posted
Don't know why I've got superheros on the brain this week, nor why I started thinking about my old Green Lantern comics in the car today, but a question occurs: Do the objects that Lanterns Ring up have to be constantly sustained by the Ring, or are they independant for awhile once created?
I know the Rings have a power limit and can only create so much before having to be juiced up again.
I remember this old series of comics I have from the late 80's or early 90's I think, back when John Stewart was Earth's Lantern and a whole group was stationed on Earth. Kilowog, Ch'p (the squirrel), some 6 armed pink guy, Arisa, etc. Some bad guy drained Arisa's and Hal's Rings and dumped them down a mine shaft. We learned then that the Rings also keep an inaccessable energy reserve as a last ditch measure to keep a GL alive in the event their Rings lose all the usable power. I thought that was cool. And Arisa was hot.
I think the energy constructs are viable only as long as a GL maintains some degree of concentration on them: a knocked out GL's constructs fail immeadeately IIRC.
Each ring does indeed keep a reserve to sustain their owner: mainly in case of severe injury of if they're stranded/ unconsious in space. Where most GL's would do their work (just not the Earth ones, for lack of imgination on the writer's part, really).
A GL ring is also (somewhat) intelligent unto itself- capable of answering rudimentary questions, following some orders idependant of the owner and not following orders the Guardian have restricted (mainly the Time Travel prohibition). Vetran GL's seem to be able to access this info without actually asking the rings questions (like to scan an area or follow an energy trail) but rookies often are shown using the ring as more of a partner than a tool/weapon.
A GL ring can heal catistrophic damage to it's owner as well: often up to regenerating a limb or fixing internal damage.
Incidentally, the most powerful ring is not governed the guardians of Oa at all: Alan Acott's ring is powered by the D.C. universe's Magic (a force the Guardians sort of "bottled") called the Starheart in their quest to create order in the universe.
Makes Alan a baaaad mo-fo and his ring never loses power.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Eeeeeentersting. I never really understood how they tied the Golden Age GL in with the rest of the Corps. I knew they were different, but never really got how.
Speaking of talking to the Ring and what not, the new Alex Ross oversized graphic novel dealing with the Justice League (very cool, btw) shows Hal Jordan having his Ring do all kinds of crap, like running scans, transmitting messages, etc. And, mostly I'm guessing for purposes of storytelling, he verbally tells the Ring to do these things. Then the Ring will indicate the results of the scan by either popping up a hologram or pointing a huge glowing green arrow at the area Hal should fly to.
I wonder if the Ring has a voice mail feature like my cell phone, or a way for the GLs to find out how many minutes they have left on their daily plan...
The Oans were one of the first sentient races in the universe- they developed ultra high-technology and the ability to manipulate vast amounts of the universe's energy.
One day, their greatest scientist decided to take apeek at what there was prior to the Big Bang- he made a window into the very moment before creation. A baaaad move. Turns out, all of existance is supposed tocollapse in on itself at the end of the universe, make a super-singularity nad then bloom into a whole new universe. Joe Scientist's time window allowed a HUGE amount of energy from the current universe to get sucked into the very death throes of the last one. So: when the universe collspes this time, there's nothing coming after.
The Oans's study the problem nad come to the conclusion that an orderly universe uses less universal energy nad that if there's a certain amount of order to things, the univesre might just have enough juice to start over.
It's all about guilt.
Oan's become the Guardians, found the Green lantern Corps, Darkstars and Manhunters to police the univese. The Guardians realize that a LOT of people dont enjoy being told how to live their chaotic little lives, so they split the universe into sectors with their planet Oa at the center (so an invading force must go through as many GL's as possible to get to them and the Centeral Battery: their direct link to the universe's energy.
Billions of years back, the Guardians inprison the majority of the universe's "magic" or Chaos energy into a single star at the universe's core.
Sometime back in China's aincent past, the Green Lantern for Sector 2814 was a large repitllian creature that made himself overlord of that continent for kicks. The Guardians decided this was bogus and when the peasants revolted against this "dragon" they were armed with bronze and copper weapons. The Guardians (watching from afar) made the impurity against the color Yellow and the "Dragon" was killed by the peasants, his ring and lantern smashed to pieces. Seeing the neeed to limit the GL's abilities, the Guardians spread the impurity to all the rings.
The captive Starheart (a semi-sentient force after so long) sensed a chance at freedom and infuses the pieces of the broken lantern with it's own power. The pieces are re-assembled as "the cursed jade lantern" and pass through many owners not strong willed enough to use he power. Shortly thereafter (to it, anyway) Alan Scott (in the late 30's) is driven to the lantern- in a trance he uses some of it's material to make his ring and becomes the Golden Age Green Lantern (possibly the lantern retained some vestigal memory of it's original function). Alan's energy manifests itelf as green flame.
New GL's come and go, their numbers swell to over 3000 and none travel to earth directly after the incident in China untill Abban Sur crashes in the nevada desert and passes his ring to Hal Jordan.
Recently, hal went crazy, wiped out the Guardians, attempted to re-structure the universe into one where no one ever dies (during Zero Hour) and the guardians were all wiped our except Ganthet (kinda an annoying version of yoda).
The Starheat grew more powerful as it's prison got waaay weaker with no Guardians (I guesss a lot of their concentration wa always on maintaining it's prison) and escaped.
Biiig boost to all of DC's magic-based charcters and Alan no longer needs a ring, lantern or anything else to do his thing. Seeing Kyle as the last GL (and not really belonging to the Core anyway) he starts calling himseld "Sentinel".
...and now you know the rest of the backstory...
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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While standing in a comic store being cool the other day, I noticed that Jon Stewart now seems to be the JLA Green Lantern. If I recally correctly, he was thought up for the cartoon. How'd they get him in the comic? And what's happened to Kyle?
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I believe Jon Stewart was Earth's GL back in the 80's. Before Kyle. Hal was still around, as was a decent sized group of Earth based GLs.
There was also a really cool, though completely insane, GL whose name escapes me for the moment. He had a double-breasted uniform, big green boots, and a red-haired buzz cut. I think him and Hal threw down.
So Hal wiped out the Oans (and the Corps?) leaving only one GL and one Oan, right? Someone mentioned something a little while ago about Hal resuming the title of Green Lantern next year... how's that gonna happen?
Also... how does Sinestro fit into all this? If the Yellow restriction was imposed by the Guardians (though one comic I have shows a group of psycho GLs finding new and improved Rings that don't have that flaw), how did Sinestro get shis Yellow Ring? Is there a whole group that has Yellow Rings?
posted
Sinestro got his ring when he was banished to the antimatter universe of Qward by the Guardians; the Weaponers of Qward had been monitoring his activities and liked what they saw. As far as I know, his was the only yellow power ring made.
John Stewart first showed up in the 70's, if I'm remembering correctly. An emergency came up in Hal's sector, but he was too injured to deal with it. The ring searched for the next most likely candidate to take his place temporarily. After that, Stewart was the "auxiliary" Lantern of Sector 2814.
The red headed jackass Lantern was Guy Gardner. When he was originally cooked up he was a schoolteacher, and his backstory went like this: when Abin Sur was searching for his successor, his ring found two equally worthy candidates -- Hal and Guy. The ring went with Hal because he was closer. Gardner later wound up in a coma, and when he emerged he had his "charming" personality. He got his ring when there was a schism in the ranks of the Guardians. One group thought the current GLs weren't proactive enough, and one of them gave Gardner his ring. That ring disappeared along with almost all of the GLs' rings when the Central Power Battery was destroyed. After that, Gardner got hold of Sinestro's ring (which is what he was using during the "Death of Superman" storyline).
When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, the take on the whole yellow thing went like this: the initial power rings and batteries didn't work; the Lanterns couldn't tap the energy. It was only when the Guardians added the yellow impurity that the system functioned, but at the cost of not working against anything yellow. This was back before Crisis On Infinite Earths combined the DC multiverse into one universe, and there was an interesting quirk. If the Earh-1 and Earth-2 GL's combined their rings' energies, they canceled out each others' weaknesses; the combined energy worked on wood and worked on yellow objects.
-------------------- The difference between genius and idiocy? Genius has its limits.
Registered: Aug 2001
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So what is going on with Kyle at the moment? Why is Stewart currently taking his place in the Justlice League (apart from tying it into the cartoon, obviously).
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
My cynical side comes up with a very obvious reason as to why Jon Stewart is currently the JLA's Green Lantern: Racial diversity. But maybe they just didn't want to use Hal since he's been off the scene for a while and they didn't want to use Kyle since he's not as "classic".
Interestingly, the Alex Ross book I mentioned earlier uses Jordan as GL, and he's in his classic duds, too.
posted
If you're referring to JL or JLU (ie, the cartoon), then it's not cynical at all. I think that Bruce Timm basically came out and said "we can't make a cartoon involving 5 white guys, 2 white girls, and a green bloke". And if he didn't, I would put money on that being his reason for being in the cartoon. Although they did have Kyle in an episode of Superman.
As for the comic...I'd say it's more to keep it current with the cartoon. It's what they did for Teen Titans.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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