It’s not easy being green. Not if you’re a newbie trying to join an intergalactic police force devoted to stopping interplanetary outrages. Not if you’re a veteran superhero trying to ignore the inference that your time is up. An interregnum looms. As does an intergenerational, odd-couple buddy tale with rings, lamps and mayhem played out across inner space, aka the American Midwest.Aaron Pierre and Kyle Chandler (HBO)“Lanterns,” the green new deal of the fabled DC Universe (Superman, Batman, et al.), involves a superhero who has made more changes than Taylor Swift at Arrowhead Stadium. Introduced in the ’40s as a solo act, the Green Lantern—an identity occupied here by Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler, “Friday Night Lights,” “Carol”)—has long been the American representative on a law-enforcement body devoted to keeping the peace among planets. His “trainee,” John Stewart (Aaron Pierre, “The Underground Railroad”), rubs him the wrong way. Together, they have to hunt down aliens whom (or which) the good people of Rushville, Neb., consider an invading force.Superhero-based entertainments, as we’ve come to know them, are comedies. There can be tragedy. There can be grief. There has to be action. But if the movie were a person, he’d be vaguely amused. And why not? For all the cult-like posture of the Marvel/DC worlds, this is silly stuff, if no sillier than any other of its ilk. The Green Lantern, whose ring is powered by an emerald lamp, “manifests” whatever he needs. (A very current concept, considering how long the GL has been around.) He might conjure up a protective bubble, let’s say, to shield a town from hostile aliens. He might have an alternate version of himself materialize if he needs help. It’s fun. But it shouldn’t be, as the gods of superhero cinema seem to imply, a religious experience.Mr. Chandler certainly gets it, making Hal a wisecracking, long-suffering delinquent who’s as charming as he is insubordinate—not an original type, perhaps, but the actor makes his character the magnetic force of the whole series. John is clichéd in a different way, the former Marine sharpshooter who has worked all his life to be a Lantern and is not nearly as damaged as he ought to be.Much of “Lanterns,” created by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof and Tom King, follows a fairly unremarkable format. Hal doesn’t want to be replaced by John. Outsiders are treated with suspicion. Earth is just another front in the cold war of space. In Rushville, the Lantern boys meet Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald), whose husband, Billy (Jason Ritter), is a local lawyer and whose father-in-law, William Macon (Garret Dillahunt), has an enormous ranch, his own private militia, a mysterious wife named Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan, “Never Have I Ever”), and a seeming obsession with ridding the land of anything extraterrestrial.Little is what it seems to be. But the notion that the entire Nebraska enterprise is an allusion to real-world issues of immigration and even white nationalism would be as correct as ketchup and pickles with one’s cheese frenchee.The overall tongue-in-cheekiness of “Lanterns” makes it wobbly stuff for allegory, but the more alarming aspect is the John Stewart backstory. We get quite a bit about Hal—there has to be a mix of the personal and the literally universal about each character. But John’s history is disturbing in a way that’s outside the usual parameters of the Justice League of America.In a flashback, we see John’s father (Sherman Augustus) rejected by the Lanterns for having shown fear at the audition; Hal got the job. John’s mother, Bernadette (Nicole Ari Parker Kodjoe), now saddled with a traumatized husband, doesn’t take the rejection lightly. During a visitation—think The Annunciation—the agent of the Guardians of the Universe (a fabulous, as usual, Laura Linney) tells Bernadette that her boy is special; he could be a Lantern someday. But he has to be fearless.How can a black boy be fearless in America, Bernadette asks, and answers: What follows for John is a warped upbringing of parental favoritism mixed with cruelly rigorous training. His brothers call him “the chosen,” but the boy is treated abusively, dropped off in dangerous neighborhoods, made to walk home; forced to stand up against the garage while his father shoots apples off his head. Multiple times. The point is made, but it might have been made without a viewer wanting to dial 1-800-4-A-CHILD.Mr. Pierre is solid, stolid superhero material; Mr. Chandler is pure mischief. Their partnership isn’t really resolved, although only seven of the series’ eight parts were made available for review. And as I’m writing this, I realize it doesn’t really matter. The superhero franchises just go on and on, and if you don’t know the histories or mythologies or inside jokes, well, you’re simply not a member of the sect. Don’t turn green.LanternsBegins Sunday, 9 p.m., HBOMr. Anderson is the Journal’s TV critic.