At Wizard World St. Louis this past weekend Neal Adams was on a panel where he discussed race in comic books as well as the creation and current rumors of the planned death of Green Lantern John Stewart. Those rumors have since been denied by DC Comics, but, according to various sites, this plan is what lead writer Joshua Fialkov to recently and abruptly exit writing the Green Lantern comics.

In deciding who could be the back-up to Hal Jordan, Adams explained that it didn’t make sense to have another white guy as Green Lantern. Looking at things like Olympics, you see a myriad of different types of people.

Here’s what Adams had to say on the character and controversial subject (I did my best to transcribe the audio):

I get the script. First page of the script I read it. He’s an architect. Good. He’s out of work. Makes sense. A black architect, not being able to go to work. Very sensible. Name, Lincoln Washington. So I go to Denny. “Denny, I’m guessing you didn’t name this character.” Denny says no. I’m guessing Julie named the character. He says yes. I go to Julie’s office and close the door. Julie. Lincoln Washington. (Julie says) “What’s wrong with that name? I know lots of guys with that name.” That maybe true, but it’s what we call a slave name.

More:

John Stewart has made such a difference…. I’ve had black guys come to my table and cry because it’s made such a difference.

More:

John Stewart is a message we send into the world. That and Barack Obama, which is pretty good too.

And on the rumor of Stewart’s death:

I had Jim Lee called and I had Dan Didio called. Ok. Because I can do that. They said “No that’s bullshit. That’s total bullshit.” Now that could still be a lie. You know. It could happen.

You can hear audio of the full panel at Batman News.