By Devin T. Quin
Holy Rainbows, Batman! In the past few years a complete spectrum of multi-hued warriors has joined DC Comics the Green Lantern for combat and tea in the outer reaches of space! KERPLOWIE!
People who read comics know that the Green Lantern is a guy, often named Hal Jordan but sometimes named Kyle, John or even GUY, who finds a magical ring that utilizes will power to create bright green objects out of thin air. The Green Lantern uses this ring to fight “Darkness” as part of an intergalactic peace keeping force from the planet Oa. I guess the economy on Oa is so bad they couldn’t afford consonants.
Way back in ancient times- the 1960s and 70s- an ex-Green Lantern named Sinestro was kicked out of our universe for bad tipping and found himself in an anti-matter universe. There he was given a yellow power ring, a useful weapon against his hated ex-bosses the Green Lanterns because of that squad’s unique flaw of being unable to affect the color yellow.
AH, the Silver age, when comic books where silly on purpose and everybody had a good time!
Well, times change. Sinestro now leads an evil Yellow Lantern brigade, which harnesses the power of FEAR instead of will power to create weapons of yellow light! They do things like show people bootleg copies of Paranormal Activity they’ve created out of their fear inducing yellow light in order to create MORE power rings so they can bootleg MORE horror films! Bwoo-hoo-hoo-ha-ha!
Since then EVERYBODY wants there own specially colored power ring squad. Let’s break it down, Roy G. Biv style!
RED LANTERNS
Utilizing the power of “ANGRY,” these Red Lanterns are roid raged jerks that intentionally want to kill the Guardians of Oa and their accursed Green Lanterns because the big green meanies killed a bunch of their ancestors and locked them inside a planet. Bummer.
These guys are actually pretty badass. Instead of creating constructs out of light they shoot out a stream of corrosive, flaming blood! The Blood even burns in space!
Notable members include NO ONE you’ve ever heard of if you’ve never read an issue of Green Lantern, except for maybe Guy Gardner.
ORANGE LANTERNS
For the most part there is only one Orange Lantern, a weird space dweeb named Larfleeze, who uses the emotion of greed to steal people’s rings, powers, identities and Pokémon cards. Larfleeze goes by the clever nickname Agent Orange. Get it? ‘Cause he’s orange, and Agent Orange was a horrible nerve gas that we the Americans used on the Vietnamese, permanently killing, wounding and maiming well over 500,000 of their innocent citizens? Hilarious!
Recently Lex Luthor became an Orange Lantern, which just goes to show you can’t fight city hall. Huh?
YELLOW LANTERNS
This is Sinestro’s fear squad, only he calls them “the Sinestro Corps.” I suppose if he had a TV show it would be called “The Sinestro Show, Staring Sinestro.” This guy and Oprah have a bunch in common.
The one cool thing about the Yellow Lanterns is there are TONS of these guys, just like the Green Lanterns. You can calls em’ yellow, but they really have their act together.
Notable members of the Sinestro fun time brigade include the weird, cyborg Superman from that one time that he died, the Anti-Monitor from Crisis and apparently Batman’s villain the Scarecrow. How did he get in space?
GREEN LANTERNS
Again self-explanatory. I bet it’s not really that fun being a Green Lantern. If you wanted to use your powers to eat an apple you can only make a Granny Smith. All the Bananas you’d create would be un-ripe. If you wanted to eat some Mike and Ikes candy? FORGET IT, you can only create the Ikes. Or the Mikes. Whichever one is green.
BLUE LANTERNS
Blue lanterns live on a planet called Odym and gain power from the emotion of hope. As you might have guessed, I don’t read Green Lantern myself, but I imagine these guys are pretty lame-o.
“I hope someone does something about those evil Black Lanterns.” One might say, gaining further powers of wishing in one hand and doing you-know-what in the other.
“I hope so, too.” Says a similarly empowered blue clad dork.
There power rings are similarly disenfranchised. Alone they can do nothing, though when next to the will-power based powers of the Green Lanterns they can heal wounds, prevent suns from going super-nova and stay crunchy even in milk!
Notable Blue Lanterns include MORE people you’ve never heard of if you’ve never read an issue of Green Lantern, although recently Barry Allen, the Flash has joined up. He must have gone to space on the same space shuttle as the Scarecrow.
INDIGO LANTERNS
These men women and space worms use indigo colored staves and rings to harness the power of compassion. Well GOOD for them!
Reclussive and mysterious, we don’t know much about “The Indigo Tribe,” which is another way of saying I’m not going to bother dong any hard research for this article at this time.
Their rings can force others to feel the emotions in other people, such as the suffering someone has coaused someone else like in that one episode of Futurama where Bender flushes Nibler down the toilet.
Notable Indigo members are the Atom, Emily Saliers and Amy Ray.
VIOLET LANTERNS
Human beings cannot see colors in the violet spectrum, so I guess Violet Lanterns are a bunch of invisible freaks who are completely uninteresting to the eyes.
Just kidding.
The violet color spectrum is represented by a troup of clothing adverse space-hotties known as the Star Sapphires! AAAA-OOOOOGHA! They use the power of “love” in the same way psycho ex-girlfriends do, which is to say they can generate violet colored power prisons and lock people up in them forever, slowly brainwashing the condemned. Ah, Love.
Notable Star Sapphires include a lady with the original name Star Sapphire, Wonder Woman and enough weird alien chicks to give Captain Kirk a heart attack. Hubba Hubba!
I should try to be more mature about this stuff, but this is a comic book.
ROY G. BIV DEATH!
While that is all of the colors, there are still more Lanterns. There’s the Black Lanterns who harness the emotion of death, the White Lanterns who harness the nebulous emotion of life and the even stranger Polka-Dots and Plaid Lanterns who seem to use a subtle blend of the emotion of regret and constipation.
So THAT is what you’ve been missing by reading X-men, Mouse Guard or Scott Pilgrim: A pack of colorful loons shooting each other with bright lights in the darkness of outer space. It’s like a rave, only without sound.
Print this article out and use it as a guide for all things Lantern. Bon Appetite!
