Green Lantern: Legacy introduces two new Green Lanterns because there’s a 13-year-old boy named Tai and he lives with his parents and his grandmother. And one day unfortunately his grandmother passes away and he ends up with her jade ring. Or what he thought was her jade ring, because it turns out that it was actually a Green Lantern power ring, and that his grandmother had been a superhero his entire life and he didn’t realize it. So the story follows him as he learns more about his grandmother’s secret superhero past while learning how to become a superhero himself.
And for me, when I was trying to think of a story to write, I was really looking for some way to connect with these characters. And DC Comics had said, take a look at all of our characters from Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, on down, and just see if you can come up with a story that feels right. And so I looked at all the characters and it wasn’t until I got to Green Lantern, which is about an individual with a very strong willpower and a green ring that plays — or draws upon the strength of the character, that I realized there’s something very familiar about this character, and it was because it reminded me of my own grandmother who always wore a jade ring and was one of the strongest people that you’ll ever meet
She’s actually very much responsible for helping most of my family escape during the Vietnam War. So for me it was an opportunity to kind of like think about who are those real heroes in your life because I think that the superhero stories that resonate with me the most are the ones where the super human is grounded in something very human, right? And you can take away the cape, you can take away the magical powers, but there’s still at its core an individual who demonstrates these heroic qualities.
And I think especially in the past couple of years we’ve been able to see so many examples of real-life heroism that getting to write a superhero story that allows children or readers of all ages to think about who are those real heroes in your life, has been really gratifying to, to me. So yeah, the story is very much inspired by my family. And I was able actually to go back to Vietnam and visit my other grandmother, who is 98-years-old, and show her a copy of the book, and give her own Green Lantern, and it was really a special moment.