With the huge box-office success of even lesser-known comics characters such as Iron Man it is surprising that Warners took this long to dig up Green Lantern, a B-list DC Comics character created as far back as 1940, for a live action movie adaptation.

In his most popular incarnation Green Lantern was Hal Jordan, a test pilot who was given a power ring by a dying alien, Abin Sur, and who became a member of the Green Lantern Corps, an interstellar organization of police overseen by the Guardians of the Universe. The Corps' rings were powerless against anything colored yellow, due to a necessary impurity in the ring.

To be honest we only really liked Green Lantern when he was teamed up with the wise-cracking Green Arrow and Black Canary (in those stockings and blonde wig!) was along for the ride. Hal Jordan has always been a rather one-dimensional good guy which explained why the writers at one point turned him into a megalomaniacal villain intent on galactic destruction.