Medphyll
44 years ago - Medphyll gestates on J586
31 years ago - 13-year-old Medphyll is stolen and sold into slavery in Citadel space.
27 years ago - 17-year-old Medphyll escapes Citadel slavery and begins covertly battling the Citadel as a freedom fighter.
21 years ago - 23-year-old Medphyll is captured by Citadel Police and placed in the Starlog.
19 years ago - 25-year-old Medphyll escapes the Starlog with Vril Dox, leaving behind a plant carcass so he would be assumed dead, joining the Omega Men.
18 years ago - 26-year-old Medphyll is selected for the Green Lantern Corp, leaving the Omega Men. He trains alongside Hal Jordan & Ch’p and helps battle Legion.
8 years ago - 36-year-old Medphyll is severely injured in Thall Sinestro’s attack on Oa. He returns to J586 to heal.
6 years ago - 38-year-old Medphyll meets Swamp Thing when he sends his consciousness across the cosmos to J586, to excise a seed of rot from his people's core. He warns that Medphyll could find the same rot taking root in himself.
5 years ago - 39-year-old Medphyll ring is depowered in Hal Jordan's attack on Oa. He is found and arrested by the Citadel.
1 year ago - 43-year-old Medphyll is freed by Kyle Rayner, but double crosses him, leading to his own demise.
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.
Medphyll is one of the very first Green Lanterns to ever show up, and a lot of the Lanterns from that era are pretty generically interchangeable, but for one reason or another Medphyll has cropped up in some very interesting places and been part of some wildly different stories. We're going to have some fun bringing those stories into our timeline.
Medphyll is one of the very first Green Lanterns to ever show up, and a lot of the Lanterns from that era are pretty generically interchangeable, but for one reason or another Medphyll has cropped up in some very interesting places and been part of some wildly different stories. We're going to have some fun bringing those stories into our timeline.
Medphyll's StoryMedphyll's first appearance is in Green Lantern #11 in 1962, one of the issues responsible for many of the original alien lanterns. All the lanterns introduced here were basically each invented as an expression of a particular weird idea for an alien race.. there was an aquatic alien, a living crystal alien, a robot from a planet of intelligent robots... and of course, an intelligent plant. These original alien lanterns have all appeared across Green Lantern comics. Medphyll was defined more by his look, he didn't really have a set characterization, but he would appear consistently for years.
Medphyll has made a few very clever appearances in some strange corners of DC's history. Perhaps the most interesting one happened in 1987, in issue #61 of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, where the titular character was sending his consciousness into plant life of other planets, and inadvertently built a giant body out of the people of Medphyll's native planet, J586. It's a great single issue, and gives Medphyll some fantastic heroic moments. |
The story that is really informing our use of the character, however, comes from James Robinson's Starman series. In issues 57-60 in 1999, series star Jack Knight was on an extended adventure in space that incorporated a lot of other characters to have gone by the name Starman, fighting against the Throneworld regime of Starman Prince Gavyn. He was joined by a small team of space-based characters, including a very different-looking Medphyll.
This was in the middle of Kyle Rayner's time as a Green Lantern, and a lot of the former Lanterns, Medphyll included, had been in a short-lived team of Darkstars, but that series was over and the team had disbanded. Medphyll appears spindly skinny, with his grassy hair looking more like dead twigs. Medphyll has clearly been through it, and actually winds up betraying the heroes and being killed as a result. This story is actually informing our version of Medphyll a LOT. He's usually depicted much more stoic, but we have plenty of stoic Green Lanterns. This level of personality and depth is just a gift for one of these classic Lanterns, and we're absolutely jumping on it. |