For the past three years, Robert Venditti has taken Hal Jordan through a war with the New Gods, a self-imposed expulsion from the Green Lantern Corps and a mindbending battle with his former self, Parallax. But he’s about to take Hal somewhere that’s new for the veteran writer—the pages of a brand new Green Lantern comic.

HAL JORDAN AND THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS is a new, twice-monthly Green Lantern ongoing debuting in July as a part of “Rebirth.” Written by Venditti and drawn by the rotating art team of Ethan Van Sciver and Rafa Sandoval, Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps will lean heavily on Green Lantern’s sci-fi roots, giving us plenty of constructs-in-the-cosmos action as the Lanterns take on one of their greatest adversaries. But what if you haven’t been reading Venditti’s current Green Lantern run? What if you’ve never read a Green Lantern comic at all? Will you have trouble following this one? We put that question and more to Venditti in a recent interview. Here’s what he had to say.

Green Lantern once again has two ongoing comics! What can we expect from Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps?

This book is Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Guy Gardner and a lot of familiar characters whom you know from the Corps. A lot of characters who have been there from the beginning, and some who are going to be surprises because we haven’t seen them in a while. It’s really just sort of boiling it down to those original concepts that go back to the beginning of Hal Jordan—Will over Fear, Hal vs. Sinestro, Corps vs. Corps, Green vs. Yellow. All those elements.

We’re going to open up the “Rebirth” issue with Sinestro. With the Green Lantern Corps absent, Sinestro takes Warworld and parks it in Sector 0, which is where Oa has always been. He is now the established police force of the DC Universe, and this is the story of what happens next.

So it sounds like this will be set in space and around Oa. Is it safe to assume that we won’t be spending as much time on Earth in this comic?

Very much so. It’s going to be more of a cosmic story. I’m very happy to be working with Ethan Van Sciver and Rafa Sandoval on this—two super talented guys. Ethan is synonymous with both Green Lantern and “Rebirth.” Rafa Sandoval is somebody whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with before. He’s just so great with cosmic scale and scope.

So you mentioned that we should expect Sinestro. Are you bringing in any of the other Lantern Corps?

Right now we’re going to be focusing on the Sinestro Corps and Green Lantern Corps. There will be other things happening in other titles, and we do have plans for additional things down the line, but for right now we’re looking at those two.

Since The New 52, Sinestro has been walking a line between villain and hero a bit, but it sounds like he’s going full-villain again.

I don’t know. It depends on your perspective. He believes he has a philosophy that will be the working model to control the universe and rid it of chaos, and it happens to differ from our heroes’. But I think from Sinestro’s perspective, he’s not a villain at all. Even as we see this story and we see him clashing with our heroes, you’ll see that he does have his own code. There are lines that he won’t cross. In the same way that a character might be an antihero, I think Sinestro’s kind of an “antivillain.”

You’ve been working on Green Lantern for a while now. Now that it’s starting its numbering over again with “Rebirth,” is there a difference in how you’re approaching it or is it just the next chapter to you?

As all of the “Rebirth” books do across the line, it builds on everything that’s come before. That’s kind of the purpose of “Rebirth,” to look at the long storied history of these characters. It’s about holding on to all of that and doing the next thing. But it’s very much a different story than what I’ve told before. I wouldn’t want to do it if I was just going to be doing the same thing again. It is going to be looking at these characters in different ways and putting them in different and unique situations, and seeing how those new, unique situations affect them.

So will this be a good place for new readers to come aboard?

Very much so. This is as clean a jumping on point as you’re going to get. If you open up HAL JORDAN AND THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS: REBIRTH #1, by the end of that you’re going to know everything you need to know to read this story. If you’ve never read an issue of Green Lantern in your life, you can start with that issue.

Hal Jordan returns to the stars on July 13, 2016 with HAL JORDAN AND THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS: REBIRTH #1 by Robert Venditti and Ethan Van Sciver. His story then continues in HAL JORDAN AND THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS #1 by Venditti, Rafa Sandoval and Jordi Tarrogona on July 27, 2016.

This is the latest in a series of interviews looking at the many DC comic books that will be spinning out of this summer’s "Rebirth." Keep an eye on DCComics.com for more!