Hey all, today's article is all subject around the Lantern Corps and how they have changed the frontier of the DC heroes and villains. As some may not know, in the early days of the Silver Age, Hal Jordan became the redesigned Green Lantern, overtaking Alan Scott who was the original Green Lantern, who's power was mystical in power, as opposed to Jordan's who is powered by his will and a cosmic energy source. Over the years we saw established many new corps, the first was Yellow, which only had one member, Sinestro, who then was able to form and entire corps on his own corps to create the Sinestro Corps war mini-event. Thanks to the Help of DC comics own Geoff Johns created every other Corps in the rest of the universe. We quickly gained the Red Lanterns, Agent Orange, Sinestro Corps, Blue Lanterns, Indigo Tribe, and Star Sapphires( To be clear, the corps made an official appearance in 2007, not the single entity it was before). So now that Johns has established a greater scope of the Lantern universe with all varying members from all planets and forms we had them eventually team up for the amazingly well done Blackest Night mini-series epic.
During the events centering around the eight part main series of Blackest Night, the new and deadly Black Lantern Corps who were the zombie/reanimated forms of fallen heroes and villains all seeking to rise their entity known as Nekron, who is to destroy the entity of the White Lanterns, who is essentially the light of life and creation, it was also established that all the entities of the Lanterns were created from the White light. The one power all Black Lantern's have is that they all can see the emotional spectrum, which is an aura that shrouds a person in one or more of the seven emotions of the the Lanterns which are Rage=Red, Avarice=Orange, Fear=Yellow, Green=Will, Blue=Hope, Indigo=Compassion, Violet=Love. This ability I dub emo-vision basically labels what kind of powers and traits the person has and in theory the potentiality to becoming a Lantern member of their respective aura. In the recent Brightest Day #10, we get the reappearance of Black Lantern Firestorm, now titled Death-storm. As he was freed from Ronnie and Jason, he quickly identifies their changing auras. Jason Rusch has the auras of Rage, Love, and Hope, while Ronnie Raymond has Will, Fear, and Avarice, along with Professor Stein has only Compassion.
So as you can imagine, a lot of fans have a slight split in this idea. Geoff Johns created an amazing array of characters for us to see and discover new wonders they will be in the bigger scheme of things. However, when you create a new thing, the company sees it as a quick opportunity to make nearly any kind of hero or villain somehow connected to the Lanterns, when most if not have any kind of interaction with any of the Lanterns. DC still feels at best to bring in this as a new addition into the mainstream universe. Is it because the Green Lantern movie is coming closer to release? Is it a cheap story tool, or is their something we are all missing?
I think this is a double-edge sword topic, while the idea of giving heroes and villains various emotions from the emotional spectrum is a well conceived idea, this mean that these characters whoever they may be can be deputized by the respectful Lantern or one of the Guardians. The other problem we get is that we as fans ten to think that soon every hero or villain could become a lantern and essentially be more powerful than they already are, which I'm sure we will not see every time but is some cases will. I give Johns a lot of credit for taking a pretty basic group of Space Cops, defending their respected emotion and balance in the entire universe, by giving them a larger presence in every single aspect of the DCU. I think many saw the over saturation of this once we got the variant image of Brightest Day #13, which had a White Lantern Bat-man, which was mostly likely Bruce Wayne, but to me thats just variant cover and won't have any bigger presence in the Batman titles.
Following after the events of Brightest Day, we will be entering a new mini-event titled Flash Point, which will deal with the various Speedsters in the DCU, so will this post-event bring the end of the Lantern emotional spectrum, or will the Spectrum live on and be seen in only the Lantern titles, which I'm sure will be expanding in the near future. So for now, lets see how this will be handled, I'm sure Johns will deliver us more amazing stories with the Lanterns, let's hope they eventually go back and be focused on a smaller aspect, rather than being a focal point for all things. Til next time ComicCritic87 OUT!!!!