Damon Lindelof Apologizes for His Green Lantern Joke

Damon Lindelof is clearing up a joke he made about Green Lantern.

Lindelof is the co-creator of HBO’s upcoming series Lanterns and previously on a podcast, he joked that they named the show Lanterns “because we all agreed that the green was stupid.

When the clip recently resurfaced online, Green Lantern comic book writer Grant Morrison called the joke a “jockish dismissal of superhero conventions” in a Substack post.

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Now Lindelof is responding in an Instagram post showing him in an older photo wearing a Green Lantern t-shirt.

“I have upset Grant Morrison, which means I have now pissed off MOST of the brilliant British/Scottish comics writers that I grew up idolizing,” Lindelof said. “To quote the bard (Otis Redding), this is nobody’s fault but mine.”

He continued, “I made a dumb joke on a comedy podcast. I’m not going to bob and weave about context, the joke was dumb, the fandom is not. I owe them an explanation and a genuine reflection of my actual feelings.”

The Watchmen creator said when he first went to ComicCon for the Lost pilot in 2004, he wore the Green Lantern shirt as shown in the photo.

“For a quiet, uncoordinated kid, there was nothing cooler than a hero whose superpower was his imagination. And green is not stupid, it is my lifelong favorite color and I have a questionnaire that I filled out in third grade to prove it. Green is f–king awesome,” he added.

Lindelof also said “it would be a betrayal to everyone I worked for” to say that he was anything but “absolutely honored” to be on the team creating the HBO series Lanterns.

“I was sloppy and careless with my words, ironic considering I care so much about Hal, John and the entire Corps. I can and will do better to be worthy of the oath… until then, I’ll let the show speak for itself and I can’t wait for you all to hear what it has to say,” he concluded.

People seemed to take his apology well, with Nathan Fillion, who plays Guy Gardner in James Gunn‘s DC universe, responding: “The joke was funny. No harm, no foul! Keep up the great work, we appreciate you! ????”

Lanterns will premiere later this year. Watch the trailer!