Lantern Facts

Let's see how much of a Green Lantern Fan you are! Here are One Dozen Green Lantern Facts!

1. There has been seven people from Earth to use the name "Green Lantern". Alan Scott (1940), Hal Jordan (1959), Guy Gardner (1968), John Stewart (1971), Kyle Rayner (1994), Simon Baz (2012), and Jessica Cruz (2016).

2. The Green Lantern Corps is an intergalactic police force. Every sector of space gets a selected Green Lantern, given a Power Ring, a Lantern Battery, and training by veteran GLC members. The sector that Earth sits in is Sector 2814. To our knowledge, no other Sector has been through so many Green Lanterns in only a few decades than Sector 2814.

3. The very first Green Lantern-Alan Scott-had a magical ring and was not connected to the GLC or the rest of his successor's lore. It was established in a 1963 Flash story that Alan Scott exists on a parallel Earth segregated from the other Green Lanterns.

4. Originally, Alan Scott's ring could not effect anything made of wood. In the 2011 reboot of DC Comics, Alan Scott's ring was made part of The Green-a supernatural force that connects all plant life-making this previous weakness ironic.

5. Hal Jordan and other Green Lantern's rings originally could not effect anything yellow. What was once a minor weakness would effectively lead to the creation of other Lantern Corps.

6. Along with the Green Lantern Corps there are several other Corps that use rings and lanterns powered by emotions (kind of). Counting them all you have Red Lanterns (Rage), Orange Lanterns (Greed), Yellow Lanterns (Fear), Green Lanterns (Will), Blue Lanterns (Hope), Indigo Lanterns (Compassion), Pink Lanterns (Love), White Lanterns (Life), and Black Lanterns (Death). Each Lantern Corps has a weakness to one another and each type of Power Ring has been used by both Hal Jordan and Kyle Rayner.

7. Hal Jordan was originally a test pilot for Ferris Aircraft. His role as a pilot and a member of an intergalactic police force established Hal as a militaristic, All-American, soldier archetype. When Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams began writing team-up stories between Green Arrow and Green Lantern in the 1960's they used Hal's characterization to make him the opposing voice to Green Arrow. Green Arrow was a liberal, Green Lantern was a conservative and they'd tackle modern day problems. Each had their own way of solving the issue, they'd disagree, but they'd both learn something from each other in the end.

8. Hal Jordan has also taken the identities of Parallax and The Spectre.

9. Guy Gardner-the 3rd Green Lantern-was once knocked out cold by Batman in one punch.

10. The 5th Green Lantern Kyle Rayner is tied to a large controversy in comic book history. Besides the fact that the character was created during a time when Hal Jordan had become a villain and many fans had taken the replacement as a social commentary, Kyle Rayner's girlfriend had been murdered by a villain. What made this offensive was that she had little character development and was shoved into Kyle's fridge after her murder. This began the "Women in Refrigerators" movement which was based off this event and the term coined by writer Gail Simone. "WIR" had become a website in 1999 addressing the mistreatment of women in comic books and was arguably one of the first Feminist movements of the modern era.

11. In the episode "Green Lantoon" from Duck Dodgers (starring Warner Bros' Looney Tunes character Daffy Duck) the title character accidentally picked up Hal Jordan's laundry resulting in Daffy Duck becoming The Green Lantern.

12. Hal Jordan was selected to be the next Green Lantern of Sector 2814 by Abin Sur after the alien had crash landed on Earth and was about to die. However when Abin Sur sent the ring to find the closest and most worthy Earthling to take the role of Green Lantern the ring did not not go to Hal Jordan first. The first person the ring went to was Superman. But due to Superman not being born in Sector 2814, the ring went to Hal.

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