Who's This? A space police force.
The facts: The Corps' existence is mentioned in Hal Jordan's first appearance (Showcase #22, October 1959), of course, since Abin Sur is a member and passes his ring on to his replacement. But not until Green Lantern #6 (June 1961) does Hal meet another member (Tomar-Re) and #9 before we see a bunch of Green Lanterns together. Mostly in the background through most of Hal's first two decades, they get a back-up in the 80s that develops all sorts of members (including 3 full Annuals) - much as Green Lantern Corps Quarterly would in the 90s. There are thousands of Lanterns, but a tight core group joined forces on Earth and take over Hal's book in the mid-80s (from #201 to #212). The Corps is destroyed by Parallax in 1994, but by the 2000s, the team gets its own series from 2006 to 2015, usually following human characters like John Stewart, Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner when they had no other berth. It's rare now to read GL series that don't use the Corps for any length of time.
How you could have heard of it: The Corps was shown in the live action Green Lantern movie, was a core element of the Green Lantern animated series, and for comics readers, still features in GL comics.
Example story: Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual #3 (1987) "Many Are Called..." by John Byrne, with Kurt Schaffenberger
This particular Annual gave us a blind Green Lantern who had no idea what green was (by Alan Moore, no less), a GL worshipped by his people, and one who is pregnant, but let me take you to the last story in which John Byrne - at the very least! - understands that GLs from far-off Sectors should look ALIEN.
This is TO-T-U-K, Green Lantern of Sector 1287, and he's retiring after a long career. The Guardians have sent him to a seemingly virgin planet to find his successor, but he can't imagine what they have in mind, and his worthiness-finding beam goes limp when he tries!
He suspects the spores floating around are creating interference... or are part of the source of the mind the Guardians detected? The latter analysis proves correct. These "puffballs" are part of a hive mind, one that otherwise manifests as a congregation of puffballs, though even this "queen" is of limited intelligence. So what gives? I really behaves as an animal would.
It only has the mind of whatever it's absorbed, and that gives ol' TO-T-U-K (unnamed here, but Green Lantern/Sinestro Corps Secret Files and Origins provides) a chance to continue his career, in a way. He never wanted to retire. So he jumps into the "queen", is digested and becomes what I would guess is the Green Lantern who best covers his Sector!
A BILLION Green Lanterns! Yeah, that'll do it.
Now, both TO-T-U-K and the Puffball Collective have appeared later, at least in flashbacks and crowd/battle scenes, which is true of most of the Tales' Green Lanterns. The GL concept lends itself extremely well to short stories, either tapping into the lore (the way the ring is transferred, how worthiness is gauged, the yellow impurity), but also exploring how vastly different beings go about protecting their Sector, as opposed to the better known Earth heroes. What would YOU do with a wishing ring? Now what would you do if you were an alien from a completely different culture? It's no surprise the franchise eventually spawned a Quarterly devoted to the idea.
Who's Next? A Vegan space cop.
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