DC is subtly revolutionizing its Green Lantern mythos just in time for the Corps to take the spotlight in the DCU. The Green Lanterns have been the central faction of the Guardians of the Universe’s Emotional Spectrum for over six decades, with over a dozen human heroes who have left a mark in the Corps throughout the years. Alan Scott, Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Guy Gardner, Kyle Rayner, Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz, and Jo Mullein will forever be known as the most famous Green Lantern heroes protecting Sector 2814, at least within the Lanterns’ first seven decades of comic book history.
Virtually every defining event in Lantern history begins with, concludes through, or depends in major ways upon the Green Lantern Corps. Sinestro Corps War centers on Sinestro’s attempt to overthrow the Green Lanterns. Blackest Night depicts every Corps uniting against Nekron, yet Hal Jordan and the Green Lanterns are the story’s protagonists. Brightest Day follows directly from the Green Lantern-led resurrection of life across the universe, while War of the Green Lanterns examines the Corps’ internal collapse before rebuilding it. Even stories focused on other factions like Rage of the Red Lanterns place the Green Lanterns as the force responsible for restoring equilibrium.
Unlike fear, rage, greed, hope, compassion, love, and death, willpower works as the driving force that chooses how every other emotion is expressed. Green Lanterns act as their stabilizing influence, which makes them the natural protagonists of a mythos built upon interactions between different sources of power.
All Lanterns Corps Are Finally Teaming Up
Green Lantern Corps #18; Written By Morgan Hampton; Art By Fernando Pasarin
Ever since DC K.O. gave him one of the best job promotions in the universe, Guy Gardner has defied expectations as All-Sight, going so far as to save his fellow Lanterns from the infinite pull of a black hole. Now, having achieved the unprecedented feat of gathering every embodiment of the Emotional Spectrum, Guy intends to protect all the Emotional Entities from the Manhunters. Although Jessica Cruz protests, Guy Gardner’s idea is pretty promising, as the Entities might be the Lanterns’ last line of defense against the Manhunterrs, and Green Lantern Corps #18’s main cover teases a full team of Lanterns of all colors.
Supergirl Officially Debuts DC’s New Blue Lantern, With Awesome Costume
DC unveils a new member of the Blue Lantern Corps by rewriting history and retroactively turning an established hero into a new recruit.
Morgan Hampton’s Green Lantern Corps #18 isn’t alone in its idea of a unified Emotional Spectrum. Supergirl: Survive introduces a team of assorted Lanterns, composed of heroes like the Blue Lantern Saint Walker and the legendary Green Lantern Abin Sur, plus a member of every other Corps. Somehow, every faction of the Emotional Spectrum agreed on assembling a team, which seems to be incredibly effective up to the moment they find themselves overpowered by Lobo and his group of Czarnian bounty hunters. Green Lantern Corps and Supergirl: Survive‘s multi-color Lantern teams may be more than just parallel thinking.
DC’s Lantern Corps Integration Could Be The Start Of A New Era For The Power Rings
The Lantern Mythos Could Be Overhauled Soon
If DC were to expand the franchise so that every Lantern Corps received sustained attention comparable to the Green Lanterns, the Emotional Spectrum could evolve into one of the richest shared settings in the DC multiverse. Each Corps could develop its own long-running cast, mythology, political structure, rivalries, and internal conflicts. Readers could follow the Blue Lantern Corps rebuilding civilizations devastated by interstellar wars while the Star Sapphires mediate conflicts driven by love and obsession, and the Sinestro Corps’ Yellow Lanterns continue to prove their worth beyond simple antagonism.
Instead of every major cosmic crisis depending on the usual Green Lanterns, major events could focus on interactions between multiple Corps whose goals overlap. A Blue Lantern epic could examine the dangers of hope detached from realism, while an Orange Lantern-focused storyline could explore greed as an expanding cosmic force instead of simply Larfleeze’s defining trait. The White and Black Lanterns could continue developing the cosmology of life and death, and entirely new sectors of the universe could be explored through Corps that rarely interact with Earth. The Green Lanterns would remain the cornerstone, but they would no longer bear the responsibility of carrying their mythos alone.
Which Lanterns would you like to see in a single team?
Green Lantern Corps #18 is available July 8 from DC Comics
- Created By
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Martin Nodell, Bill Finger, John Broome, Gil Kane, Dennis O’Neil, Neal Adams
- First Appearance
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All-American Comics
- Alias
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Alan Scott, Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, Simon Baz, Jessica Cruz, Sojourner Mullein
- Alliance
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Justice League, Justice Society of America, Green Lantern Corps
- Franchise
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D.C.