Green Lantern is a DC Comics superhero. Created by Martin Nodell and Bill Finger, the original Green Lantern debuted in All-American Comics #16 (1940).
Several individuals have assumed the identity of Green Lantern over the years. Each of them possessed a special ring called a power ring which gives them great control over the physical world as long as the wielder has sufficient willpower. While the ring of the Golden Age Green Lantern (Alan Scott) was magically powered, the rings worn by all subsequent Green Lanterns were the creations of the Guardians of the Universe who granted such rings to worthy candidates across the universe. These individuals made up the intergalactic police force known as the Green Lantern Corps.
The character was a relatively generic superhero until 1970, when DC paired the Silver Age Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) with the archer Green Arrow in a ground-breaking, socially conscious comic book series. This era helped make Green Lantern popular, although subsequent series took on a more cosmic theme. In the last twenty years, DC has placed different individuals in the role (most permanently Kyle Rayner and John Stewart), sometimes irking longtime fans.
Green Lantern is part of the all-star group the Justice League and is currently featured in the Justice League animated series.
Publication history
Green Lantern (sometimes called The Green Lantern in the early days) was created by Martin Nodell and Bill Finger and first appeared in All-American Comics #16 (1940). This Green Lantern was Alan Scott, an engineer who had come into possession of a magic lantern. From this he crafted a power ring which gave him the power to control any metal object, and which had to be charged every 24 hours by touching it to the lantern for a time. His powers were soon retconned such that his ring was able to affect any material except wood.
Scott was a founding member of the Justice Society of America, and starred in his own title, Green Lantern, during the 1940s. His adventures during the Golden Age of comic books came to an end when superheroes fell into disfavor in the industry in the early 1950s, when the JSA's adventures ended with All-Star Comics #57 (1951).
A few years later, DC Comics had successfully revived The Flash in a new incarnation, with the name and powers being used by an entirely new character, and it was decided that Green Lantern would be similarly revived. This Green Lantern was Hal Jordan, a test pilot who was given the ring by a dying alien, and who became a member of the Green Lantern Corps, an interstellar organization of police overseen by the Guardians of the Universe. The Corps' rings were powerless against anything colored yellow. Jordan's creation was motivated by a desire to make him more of a science fiction hero (editor Julius Schwartz being a longtime SF fan and literary agent) to boost sales.
The Green Lantern Corps bears many similarities to the Lensmen from the stories of E.E. Doc Smith. The Lensmen, who hail from various alien races, bear a device known as the Lens which gives them enhanced physical and mental abilities, bequeathed to them by the advanced and benevolent Arisians. The Lensmen are the vanguard of the Galactic Patrol, an interstellar police force. However, both John Broome, writer of the early Hal Jordan tales, and Schwartz denied any connection. Broome, in particular, denied all knowledge of Smith's stories. Schwartz also denied reading them, although he admitted that, as an SF fan, he had of course heard of them.
This Green Lantern was a member of the Justice League of America and starred in his own title, and eventually met his predecessor, who was established to live on the parallel world of Earth-Two, separate from Jordan's Earth-One. The two Lanterns struck up a close friendship and periodically come to each other's aid in various adventures.
By the late 1960s, however, Green Lantern's popularity was flagging. Green Lantern writers Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams attempted to spark new interest in the book by adding the character Green Arrow to the series, and having them travel through America encounting various "real world" issues, to which they reacted in different ways, Green Lantern being fundamentally a lawman while Green Arrow was a liberal iconoclast. Although not a commercial success, this "relevant" era is considered to have spearheaded the efforts of comic books to become more than light fantasy.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the focus of the series (which was cancelled and restarted several times) gradually shifted from Jordan to the Green Lantern Corps as a whole. Jordan gave up the role for a time, surrendering his role to fellow Earthman John Stewart. After he took up the ring again, Jordan was joined by a legion of other Green Lanterns, both human and alien.
Jordan's career came to an end when he went insane following the destruction of his old home, Coast City, by the villainous alien Mongul. He destroyed the Green Lantern Corps and the Guardians, absorbing their power and taking the name Parallax . One Guardian survived, however, and passed one remaining ring on to a randomly-chosen human named Kyle Rayner. This ring lacked the flaws of the earlier rings, and Rayner gradually molded himself into a hero, joining a new incarnation of the Justice League.
Jordan eventually died in the events of The Final Night , when he used his power to reignite Earth's Sun (which had been threatened by a interstellar predator known as a Sun-Eater) and was later resurrected as the spirit of vengeance, The Spectre.
Fictional biographies
The Golden Age Green Lantern (Alan Scott)
Thousands of years ago, a mystical "green flame" fell to Earth. The voice of the flame prophesied that it would act three times: Once to bring death, once to bring life, and once to bring power. By 1940, the flame had been fashioned into a metal lantern, which fell into the hands of Alan Scott, a young engineer. Following a railroad bridge collapse, the flame instructed Scott how to fashion a ring from its metal, to give him fantastic powers as the superhero Green Lantern. He adopted a colorful costume and became a crimefighter.
(Years later, the green flame would be retconned as the expunged magical characteristics of the Guardians of the Universe from the Earth-1 universe. Yet later the flame was retconned again to be a mystical entity called the Starheart.)
Scott used his ring to fly, to create rays of energy and occasionally solid objects, and force fields. His ring was unable to affect any object made of wood.
Scott was a charter member of the Justice Society of America, beginning in All-Star Comics #3 (Winter 1940). He served as the team's second chairman, in #7, but departed following that issue, only to return a few years later. He has been a key member of the group ever since.
During the 1940s, Green Lantern seemed to alternate between serious adventure - particularly when his arch-nemesis, Solomon Grundy, appeared - and light comedy, such as his sidekick Doiby Dickles . Toward the end of his Golden Age adventures, he was even reduced to the role of a sidekick to Streak the Wonder Dog , a heroic canine cut from the mold of Rin-Tin-Tin and Lassie.
Scott was a member of the JSA in 1951 when the team was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee for possible Communist sympathies and asked to reveal their identities. The JSA declined, and most of the membership retired for the 1950s.
(One piece of retroactive continuity fills out early Scott history. All-Star Squadron Annual #3 states that the JSA fought a being who imbued them with energy that retarded their aging, allowing Scott and many others (as well as their spouses) to remain active into the late 20th century without infirmity. The events of that incident also lead to his taking a leave of absence from the JSA, explaining why the character vanished from the roster for a time.)
The team re-formed in the 1960s with Scott as a member, though little is known of their adventures during this time save for their team-ups with the Justice League of America of the parallel world Earth-1, and a few cross-universe adventures Scott shared with Earth-1's Green Lantern, Hal Jordan.
It was eventually revealed that in the late 1950s or early 1960s, Scott had married the woman with the dual identity Rose and Thorn , and the two had a pair of children who would grow up to become the superheroes Jade and Obsidian, of the team Infinity Inc..
In the late 1970s, Scott ran a broadcasting corporation, which was ruined by creditors. Scott was temporarily driven mad by the Psycho-Pirate , but the rest of the JSA helped him back from the brink. His friend The Flash helped him start a new career as a scientist.
In the 1980s, Scott married his longtime nemesis (now reformed), The Harlequin , and reconciled with his son and daughter. Following the Crisis on Infinite Earths, which merged all parallel realities into one, Scott's power was revealed to be the mystical "Starheart", which additionally helped retard Scott's aging process. For a while the Starheart was part of Scott's body, and he adopted the name Sentinel, and became a founding member of a new JSA. In the early 2000s, the Starheart was again restored to its lantern form, and Scott again took the name Green Lantern.
Thanks to the rejuvenative properties of the Starheart, Scott is physically a man in his 30s or early 40s, and continues to fight crime in his costumed identity.
The Silver Age Green Lantern (Hal Jordan)
The second Green Lantern was Hal Jordan, who in 1959 was a test pilot who was given the power ring and battery (lantern) by a dying alien named Abin Sur. When Abin Sur's spaceship crashed on Earth, the alien used his ring to seek out an individual to take his place as Green Lantern: someone who was "utterly honest and born without fear."
Though treated on Earth like a superhero, Jordan soon learned that Abin Sur was a member of an elite force of intergalactic police called the Green Lantern Corps, who worked for the Guardians of the Universe. Instead of one Green Lantern wielding a magic ring, there were 3600 Green Lanterns patrolling the entire universe. Their rings were powered by the central power battery at the planet Oa, where the Guardians lived. Oan power rings had to be recharged every 24 hours, and were ineffective against direct contact with the color yellow, due to a "necessary impurity" in the design of the rings.
Jordan had a longtime on-again off-again love affair with his boss, Carol Ferris . He fought colorful 1960s villains such as Star Sapphire (a mind-altered Ferris), Hector Hammond , and the rogue Green Lantern, Sinestro. He was also a founding member of the Justice League of America in The Brave and the Bold #28 (1959).
In 1970, feeling the tension between dealing with the intergalactic problems of the Guardians and the individual, personal miseries on Earth, Jordan left his test pilot career behind and travelled across the United States with fellow hero Green Arrow in a "search for America", highlighted by tensions between the pair due to their different outlooks on life. One memorable scene from this period saw Green Lantern confronted by an elderly black man, who noted that the Green Lantern had done much for aliens with fantastic skin colors, but asked what he had done for the "black skinned people".
In the early 1980s, Jordan was exiled into space for a year by the Guardians in order to prove his loyalty to the Green Lantern Corps, having been accused with paying too much attention to Earth when he had an entire "sector" of the cosmos to patrol. When he returned to Earth he found himself embroiled in a dispute with Carol Ferris. Faced with a choice between love and the power ring, Jordan chose to resign from the Green Lantern Corps. The Guardians called Jordan's backup, John Stewart, to regular duty as his replacement.
In 1985, the Crisis on Infinite Earths saw Jordan once again take up the mantle of Green Lantern, even as the Guardians withdrew from our dimension for a while. Jordan helped organize the new Corps, with seven members residing on Earth, including several aliens, John Stewart, and Jordan's slightly-unbalanced "other backup", Guy Gardner. For a while Jordan was romantically involved with a younger, alien Lantern named Arisia. The alien Lanterns took a more direct hand in human affairs, a fact not appreciated by human governments (Kilowog helped create the Rocket Reds for the Soviet Union). Eventually, the Earth corps broke up, several members returning to their home sectors.
The Guardians soon returned to this dimension, and Jordan worked with them to rebuild the fractured Corps. Then the villainous alien Mongul came to Earth in a plot to take advantage of the death of Superman. Jordan defeated Mongul, but not before Coast City (Jordan's former home) was destroyed. He tried to use his ring to recreate the city, but the Guardians condemned this use of the ring for personal gain and demanded that Jordan come to Oa for trial. Angered at what he saw as the Guardians' ungrateful and callous behavior, Jordan went insane and attacked Oa to seize the full power of the central battery. The Green Lantern Corps attempted to defend Oa, but the enraged Jordan overwhelmed them, destroying his fellow Lanterns and the Guardians. He then renounced his life as Green Lantern, adopting the name Parallax .
As Parallax he initiated the Zero Hour crisis, attempting to rewrite history to his own liking, but he was eventually defeated by a gathering of heroes. Ultimately, Jordan returned to his heroic roots to save the Earth from the Sun-Eater , but died in the process.
A few years later, Jordan was resurrected as a new incarnation of The Spectre. Soon after assuming this mantle, Jordan chose to bend his mission from a spirit of vengeance to one of redemption.
The Modern Age Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner)
Kyle Rayner was a struggling freelance artist when he was approached by the last Guardian of the Universe, Ganthet , to become a new Green Lantern with the last power ring. Ganthet did not choose Rayner for any particular reason; he simply needed to find someone to fill the role. Despite not being cut from the same cloth of bravery and fearlessness as Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner proved to have his fans.
Kyle was a gifted artist and a fan of Japanese manga. To him, the Green Lantern ring was the ultimate expression of his imagination. While in battle, he often used rings to create constructs of other superheroes, anime characters, mystical characters, mechas, futuristic weapons and original characters from his comic books. While some questioned the practicality of those constructs, they often made Kyle an unpredicable opponent.
Rayner also joined the Justice League. He became friends with Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern, and his daughter Jade (also a Green Lantern previously). Kyle and Jade's relationship was been a complicated but ever growing one. Their relationship went as far as Kyle proposing and Jade believing she was pregnant. His adventures have mostly been confined to Earth, with a brief period of godhood as the imposing Ion. Kyle's godlike powers had drawbacks: Ion was one with everything, but Kyle Rayner could no longer sleep or separate himself from the overwhelming responsibilities. Rather than sacrifice his humanity, Kyle abandoned omnipotence, bleeding off the vast power (recharging the Central Power Battery on the planet Oa and helping to create a new group of Guardians in the process). Once again limited only by his willpower and imagination, Rayner's ring can affect yellow and does not have a set time limit on its power, though prolonged use can leave it depleted and in need of recharging. After the brutal beating of his young assistant and friend, Kyle went on a lengthy self-imposed exile into space. On his return he discovered that Jade had begun seeing someone new, and John Stewart had replaced him in the Justice League.
Controversy
The editorial decision to turn Jordan into an homicidal maniac and replace him with Rayner was very controversial in comic book fandom, sparking a debate that has lasted for years in forums such as Usenet. Many fans consider the treatment of Jordan to be a betrayal of the character (some fans created a Jordan defense organization called H.E.A.T., "Hal's Emerald Advancement Team"), while other fans feel that Jordan's fate should not reflect badly on Rayner. Caught in the middle has been writer Ron Marz , who executed the editorial decision to replace Jordan with Rayner, and who has been defended as having done the best he could with a decision which was out of his hands.
The controversy is somewhat similar to that of replacing Barry Allen as The Flash with Wally West, except that Allen was, fans feel, given an heroic send-off while Jordan was not. Moreover, writer Mark Waid addressed the Allen/West controversy head-on and developed West into a fully-rounded character, while despite several attempts it is widely felt that no similar catharsis has been provided in the case of Green Lantern.
Another Jordan/Rayner controversy seems to be brewing as of this writing. The limited series Green Lantern: Rebirth, written by Geoff Johns, has as its end-goal the redemption of Hal Jordan/the Spectre, and his return to active duty as a Green Lantern. Following will be a rebooted Green Lantern series. With Jordan returning, Kyle Rayner's place in the pecking order is uncertain. Some fans are preemptively protesting the apparent retro move.
Other Green Lanterns
The Green Lantern Corps had 3600 members at its peak. Some of the more notable ones:
- Abin Sur was an alien who incongruously travelled using a spaceship, rather than the power of his ring. The Post-Crisis explanation for this was that a psychological attack by a group of exiled demons caused him to lose faith in his ring and sometimes use a ship instead. His ship crash-landed on Earth; as he lay dying, he passed his ring on to Hal Jordan.
- Kilowog of Bolovax Vik was an alien who recruited and trained new members of the Green Lantern Corps. His most illustrious student was Hal Jordan. When Jordan went insane, Kilowog was one of the last Green Lanterns to try stop Jordan from destroying the central battery. He was killed by Jordan, but subsequently revived by Ion/Kyle Rayner.
- Guy Gardner is a former schoolteacher whom Abin Sur's ring selected as an alternative to Hal Jordan, but Jordan was closer so Sur chose him instead. Gardner later suffered brain damage, and was unbalanced when he recovered enough to function. He was awarded a ring by a Guardian during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. He served in Maxwell Lord's JLI until all Green Lantern rings lost their power when Hal Jordan (as Parallax) destroyed Oa. Finding himself powerless, he went on a quest for a mythical source of power deep in the jungle. This power source activated dormant extraterrestrial DNA in him, providing him with the ability to morph his body into various different forms -- mainly in the form of weapons. He then adopted the identity of Warrior.
- John Stewart is an architect who was Hal Jordan's backup, and occasionally filled in for him when Jordan was unavailable. After Jordan gave up being Green Lantern in the 1980s, the Guardians selected Stewart to replace him. Stewart filled that role for some years, during which time he married Katma Tui, the Green Lantern of the planet Korugar. After Tui's murder, Stewart became the administrator of the "Mosaic World", a patchwork of communities from multiple planets that had been brought to Oa by an insane Guardian. From this position, Stewart eventually ascended to Guardianhood, which he later relinquished. After a brief period of paraplegia, he became Green Lantern once again and is currently a member of the latest incarnation of the JLA.
- Sinestro was the Green Lantern from the planet Korugar; however, he believed that the best way to maintain order on Korugar was by using his ring to become the planet's dictator. The Guardians convicted him of criminal actions and banished him to the antimatter universe of Qward, where he was given a yellow power ring, and returned to our universe to become Hal Jordan's greatest enemy. He was killed in action, helping defend the central power battery on Oa from the insane Jordan.
- Katma Tui led the Korugarian rebellion against Sinestro, and became his successor after the Guardians arrested him. She eventually married John Stewart, but was later murdered by Star Sapphire.
Powers and abilities
All Green Lanterns wield a power ring that can generate a variety of effects and energy constructs, powered purely by the user thinking about it. The greater the user's willpower, the more effective the ring is.
Power rings allow the user to fly and to cover themselves and others with a protective force field, suitable for travelling through outer space. They can also generate beams and solid structures of energy that can be moved simply by thinking about doing so, enabling the user to create cages, transportation platforms, walls, and battering rams. The ring can also be used to search for energy signatures or particular objects. It can serve as a universal translator. The ring can manipulate sub-atomic particles (effectively producing new elements) and split atoms, but those powers are rarely used by Green Lanterns.
The rings of the Green Lantern Corps appear to be semi-sentient computers, able to talk to and advise the user as to various courses of action.
Rings typically hold a limited charge. Alan Scott's ring and the Green Lantern Corps rings must be recharged every 24 hours. Kyle Rayner's ring also has limited energy, but no set time limit; the energy is expended by Rayner's use of the ring, so the duration of each charge is determined by his actions.
Alan Scott's ring cannot directly affect objects made of wood, and Green Lantern Corps rings cannot directly affect objects colored yellow. Lanterns have typically found ways to get around these limitations by affecting objects indirectly. For example, if the Lantern is faced with a yellow gas approaching him, a fan can be created to blow it away since the fan only directly affects the normal air around it, not the gas. Kyle Rayner's ring can affect both wooden and yellow objects, but his mind has proven to be susceptible to forms of external control (such as hallucinogens, psychic attacks, and other phenomena that disrupt his thought processes).
Green Lantern Corps rings typically reserve a small portion of their power for a passive force field that "protects the wielder from mortal harm". In dire emergency, that energy reserve can be tapped, at the expense of said protection, until it too is exhausted. Kyle Rayner's reconfigured ring can "run low", but never completely loses its charge; however, it doesn't shield him from harm if he's caught off-guard.
The GLC rings do not necessarily have to be worn to be wielded in some functions. For instance, Ch'p once faced a hostage situation where the villain demanded he take off his ring or the hostage would be harmed. Ch'p complied, but not before ordering the ring to fire a restraining beam on the villain seconds after being removed from physical contact (which was done, and the villain was captured). Rayner can will his ring to return to him if it is ever removed or lost.
Standard Green Lantern Corps rings can be used by anyone who wears them. Rayner's ring is keyed to his genetic pattern and is useless to anyone else.
Television
Several Green Lanterns have appeared in animated TV shows, both as regular characters and as guest stars.
Regular roles
Green Lantern John Stewart in Justice League
Hal Jordan was the featured character in a solo series which was part of The Aquaman/Superman Hour as well as part of the Justice League segment. In addition, the character was an occasional supporting character in the various Super Friends incarnations.
John Stewart is a member of the Justice League in the Justice League animated series. In this series, Stewart's ring was initially constrained to permitting him to fly, generating a protective force field, creating walls, and firing energy blasts; this limitation was established as being due to Stewart's mindset, not a inherent limitation of the ring itself. (The series' version of John Stewart is an ex-Marine, not an architect.) After being berated by Katma Tui for his unimaginative use of the ring, Stewart has increasingly generated complex tools (to defuse a bomb in one instance) and weapons. In a development not seen in any other version of the Green Lantern mythos, Stewart's eyes glow green as a side effect of the Ring's radiation (the glow fades when the ring runs out of power). In addition, the ring is effective against yellow; Stewart is seen fighting Sinestro in one episode and the yellow energy does not prove to be a significant problem for the Lantern.
Guest appearances
- Kyle Rayner appeared as Green Lantern in one episode of Superman: The Animated Series. This incarnation appeared to be a hybrid of Kyle Rayner and Hal Jordan, since he was recruited by Abin Sur, fought Jordan's old enemy Sinestro, and looked more like Jordan than Rayner. This character was later inducted into the Green Lantern Corps. (In one scene, the name of test pilot Hal Jordan is clearly visible, painted on the nose of an airplane on the tarmac at a military base.)
- Rayner was briefly mentioned in one episode of Justice League and reappeared after the series became Justice League Unlimited, bearing a far greater resemblance to his comics counterpart. Kilowog, Katma Tui, and Sinestro have also appeared in the series.
- A character known as Green Guardsman (real name Scott Mason) appeared in a Justice League episode in which John Stewart and several other members traveled to a parallel universe. This other universe had its own superhero group, the Justice Guild, whose members were modeled on Golden Age versions of the Justice League characters. Green Guardsman was an homage to the Golden Age Green Lantern.
- The Justice League version of John Stewart has appeared in a few episodes of Static Shock, both as a member of the League and in a solo appearance.
- A two-part episode of Batman Beyond featured a future Justice League Unlimited that included a Green Lantern who was an eight-year old Asian child. (The character was created for this appearance, and has not appeared elsewhere.) His name was Kai-ro, a tribute to Green Lantern's alien sidekick on the SuperFriends, Cairo.
- Hal Jordan appeared briefly in a two-part episode of Justice League Unlimited in which a time-traveling villain caused the timeline to become unstable, with characters changing or disappearing as their history was altered. At one point, John Stewart morphed into Jordan, who aided the other characters for several minutes before changing back into Stewart.
Trivia
- The unsuccessful pilot for a live-action Justice League of America television series in 1997 included Matthew Settle as Guy Gardner, although the pilot's Green Lantern used only the name and costume of the comic-book Gardner. In personality and appearance, he more closely resembled Hal Jordan. He wore a mask similar to the one Kyle Rayner wore as a part of his original costume. His ring closely resembled that of Alan Scott. However, this ring didn't bestow the power of flight upon its wearer -- instead, Gardner flew by using the ring to generate a helicopter rotor.
- The animated series Duck Dodgers has an episode in which a mixup at the dry cleaners results in Dodgers getting Hal Jordan's outfit -- and ring. The episode includes appearances by many well-known members of the Green Lantern Corps.
The Green Lantern oath
Green Lantern is famous for the oath he recites when he charges his ring. Originally, the oath was simple:
- ...and I shall shed my light over dark evil.
- For the dark things cannot stand the light,
- The light of the Green Lantern!
In the mid-1940s, this was revised by science fiction writer Alfred Bester into the form that became famous during the Hal Jordan era:
- In brightest day, in blackest night
- No evil shall escape my sight
- Let those who worship evil's might
- Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!
The word "blackest" is often replaced with "darkest" to avoid racist connotations.
It has since been established that each Green Lantern has his, her, or its own oath. Notable oaths include that of Jack T. Chance:
- You who are wicked and evil and mean
- I'm the nastiest bastard you EVER have seen!
- Come one, come all, put up a fight
- I'll whup your asses with Green Lantern's light!
and that of Rot Lop Fan, a Green Lantern whose species lacks sight, and thus has no concepts of brightness, day, darkness, night, color, light, or lanterns:
- In loudest din or hush profound
- My ears hear evil's slightest sound
- Let those who toll out evil's knell
- Beware my power, the F-Sharp Bell!
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