Lanterns Creator Tom King on HBO Show, CIA Counter Terrorism Career

If comic book author Tom King has a superpower, it’s that everything he writes turns to gold.

Marvel and DC have each adapted one of his comics, resulting in 2021’s “WandaVision” and 2026’s “Supergirl.” Now, he’s helping forge the rebooted DC Universe with his take on the Green Lanterns — galactic peacekeepers who can create any item imaginable using magic rings.

Green Lanterns have struggled in Hollywood, falling far below the popularity of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Ryan Reynolds brought one of the emerald heroes to life in his infamous “Green Lantern” movie in 2011; the result was a cheesy, CGI-filled disaster. With his new HBO series “Lanterns,” King has reimagined the Lanterns as gritty earthbound detectives, à la Matthew McConaughey’s and Woody Harrelson’s characters in “True Detective.”

So don’t let the superhero genre fool you — “Lanterns” has as much gravitas as HBO’s top dramas; in fact, it’s charting a more mature path for the DC Universe after the spunky adventures in “Superman” and “Supergirl.” In the show, Kyle Chandler plays Hal Jordan, an ornery Green Lantern who is begrudgingly training his upstart protégé (Aaron Pierre). The argumentative duo are summoned to investigate a murder in rural Nebraska that has mysterious connections to dangerous extraterrestrials.

King has the comic book credentials to infuse “Lanterns” with plenty of references for fans, but he also brings a wealth of spy craft and detective knowledge from an unlikely place: He worked as a CIA counterterrorism officer from just after 9/11 to 2009.

It’s a rainy early morning in Brooklyn, but King, in town for the world premiere of “Supergirl,” based on his space-Western comic “Woman of Tomorrow,” is wide awake — no coffee needed. He was out late after the premiere and up early getting ready to fly to France’s Annecy film festival to show off “Mister Miracle,” an animated adaptation of another one of his comics. His three children joined him on the trip and got to see their dad schmoozing it up at a star-studded event. In just a couple hours, King will be leading them through Newark airport for the kids’ first international flight, but right now he’s calm and ready to talk about his favorite thing in the world: comics. When asked how he balances everything, he credits the CIA’s sleep-deprivation training. 

“You’re doing two or three hours of sleep for months. You go insane,” he says. “Lately, I’ve been doing ‘Mister Miracle’ during the day, then spending time with my kids, and after 10 p.m., I’m back at my computer writing until 3.”

Before his career took a detour into counterterrorism, King started out like many other comic writers — at 7 years old, he bought his first issue, “Avengers” #300 (which he still owns). His obsession grew from there, and he landed internships at both DC Comics and Marvel while attending Columbia University. As an intern, he worked as a copy boy on DC’s Vertigo imprint, making photocopies of Garth Ennis’ “Preacher,” and was the assistant to “X-Men” writer Chris Claremont, who turned Marvel’s mutants into the bestselling title in the world.

But the comics bubble burst in the early 2000s, right when King was graduating from college. He learned this when his boss at Marvel called and said, “Hey, kid, comics are dead. This industry is dying. Marvel’s declaring bankruptcy. Superheroes are going away.”

It’s true that before movies like “Spider-Man” (2002), “Batman Begins” (2005) and “Iron Man” (2008) launched superhero cinematic universes, the comics industry went through a bruising period that turned King toward a new career path: In 2000, after his call with his boss at Marvel, he pivoted to working for the Justice Department in Washington, and had plans to go to law school. But his life changed again on 9/11.

“Like a million other people, I was like, ‘What can I do to help the country?’” King recalls. “I applied to the CIA, because I was good at information. I think comics helped me, like knowing every single Avenger and their first appearance. I could be a dot connector. To my surprise, after a year of training, they’re like, ‘You’re a frontline guy.’ Then I became a case officer in the CIA. That’s how I spent my 20s.”

Some comics readers have taken issue with King’s past, equating his service with pro-war sentiment. A few of his books later channeled his CIA experience: DC’s “Sheriff of Babylon” followed a military consultant solving a murder in Iraq, while “Grayson” reinvented Batman’s former Robin into a gun-toting spy. But King shuts the gossip down.

“I’ve seen rumors that I started the Iraq War. I didn’t start the Iraq War. I was 23 years old,” he says. “I was against al-Qaida and the Taliban. We were trying to stop them from doing horrible things. I was against the Iraq War. I thought it was the stupidest fucking thing. I watched people lie about stuff on TV, but I still had to go. It was my duty. I worked on some cases where people were going to blow up a base, and we stopped them. Should I have let them blow them up? Let those kids die because I didn’t agree with the war?”

After seven “very stressful” years in the CIA, a care package from his mother sent to Baghdad, where he was stationed, convinced King to leave the CIA and return to writing. The package was full of new-age comics by Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Millar and Ed Brubaker, all powerhouse authors of the 2000s. After having given up on the medium, King discovered these writers elevating superhero stories into a prestige art form. “It was the generation who had reconstructed comics,” he says. “They turned them from books with pictures into movies with words,” he says. “It blew my mind.”

After deciding to leave the CIA, King returned to writing comics for Marvel and DC. His first major hit was 2015’s “The Vision,” which relocated the Marvel android to a quaint suburban neighborhood, retired from fighting crime and living peacefully with a robot family. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it became the inspiration for Marvel’s inaugural Disney+ TV series, “WandaVision.”

“The Vision” was the first of King’s comic books to be adapted for the screen, but it wouldn’t be the last. After that, he signed a deal to write exclusively for DC Comics, where he penned 85 issues of the flagship “Batman” series, 2021’s hit “Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow” and many more. “Supergirl” caught the attention of filmmaker James Gunn, who earmarked the series for a big-screen adaptation when he and Peter Safran relaunched the comic book universe.

“We thought it was a fantastic comic book, even before we took the job to build DC Studios,” Safran says. “We love the idea of working with comic book creators and taking them outside of their comfort zones into other areas.”

So in 2022, Gunn and Safran recruited King for their DC brain trust — a Justice League of writers helping plot the future of the fledgling universe. The group met at Safran’s house, where everyone was given a copy of “Woman of Tomorrow” to read. In addition to the “Supergirl” movie being greenlit there, King also pitched “Lanterns” as a grounded murder mystery. The writers loved the idea, and “Lanterns” was added to the DCU’s slate announcement. 

“It’s easy to forget that superheroes are human beings. What they want are the same things you and I want. That’s Tom’s fundamental approach,” says Damon Lindelof, who joined “Lanterns” as a co-creator alongside “Ozark” showrunner Chris Mundy. “There’s a sophistication to his writing because he’s lived a life. Before I was a writer, I was an assistant for writers; Tom was in the CIA. He’s experienced a level of intensity that permeates his work.”

“Lanterns” is making a splash at San Diego Comic-Con, which means King isn’t getting more sleep anytime soon. After that, he’s sticking with the DC Universe and turning his acclaimed comic “Mister Miracle” into an animated series following Scott Free, an immortal escape artist with PTSD. King won two Eisner Awards — comics’ equivalent of Academy Awards — for the series.

“Of all the things I’ve written, it’s the book that can connect with people on a deeper level because it’s about a man who attempts suicide, goes through something and comes out of it,” he says. “It’s about how you recover and live with trauma.”

After his brief trip to France with his kids, it’s off to San Diego Comic-Con for “Lanterns.” He’s no stranger to Comic-Con or its massive Hall H stage, but this year will be different.

“My first year at that convention, I was hand-selling my novel. They gave me the table in the corner at the very end to Hall H, where nobody showed up,” he says. “I sat there for five days, listening to the hall explode every 10 seconds. This year, for the first time, I’m gonna be in Hall H. It’s full circle.”