Green Lantern: The Animated Series Producer Giancarlo Volpe sat down with website Newsarama to discuss the television show. Among items discussed were the Red Lanterns, Geoff Johns, and more.
Newsarama: Giancarlo, you’ve worked on plenty of different animated series, but Green Lantern: The Animated Series is your first one that’s strictly comic book-based. Were you pretty well versed in the medium, or did this project require some amount of research?
Giancarlo Volpe: A little bit of both. I was really into comics when I was younger — early teens. My brother and I used to collect comics, and we would share them with each other so we could save on spending. [Laughs.]
I kind of lost track of it over the years; I’m not sure why. In recent years, especially with all these superhero movies are coming out, it’s really hit that nostalgia for me. I wasn’t the biggest Green Lantern fan. To be honest, I didn’t know a lot. Thankfully, a friend of mine told me, if you’re going to read Green Lantern, read the Geoff Johns stuff. So I ordered all of those graphic novels on Amazon and kind of caught up. It was actually really cool because of the way he sort of started with Hal’s origin, and then introduced all this color spectrum stuff. It was such a great introductory course to Green Lantern. I feel like a lot of what I get inspiration from is from those books.
Newsarama: And very direct inspiration, it seems, as the Red Lanterns — who have only been around in the comic books for about four years — are the main villains for the first season. What motivated that decision?
Volpe: I guess that partially had something to do with the fact that Geoff Johns is so involved with DC creative right now. When I was brought on for this project, it was already sort of decided that it would be Red Lanterns, but I wouldn’t be if surprised if Geoff maybe made that suggestion. I actually really kind of believe in keeping it modern and keeping it current. If we would have gotten a little too nostalgic, then I think that the show would have contradicted the comics, or felt like a different world. The ideal is that kids will watch the show and see Atrocitus and Zilius Zox as Red Lanterns, and Kilowog as a green, and hopefully fall in love with them, and then they can go to the comics and see further adventures — and vice versa.
You can read the entire article by visiting Newsarama.com.
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