expanded Abin Sur’s origins and further explored the events that lead to his crash landing on earth, and why exactly he was in a ship in the first place. Post-crisis also establish Sur as the brother-in-law to Sinestro, and uncle to his daughter Soranik Natu.
Abin would investigate the prophecy of the Blackest Night which would lead him to the planet Ysmault, a forbidden territory, to question the inhabitants of the five inversions, the survivors of a massacre at the hands of the Manhunters and a group of ruthless terrorists led by Atrocitus. Sur would become obsessed with this prophecy, learning that he would meet his fate when his ring would fail him at a critical hour, that being he would take Atrocitus off world and be bested by the beast by having his will weakened. Atrocitus would free himself and attack Sur, crashing the ship and landing on earth where Jordan would come to acquire Abin’s power ring.
Hal Jordan’s DCU Origin
After being barred from interfering in Sheriff Kane’s investigation, John and Hal sit down at a local bar where John questions use and worth of the power ring, questioning how he even got the ring in the first place. John asks for the truth, not what Jordan sold to the public in the ’90s. He wonders how a “dangerous weapon,” according to Jordan, would just fall into the hands of any random joe who doesn’t know the first thing about honor and duty.
Eventually breaking Jordan, he explains that only a few years of being a military test pilot and sleeping off “9 too many,” he was awoken to the room around him being violently shaken and before he knew, picked up into a big green bubble and whisked away. Jordan recounts a feeling that surged through his entire body, a voice asking him ” are you afraid?” upon answering he’s rocketed through the sky and right down into Nebraska, just 20 miles shy of Rushville, the “middle of f*cking nowhere.”
Jordan stumbles upon a crashed spacecraft, inside a dying pilot, a pink alien that Hal would only come to understand after being given the ring, remembering the very first words out of his mouth, “I am Abin Sur.” In his final breaths, Abin tells Hal that he is responsible for “maintaining the peace and sovereignty of Sector 2814” and passes that mantle to him, revealing the ring to have chosen him as his successor.
Jordan explains that there was never supposed to be a human Green Lantern, in fact the Guardians of The Universe didn’t even want Lanterns on earth at all. The Guardians considered it “out of their jurisdiction” and deemed it “backwater” and a “shithole.” Hal states this is why he believes what happened to him was no mistake.
Origin’s Compared
The differences aren’t plenty. They’re actually quite similar aside from a few minor details. As we know, both of these Jordan’s lost their fathers and it plays an massive part in shaping their personalities and how they operate as heroes. DCU Hal even states that he feels no fear because the single greatest thing a child can fear is losing a parent, after that it all goes out the window. Those moments and their fathers legacy would lead them both to air force, a career frowned upon by Jordan’s mother.
Hal would eventually depart the air force in an act of insubordination by striking a commanding officer to secure a quick dismissal to be able to see his dying mother. He would eventually land at Ferris Air as an aircraft technician and test pilot that he’d remain at until he became Green Lantern. In the DCU it’s implied that he was “a couple years” into being a test pilot, which would line up with his comic origins, its just not explained where exactly he was a test pilot but all stories are told in due time.
Perhaps the biggest change is the location of said origin. Our Hal became the next Green Lantern just outside of Coast City, his hometown. Of course HBO’s Lanterns takes us to the American heartland, smacking us right down in Rushville, Nebraska where Hal reveals that just 20 miles shy of the small town is where he first met Abin Sur and became the hero the world knows him to be now.
The first episode of Lanterns is now streaming on HBO Max, with new episodes releasing every Sunday. Check out the weeks-ahead trailer below:
