Green Lantern Compendium One: Rebirth

Green Lantern Compendium

by Geoff Johns, Dave Gibbons, Ethan Van Sciver (Illustrator)

The modern era of Green Lantern begins here—Geoff Johns’s legendary Rebirth saga returns in this definitive compendium edition!

Before the rise of the Sinestro Corps, before Blackest Night, it all began with Rebirth. After years in exile, Hal Jordan returns to reclaim his destiny as Earth’s greatest Green Lantern. But his resurrection sparks a chain reaction that reignites the Green Lantern Corps, unites intergalactic allies, and pits the universe’s mightiest warriors against an onslaught of cosmic threats—including the war between Rann and Thanagar, a sinister conspiracy targeting the Corps, and Kyle Rayner’s transformation into Ion. Packed with epic storytelling, unforgettable battles, and the foundation of the Green Lantern mythology that shaped DC’s modern era, this collection is essential reading for longtime fans and new recruits alike.

Collects Green Lantern #1-17, Green Lantern: Rebirth #1-6, Green Lantern Secret Files 2005 #1, Rann/Thanagar War #1-6, Green Lantern Corps #1-6, Green Lantern Corps: Recharge #1-5, Guy Gardner: Collateral Damage #1-2, Ion #1-12, and Rann/Thanagar War: Infinite Crisis Special #1.

Genres: Comics, Dc Comics, Graphic Novels

1536 pages, Paperback

Published December 23, 2025

About the author

Geoff Johns originally hails from Detroit, Michigan. He attended Michigan State University, where he earned a degree in Media Arts and Film. He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1990s in search of work within the film industry. Through perseverance, Geoff ended up as the assistant to Richard Donner, working on Conspiracy Theory and Lethal Weapon 4. During that time, he also began his comics career writing Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. and JSA (co-written with David S. Goyer) for DC Comics. He worked with Richard Donner for four years, leaving the company to pursue writing full-time.

His first comics assignments led to a critically acclaimed five-year run on the The Flash. Since then, he has quickly become one of the most popular and prolific comics writers today, working on such titles including a highly successful re-imagining of Green Lantern, Action Comics (co-written with Richard Donner), Teen Titans, Justice Society of America, Infinite Crisis and the experimental breakout hit series 52 for DC with Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid. Geoff received the Wizard Fan Award for Breakout Talent of 2002 and Writer of the Year for 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 as well as the CBG Writer of the Year 2003 thru 2005, 2007 and CBG Best Comic Book Series for JSA 2001 thru 2005. Geoff also developed BLADE: THE SERIES with David S. Goyer, as well as penned the acclaimed “Legion” episode of SMALLVILLE. He also served as staff writer for the fourth season of ROBOT CHICKEN.

Geoff recently became a New York Times Bestselling author with the graphic novel Superman: Brainiac with art by Gary Frank.

Reviews

[Matt Sautman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mammoth of a book that covers the rebirth of the Green Lantern Corp in the early 2000s, this is not to be confused with a collection of Green Lantern comics from DC’s similarly named Rebirth initiative—I made that mistake when I first picked this up. The largest downside of this 1500+ page tome is that, by the end, story beats exist that have yet to be resolved. Thankfully, the follow-up compendium, The Sinestro Corps War, comes out March 2026.

[Beastyos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good amount of Red Tornado content, I'm satifsfied with my purchase

Although I'm a bit dissapointed in the lack of appearances made by John, this book perfectly did what I bought it for, introduce me to the Corps. It did even more than that actually, it introduced me to a lot of the DC universe.

Not the biggest fan of all of this, I don't really like how the book skips around from series to series (although I don't know how else they could've done it), how The Green Lantern Corps series is formated is also not really for me and every hero being kind of cool until they open their mouth around women. It's insane how the writers can bring me a beautifully entertaining story with a decent amount of maturity, but from the second they need to write a woman into their story they turn into 13 year old boys. (not talking about how they write Guy btw, he gets the pass for being the worst)

The artist of the Rann-Thanagar war draws children with adult faces which is funny.

There was a crazy jumpscare of Hal's victim at the end which was not appreciated, and instead of moving past it they make a whole big deal about her being back. I honestly thought they were just going to ignore that part of Hal's history, but oh no, they retcon it to be just a little less fucked up, but that's it. This along with Deathstroke still having issues published to this day, baffles me to no end.

I enjoyed this

[Langston Lardi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow what a book. You know you’ve struck gold when you go to read just a little bit of the book to get a taste then you manage to finish the entire thing in the span of a couple days. Each story here just kept me hooked, I figured once we left Hal it was be hit and miss but I kid you not each story had my full attention. Of course Hal’s story was my favorite, dealing with the aftermath of parallax and some good simple Hal on earth stories mixed with the larger cosmic plot forming and even picking up pieces from The Death and Retune of Superman. The book also includes the GL Corps stories as well and I absolutely loved each one. Guy Gardners stories are always fun and definitely perfectly represent the early 2000’s. Heck this was my first time reading anything Kyle Rayner related and by the end I was absolutely hooked and invested in his character and the crazy journey he has been on. The only earth GL who got no love really was John Stewart, I’m not sure if he just didn’t have a lot going on story wise during this time period or if he was in a team book like JL, but he was sprinkled through the book very little. Overall a great read and a must read for any GL fan. Each lantern gets some crazy stories that all are grand and cosmic in their own ways (sadly minus John). Definitely worth the read!

[Mason Bissada · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5 stars. Come on Goodreads, get with the times.

All of the Johns mainline stuff and most of the Gibbons Lantern Corps stuff is great, with Rebirth being the standout. Those six issues are such a blast and do an amazing job of bringing an uninitiated reader up to speed while also resetting the GL world and pushing what can be done with manifesting to its limits. The ring gives both the writers and artists an amazing and vast sandbox to play in. After the resets, when the book is essentially space-cop-mystery solving, whether it’s Hal Jordan on Earth or Guy Gardner and the gang elsewhere, it’s so much comic fun while maintaining emotion/stakes.

The reason I’m not rating the entire compendium higher is the Rann-Thanegar war issues and a lot of the Ion issues dragged it down. I haven’t read Marvel’s Annihilation event since college but I was not the biggest fan when I read it, and those parts of the compendium reminded me a lot of that event. There’s something about cosmic war arcs that feel so bombastic to me. I love stories that take place in space as long as they’re grounded by characters I care about, but these didn’t really have a North Star main character to point to (no disrespect to Kyle Rayner).

Can’t wait to read compendium 2!

[Nolan Gutenschwager · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75 stars. This was epic. 5 stars for GL Rebirth and the ongoing. 4.25 for GLC and 4 for Ion. Writing (Johns for GL, Gibbons mostly for GLC, Marz for Ion) and art (a lot of Ivan Reis and Ethan Van Sciver) are exceptional. Rebirth is a great story that explains the parallax situation and redeems Hal. Rann-Thanagar War is great. GLC Recharge and the ongoing were surprisingly great with a heavy focus on Guy Gardner, and it also made me care a lot about these new lanterns from all over. The Ion series surprised me with how good it was and issue 12 in particular was very emotional with Kyle's mother dying. A couple Guy Gardner issues in here that were not great but good to see them collected. And the main ongoing GL series was simply incredible top to bottom. Planting seeds with the world building like gradually mentioning the Sinestro Corps even though Sinestro is not really in the ongoing series. Little glimpse of some Star Sapphire towards the end. Different villains get to shine like the Manhunters, Cyborg Superman, Hector Hammond, Amon Sur (vengeful son of Abin Sur). Cannot praise this enough, it is exceptional.

[Oscar Alvarez Alonso · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dare anyone who thinks the character of Green Lantern is stupid to read through this and tell me they didn't come away feeling like they could overcome great fear.

This book felt very set-up heavy for the Sinestro Corps, but it made up for it greatly by reintroducing us to the famous green lanterns like Jordan, Stewart, Gardner, and Rayner, while also handling the reintroduction of the corps as an organization.

I won't lie, the book almost lost me when it started covering the Rann-Thanagar war, because I know that it's important to give context to where a lot of these new lanterns came from, but... I just don't really care about Carter Hall and his lore, y'know. Luckily this only lasts about 6 issues, and then we're back to our regular scheduled programming.

5/5 for creating the Green Lantern lore we know and love today, minus one star for the German-speaking Aliens.

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great introduction to the world of Green Lantern, even if there are a few things I did need to look up because it seemed thrown in with no explanation. The flagship series was great with Hal and I loved the Corps stuff when Guy was involved, he was the most entertaining character for me. I thought the Kyle stuff was a little weak, especially parts of the Ion series. The Rann/Thanagar issues did absolutely nothing for me and I was very excited to be done with it, even if it did play a big factor in Kyle's new status quo. I could tell in the latter half of this compendium they were started to set the stage for later big story events which I look forward to seeing come to fruition, but it did slow down the story a lot for me. While it is a lot of standard superhero fare, this is still a very fun read and I think most people would enjoy reading it and look forward to what comes next.

[Brian Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a fantastic collection of the Green Lantern universe at the time. Though it can feel a bit padded out at times (this really didn’t need the Guy Gardner mini-series or Rann-Thanagar War), it makes for such a great read!

The only thing holding this back is also the thing that makes it great, how it is a collection of many different Green Lantern books. If you gravitate towards one series more than the others like me (Green Lantern Corps), then you’re only gonna get so much of that series. But, that just makes me even more excited to pick up The Sinestro Corps War compendium.

[Matthew Hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly epic storyline and a truly epically sized book. I once owned Geoff Johns’s Green Lantern run in omnibus format but this new series of compendiums includes a lot of issues not collected in the omnibus volumes and has a more cohesive reading order. These are the stories that finally got me to love the Green Lantern Corps and I’ll continue reading them in this format.

[Greg L Goldstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This thing is massive — almost comically unwieldy — but it’s packed with Green Lantern material from Johns’ Rebirth era onward, including a Darwyn Cooke story I somehow hadn’t seen before, the Howard Chaykin prestige-format Guy Gardner series, and plenty more.
A ridiculous bargain, especially if you can grab it at a discount.

[Samuel Hickman · Rating 4 out of 5]

7.5/10

A remarkably consistent run. For its length, it manages to keep my attention for most of it. It started great, had a wobble in the middle while switching between series but when returning to green lantern picked up a lot of steam.

Cant wait to read the next one

[Wombo Combo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I paid like $35 for this and it's over 1500 pages. Keep killing it in value, DC

[Paxton Coats · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me love Green Lantern.

[Jesus Saldivia · Rating 3.75 out of 5]

An outstanding collection with some low moments and VERY excellent issues as well. I had a great time with this.

[Ryan Flynn · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

What a dense but unbelievably fun read. I’ve wanted to get into Green Lantern for some time now and I’m way more than just invested after reading the Rebirth Compendium. I’m so excited to see what The Sinestro Corps War has in store!!