In news leaked last week, The head honcho of The Back Lanterns was revealed. It’s not Scar, and it’s not The Black Hand. It’s someone else. Since this is technically a spoiler, I’ll hide it behind a cut. If you want to read on, you can. If you don’t, you can skip ahead.
With Blackest Night in full swing, some of you may be a little confused as to just WHO this Nekron fellow is. He’s been revealed the head honcho in the Black Lantern Corps, but other than that, he’s mostly unknown. Let me attempt to illuminate you on the matter.
Created almost 30 years ago in the pages of Tales of The Green Lantern, Nekron was conceived as the ruler of a domain that lie between Heaven and Hell, like purgatory. He also accumulates his power from the dead souls that inhabit his realm.
He was originally int
roduced because of the “death” of Krona. Krona being immortal and also in what could be described as purgatory, was exactly what Nekron needed in order to push his way into our world. He enlisted the undead Krona to do his bidding in the living world, as he was too large to pass through the rift created with the immortal’s death.
Krona and his army attacked the living world to kill more immortals, specifically the Guardians of the Universe. Killing more Guardians would make the rift grow in size, large enough for Nekron to pass through. And you know what? He actually succeeded somewhat. Krona murdered several guardians and dozens of Lanterns, even managing to destroy the main power battery, preventing the living Lanterns from recharging their rings. So what does Hal Jordan do? He enters Nekron’s turf and incites the recently killed Lanterns to rise up against Nekron while the Guardians push Krona back into the rift, and sealing Jordan inside. Luckily, Jordan’s predecessor, Abin Sur, assists Hal’s escape from death.
Other characters, such as Captain Atom, have had run-ins with this Lord of Death. He was described as being “The Ultimate Opponent,” as opposed to DC’s other interpretation, Vertigo’s Death(from Sandman) being described as “Release, Mercy, Compassion.”
Kyle Rayner, the then-last-of-his-kind, even battled Nekron at one point. All the Green Lanterns that had died were resurrected WITH RINGS POWERED BY DEATH. Kyle eventually beat back Nekron, and his legion of dead Lanterns, but obviously, this is not the last we would see of them. And now, he’s gearing up to be the Big Bad in the pages of Blackest Night. And apparently, with good reason.
MATT’S EDITORIAL NOTE: FYI, this isn’t technically true. Yes, Nekron battled Kyle Rayner. However, the reason the GLs came back to life was never actually stated. After Kyle defeats Nekron by killing all the resurrected GLs, Nekron screams that he didn’t bring them back to life. All Nekron did was take advantage of the situation. An unknown entity brought them back to life which caused a similar anamoly as when Kronas died, allowing Nekron a small access right into our world. There weren’t actually any death powered rings. We could guess that this is where Nekron got the idea of resurrecting the dead in order to open the rift and allow him access, and when Superboy-Prime killed a Guardian in the Sinestro Corps War, it could’ve opened the rift enough for Nekron to influence the Black Hand as well as turn the husk of the Anti-Monitor into a power battery. That last bit’s all speculation though.
To his credit, however, Geoff Johns(current GL writer and all around awesome dude) has not described Nekron has evil. He’s more accurately described as a force of nature, and is darkness personified. as Johns states “Nekron is not evil. Nekron is existance.”
That’s a terrifying statement if I’ve ever heard one.
