The Green Lantern Corps #217

History

The series Green Lantern Corps (Volume 1) emerged directly out of the post-Crisis restructuring of DC's Green Lantern line: after Green Lantern vol. 2 reached its double-sized #200, the title was retooled to shift focus away from a single Earth-based hero and onto the full ensemble of the Corps, with Steve Englehart staying on as writer — a role he held for all but the final issue of the 24-issue run. Joe Staton, his long-running artistic collaborator on the Green Lantern franchise, penciled the book, with Mark Farmer providing inks on #217. The three new characters introduced in this issue were conceived within the Englehart/Staton partnership that had been defining the franchise since the mid-1980s, and the story's central antagonist thread — Sinestro's escape from Oa via the MadGod of Sector 3600 — was seeded in Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual #2, giving #217 the character of a payoff issue within a carefully plotted, ongoing serial.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Cover date: October 1987; published by DC Comics as part of the 24-issue Green Lantern Corps (Volume 1) run (#201–224).
• Story title: 'Inside Summer Skies'; written by Steve Englehart, penciled by Joe Staton, inked by Mark Farmer.
• First appearance of Driq of Criq (Space Sector 667): a Green Lantern killed by Sinestro whose power ring anomalously prevented his life force from leaving his body, leaving him as a reanimated, decomposing corpse still capable of ring-wielding.
• First appearance of Olapet of Southern Goldstar (Space Sector 345): a plant-based Green Lantern who carries her daughter as a seedling and, upon death, transfers both her memories and her power ring to that seedling.
• First appearance of Flodo Span of Inner Tasnia (Space Sector 875): a gaseous, abstract life form with no natural corporeal body who uses the power ring to construct a physical form for itself.
• All three characters are survivors of the Green Lantern Corps of the Klyminade — an eight-member regional division of the Corps devastated by Sinestro and the sentient MadGod of Sector 3600, with only Driq, Olapet, and Flodo Span remaining.
• The issue opens the multi-part story arc where the Klyminade survivors unite with John Stewart, Arisia, Katma Tui, and Kilowog to pursue Sinestro, a storyline that culminates in Sinestro's trial and the destruction of the Central Power Battery in issues #222–223.
• A simultaneous subplot follows Hal Jordan and Tom Kalmaku tending to the mentally broken Carl Ferris, weaving the Earth-based cast into the larger cosmic conflict and connecting to the ongoing Star Sapphire storyline running through the series.

Cast · 16 characters

Full credits

Variants (2)