Kilowog
59 years ago - Kilowog is born among the worker caste on Bolovax Vik
45 years ago - 14-year-old Kilowog becomes a master mechanic & engineer, despite his caste.
37 years ago - 22-year-old Kilowog is chosen as a Green Lantern. He & Tomar-Re are trained by Ermey, who leads them to save a group of Lanterns including Thaal Sinestro.
24 years ago - 35-year-old Kilowog becomes the main trainer for new Lantern recruits. One of his first trainees is Galius Zed.
18 years ago - 41-year-old Kilowog trains Hal Jordan, who goes on to save the Green Lantern Corp from Legion.
17 years ago - 42-year-old Kilowog is one of the only Lanterns to believe Hal Jordan about Thaal Sinestro's regime on Korugar.
10 years ago - 49-year-old Kilowog leads the Oan defense against the Manhunters.
8 years ago - 51-year-old Kilowog defends Oa from the attack of Thaal Sinestro & the Weaponers of Quard.
7 years ago - 52-year-old Kilowog, Hal Jordan, & Ch'p are sent by Ganthet, one of the Guardians of Oa, into the forbidden Sector 666 to investigate a group of Lost Lanterns being held hostage by Atrocitus & the Red Lanterns. They are assisted by Bro'Dee, who is given a unique Blue Battery by Ganthet to become Saint Walker, the Blue Lantern.
5 years ago - 54-year-old Kilowog uses the ancient Lantern weapon the Starheart to save the Guardians of Oa during Hal Jordan’s assault on Oa by bringing them to Mogo & folding the planet into the Paths Beyond.
1 year ago - 58-year-old Kilowog & Mogo return with the Guardians of Oa when the Lantern Battery is relit. He battles Arkillo on the front line, and becomes one of the leaders of the reformed Green Lantern Corp.
The extended membership of the Green Lantern Corp comes from a few different sources, but interestingly, those same sources all seem to happen in cycles. There are characters introduced more or less as background characters who have a line here and there but who gain popularity because of some quirk of their design, there are characters introduced in their own standalone stories whose role may or may not expand over time but who remain popular because that original story was so clever, and there are characters that are actually introduced with the intention of playing a role in the main continuity Green Lantern story. These different character sources repeat through the various eras of Green Lantern Corp mythology, resulting in a pretty deep roster of potential characters for us to go over.
Kilowog is such a staple of the story of Green Lantern that you could argue that he might be more beloved that the actual protagonists. He was introduced in a really weird era of Lantern stories, but he worked so well that he's been retroactively worked into almost all of Green Lantern Cannon. Getting him right is arguably the most important part of telling the Green Lantern story..
Kilowog is such a staple of the story of Green Lantern that you could argue that he might be more beloved that the actual protagonists. He was introduced in a really weird era of Lantern stories, but he worked so well that he's been retroactively worked into almost all of Green Lantern Cannon. Getting him right is arguably the most important part of telling the Green Lantern story..
Kilowog's Comic HistoryKllowog showed up for the first time in Green Lantern #201 in 1985. The book was undergoing a massive transition in the wake of the recently completed Crisis of Infinite Earths. Issue 201 was advertised as a new beginning for the series as the current active Green Lanterns and some of their Alien allies formed a new earth-based Green Lantern Corp team, mostly made up of existing known characters. The one totally original character, however, was Kilowog. He was pretty clearly meant to give the team a big powerful bruiser, although he also quickly became the team's scientist and tech specialist. The book wasn't that successful; it was renamed Green Lantern Corp for a few years before it was cancelled, and the relationships between characters in this era were problematic at best, but through it all, it was hard not to love the big powerful hippo-like alien.
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DC spend a lot of the late 80's releasing new series that revamped the origins of their characters. For Green Lantern, once the books were cancelled, it was reset using 1989 miniseries Emerald Dawn. Here, we see Hal's original adventure as he goes to Oa for the first time, where he meets Kilowog who has been reimagined as the drill instructor of the Lantern Corps.
The new Green Lantern series started in 1990. It basically picked up right as the previous series left off, with Kilowog among the earth-based Corp, but that series went on to feature some expansive changes to the lore of the Green Lanterns, including Hal Jordan going insane and killing much of the existing Green Lantern Corp. He actually has a moment of regret when he vaporizes Kilowog, stopping to give a soliloquy to his skull. This story is INSANE. |
Geoff Johns started writing a new Green Lantern series in 2005, and set to work returning the Green Lantern Corp (yay!) and Hal Jordan (boo.) The cover of Green Lantern: Rebirth #6 showed five Green Lanterns raising their rings triumphantly to indicate their return; Hal, Kyle, John, Guy, and Kilowog. It was a clear indication just how important he was. He was heavily featured through this era, essentially the heart and soul of the Green Lantern Corps.
He's also gone on to be one of the most consistently depicted members of the Lantern Corp in extended media. Basically, any time the Corp appears in anything, you can always count on seeing Kilowog right up front. |
Our Kilowog StoryThe first step in building a timeline for the larger Green Lantern Corp is to include Kilowog. He's an absolutely beloved character, and among all the alien Lanterns he's easily the most important character for us to get right. We're not using the Earth-based Lantern Corp (which was largely a story to let our heroes pal around with their alien girlfriends).
We've had Kilowog participate in all the major events of the Green Lantern Corp that happened during his tenure as a Lantern, but we've also added him to one particular adventure meant to loosely represent the events of the Green Lantern animated series, where he and Hal (and Ch'p, because Ch'p rules) adventure into the forbidden Sector 666, confront Atrocitus, and befriend Saint Walker. We obviously don't want to kill him during Hal's attack, but it just doesn't feel right to have him depowered and lost in the galaxy somewhere. Kilowog's roll should be huge, so we came up with something that felt weighty enough for a character this great. He's responsible for saving the Guardians from Hal by bringing them to Mogo and using the Starheart (Alan Scott's magical ring, stored on Oa since his death) to fold the entire planet into the magical Paths Beyond. This means that years later, when Kyle Rayner collects surviving Green Lanterns to restart to Power Battery to fight the forces of Sinestro, we get the huge moment when the relit battery summons an entire Lantern planet, and one of the biggest, most powerful, most beloved Green Lanterns in the Corps. |