Confirming what Bleeding Cool and I reported back in May, Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp are indeed working on a new Green Lantern series.  It was confirmed today that the creative team will be collaborating on a new DC book titled The Green Lantern which will launch this November with a thirty page launch issue.  Publisher Dan Didio pitched the idea of Morrison writing a Green Lantern book over dinner, but according to Didio Morrison balked on the idea.  Of course, by the time their meal was over Morrison had the first twelve issues plotted. Steve Oliffe will be the colorist on the book.

Morrison and Sharp provided some teasers in an interview posted by IGN, indicating that this will be a Hal Jordan solo book and that fans shouldn’t expect to see any of the other five Earth based lanterns in the series.  Rather than focusing on the big event type stories that have become synonymous with the Green Lantern franchise, The Green Lantern will focus a lot more on the character of Hal Jordan and how balances his role of a space cop and his relationships with those around him.

Instead of the big, epic, 12-part stories, we’re focusing down on the everyday life of a space cop.  Basically, it’s no more apocalypse-ending storylines. The basic concept is that [Hal Jordan] is like a space cop that patrols a sector of the universe where anything can happen. We’ve made it more like a police procedural.  – Grant Morrison.

The main plot of the series will revolve around Hal’s mission to track down three escaped fugitives who survive a crash on Earth while being transported by another Green Lantern.  The released images from the series by Liam Sharp shows that Hal may have a newly designed power battery which more closely resembles the one that Kyle Rayner has.

It’s unclear how the new series impacts the Green Lanterns title, if at all, at this point in time.  DC Publisher Dan Didio commented during today’s San Diego Comic-Con panel that this relaunch’s goal is to “re-center Hal Jordan in the mythos” and Bleeding Cool mentioned in their coverage of today’s announcement that there may only be two human Green Lanterns going forward.  That certainly sounds like there is a shakeup of sorts coming to the Green Lanterns book and the other human ring bearers.  This makes Kyle Rayner’s possible fate and Monday’s release of the October solicitations all the more interesting, that’s for sure!

We’re doing Hal Jordan where, you know he’s a good cop, but is he really a good guy? And we’re looking into his relationships and how he deals with people. If you’ve got a job as a space cop, it’s hard to be stuck on the planet Earth. He has other lives on other planets. We’re gonna be looking into a lot of things that I don’t think we’ve seen a lot with Hal Jordan before. – Grant Morrison on The Green Lantern.

Sources: IGN, Bleeding Cool