Popverse's top stories

• D Comics (yes, sort of like DC Comics) is the working name for Disney and WEBTOON’s new comics app platform

• Don't read into the King Spawn movie title at Blumhouse, says Todd McFarlane - "Writers put titles on their scripts"

• 25 years later, X-Men legend Chris Claremont still rejects Marvel's Wolverine origin story and sticks to his own headcanon for Logan

One of the big surprises of DC Studios and HBO's Lanterns series has been that the story takes place between two different time periods - 2016 and 2026. In order to understand Hal Jordan's death in 2026, we must go back to the beginning of his and John Stewart's relationship in 2016. And even though most of the story has taken place in 2016 thus far, we have gone back even further to moments in John Stewart's childhood to get a gut-wrenching look at how he was raised to be without fear, even if it came at great personal cost. 

Now, Lanterns is co-created by Damon Lindelof, who is perhaps best known for his work on Lost and HBO's Watchmen series, both of which were highly effective in their use of flashbacks (I still don't think I've emotionally recovered from the Looking Glass episode of Watchmen, "Little Fear of Lightning," all these years later). Lindelof unpacked the decision to feature flashbacks in Lanterns in an interview with Brandon Davis. 

"Yeah, I think that it happened organically. I always start from a place of, 'let's not do flashbacks and nonlinear storytelling again.' But I think it's kind of seeped into the groundwater," Lindelof began.

"And obviously, the stuff that I've worked on didn't invent it by any stretch of the imagination, but I think that it really boils down to the great thing about television, that it's a much larger canvas on which to paint. And I think that when you think about, you know, we're talking to each other right now, but essentially, there's younger versions of us that very, very significant things happen to, that if you share them with the audience, completely and totally change the contextual framework of the way that you understand someone," Lindelof said. 

Lanterns is now streaming on HBO Max. 

Shine a light on our list of the best Green Lantern comics.