Recently, fans of the Green Lantern comics were given a sneak preview of the newest villain they’ll be facing: Relic. This seems to be part of DC’s summer arcs where most comics, like Batman and the Justice League, are getting special arcs for readers to learn more about their favorite characters.
MTV Geek recently announced that Relic’s origin story will be told in a unique way. From June through August, all Green Lantern family comics will have a variant cover that will show how Relic came to be. These variant covers will be in black and white and drawn by Rags Morales. In September, these covers will be collected and colored and feature a few additional pages.
When we first meet Relic in the comics, he will be fully formed and the readers won’t know much about him. But if you get the variant cover editions of the Green Lantern comics, or wait until the September compilation, then you’l get to see how Relic came to be.
Relic is going to be a brand new character that has never been seen before. He’s not based on any previous characters, so readers are unsure what to expect of this new foe. According to Robert Venditti, this may be the Lantern’s toughest foe yet and will bring together all of the Lantern colors that have ever been seen in the comics and challenge Hal Jordan as he steps into the leadership role of the Green Lanterns.
If you want to learn more about this new foe, Relic, and what the writers have in store for the Green Lanterns and the universe, I recommend checking out Venditti’s interview with MTV Geek.
Whether you’ve been a Green Lantern fan since the introduction, or if you’re just starting out with Green Lantern, this isn’t something you’re going to want to miss. It’s not often we get a new major villain in the DC universe, and even rarer that we get one that promises to be as devastating as Relic seems to be.
These variant cover editions also may become collectors editions. Since they will be the first showing of Relic, if you can get your hands on a first print run, then they may be worth a good bit of money. Heck, even after only a few months since the release of Batman Inc #8 where they killed Damian Wayne, the first printings are already rising in value!
So don’t forget to pick up your copy of Green Lantern #21 for the first variant cover!