A popular character in the 1940s, the original Green Lantern was a member of the very first team of superheroes ever to appear in comic books -- the Justice Society of America.

Coast City, which first appeared in Showcase #22 (September-October 1959), was usually portrayed as an analogue of San Diego or Los Angeles. In the 1990s, Coast City was destroyed, along with nearly all of its residents -- then numbered at seven million.

Hal Jordan was given the power ring and battery (lantern) by a dying alien named Abin Sur, whose spaceship had crashed on Earth.

Sinestro is the archenemy of Green Lantern and founder of the Sinestro Corps.

The Guardians of the Universe sought to remove magic from the universe, and laid siege to the necromantic forces of the cosmos. After the war, stray mystical energies were gathered and bound in an orb called the Starheart.

Hal Jordan was a second-generation test pilot, having followed in the footsteps of his father.

Carol Ferris battled Green Lantern for many years before she was finally cured of her evil Star Sapphire persona.

Martin Nodell (using the name Mart Dellon) created the original Green Lantern. He first appeared in the Golden Age of comic books in All-American Comics #16 (July 1940), published by All-American Publications, one of three companies that would eventually merge to form DC Comics.

Hal Jordan was under the influence of a creature known as Parallax when he turned renegade. Parallax was a creature of pure fear that had been imprisoned in the Central Power Battery by the Guardians of the Universe in the distant past and eventually forgotten, becoming known merely as the "yellow impurity" in the power rings.

"I represented the death of the superhero for a while," Reynolds said in an episode of Variety's Actors on Actors. "After Green Lantern, I was pretty much unhirable."