Salaak
66 years ago - Salaak is born on Slyggia.
56 years ago - 10-year-old Salaak becomes a keeper of Law.
42 years ago - 24-year-old Salaak is selected as a Green Lantern.
13 years ago - 53-year-old Salaak is selected to join the Green Lantern Honor Guard upon the death of Tomar Re at the hands of Thaal Sinestro.
5 years ago - 61-year-old Salaak saves the Book of Oa during Hal Jordan's attack on Oa, hiding it on a remote planet.
1 year ago - 65-year-old Salaak helps Kyle Rayner restart the Oan Power Battery. He passes on returning to the Honor Guard to focus on his role as the Keeper of the Book of Oa.
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.
Salaak is one of a few characters that were introduced during the original Silver Age ongoing series, but who would then go on to have a larger and more relevant role in the years that follow. He's probably unique in that his popularity really grew thanks to his role in the story that he slotted into so perfectly. His place in the mythology of the Green Lanterns has expanded to make him one of the most important characters in their roster.
Salaak is one of a few characters that were introduced during the original Silver Age ongoing series, but who would then go on to have a larger and more relevant role in the years that follow. He's probably unique in that his popularity really grew thanks to his role in the story that he slotted into so perfectly. His place in the mythology of the Green Lanterns has expanded to make him one of the most important characters in their roster.
We used the more common modern spelling of Salaak's name, but in fact it was changed sometime in 2006. We have no idea why
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Salaak's Comic HistorySalaak first appeared in 1981 in Green Lantern # 149. Hal was pretty regularly standing trial before the Guardians, with the entire assembled Green Lantern Corp standing in audience. Everyone always seemed to support him, so they needed one character who didn't, who would instead speak out AGAINST Hal. I don't know if everyone else's experience was the same as mine, but he always seemed like a breath of fresh air, one of the only characters that wasn't a complete Hal fanboy. He became a far more regularly occurring character in the post crisis years as the Green Lantern Corp was re-imagined as a small team of characters that all lived on Earth together. He was one of the first members of that group, his sourpuss attitude giving that book some much-needed character drama.
After the fall of the Green Lanterns, he would appear occasionally in flashback, but really started to take a prominent role as the Green Lantern Corp was being rebuilt by Geoff Johns. He was the Keeper of the Book of Oa, essentially the lawkeeper for the entire Corp, and the character largely responsible for dispatching the Corp to their assignments, a role that he's continued to maintain in one form or another to this day. |
Our Salaak StoryUnfortunately, we're just not using a lot of the classic stories where Salaak played a more prominent role. For example... during the old Silver Age Green Lantern series, Hall would sometimes get pulled to the distant future 58th century where he would, stricken with amnesia, become the hero Pol Manning. In issue # 215 in 1987, when Salaak was taken in his place, and was also romanced by a similarly brainwashed woman named Iona Vane, which gave us this gem of a panel. We're likewise not spending much time on all those old trials of Hal Jordan where Salaak gets to be the lone voice speaking out against him,
Instead, we're just getting to set him up as a prominent Green Lantern among the Corp. We'll just have to understand that in the years he and Hal both served together, that Salaak was one of the few Lanterns who recognized that Hal was a potential risk. Other than that, we chose to make him Tomar Re's replacement on the Honor Guard after his death, and to make his connection to the Book of Oa part of Kyle's quest to relight the central battery. |