Once Oa is reborn, the new Corp is rebuilt much larger, with TWO Lanterns in every sector. John's powers are also much better suited to altering the entire flow of combat. This is really the best use of John as a character Batman might be a genius, but even he was often depicted as not being able to see the battlefield as a whole the way John could. This is when we get to see the amazing job he does as one of the main field tacticians of that group of heroes. Kyle is one of the founding members of the Watchtower, but when he leaves to work in deep space John takes his place. It's after Kyle Rayner restarts the Lantern Corps that John really becomes an important character. He does of course serve a time as a Green Lantern, but only when active Lantern Hal AND his backup Guy Gardner are both injured. For his early life, we primarily focused on his career in the Marines and his later life being trained and certified to work as an architect. We don't really take too much from his comic history before the redesigned version of the character appeared, and most of the concepts we DO use are actually from the animated series. We wanted to really allow John to be the awesome character that was formed in the animated series from the very beginning. he essentially fell into a supporting role for, I'm sorry, a less interesting character. John was established as Hal's partner, but was eventually relegated to duty on Oan. Then DC began a massive push to bring back EVERY dead character, even ones whose deaths had largely defined the DC universe like Jason Todd, Barry Allen and of course, Hal Jordan. John was THE Green Lantern for a good long while, serving on the Justice League and generally making everyone else look like chumps. By they time DC was making their live-action Green Lantern movie a decade later, most kids were so familiar with John Stewart that they couldn't figure out who this Hal Jordan character was. It wasn't long before this characterization was taken up by the comics as well. He was subtly reimagined as a veteran superhero with military training, someone that brought knowledge and experience to their team. Coupled with a soft-spoken tough-guy attitude and the immeasurable utility of his ring he quickly became a fan favorite. The show smartly sidestepped the whole thing by using the relatively obscure John Stewart. During the conception of the animated Justice League there was a debate over whether to use the then-current Lantern Kyle or classic Lantern Hal. Then came a major turnaround moment for John. More often than not he was seen as a diversity-for-diversity's sake relic of the seventies. While John was certainly one of them, he simply didn't have the fan appeal to show up very much. Kyle's years often featured him looking to older more experienced characters for advice. John was now an unpowered background character in the story of the new lone Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner. Then, of course, Hal Jordan underwent his fantastic turn to villain, destroying the corp and depowering the survivors. Guy went on to have a large presence in the late 80's, even joining the Justice League, which meant there was even less focus on John. He had a role to play, but even among backup Green Lantern characters he was often overshadowed by fan-favorite Guy Gardner. He served as the protagonist of the comic for several years before he was eventually relegated to supporting character status when Hal returned. It was still the seventies, and John was fairly limited in his characterization, but the inclusion of a minority character in such a major role was still a pretty commendable choice. He argued that a black Green Lantern was simply a logical choice when you consider the population of the planet. He was created by Neal Adams during a time when he had nearly unprecedented reign in designing the look of the DC Universe. John Stewart first appeared in 1971 chosen as a replacement for Hal Jordan who had relinquished his role in the Green Lantern Corps.
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