Graphic by Chad Bowers
From the desk of Brian Salvatore, friend to all the Jews:
L’chaim! The Multiversity Comics staff is a multicultural bunch, and wanted to spread around the holiday cheer to our chosen brethren with our new series: Multiversity Lights the Menorah!
Each night, at sundown, we will light another candle on the Menorah and tell a tale of a story, creator’s run, or general theme in comics that, much like the oil that lasted eight nights for the Israelites, went on for far longer than any of us could have expected. Tonight, it is my turn to bring the latkes, and I’m serving up a side of 9 dipping sauces, one for each of the Lantern Corps!
So, enjoy as i take the shammus and light the fourth candle!
Click here to relight the third candle, or the second candle, or the first candle.
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| There are as many Lantern Corps as there are Supreme Court Justices. |
There were two periods in my life when I was a lapsed comics reader — my high school years, and the first few years after graduating from college. In both instances, I was trying to navigate new waters, and both times I wound up deepening my love for music during my self-imposed embargo on comics. The writer/book that got me back on the horse the second time around was Green Lantern: Rebirth by Geoff Johns.
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| The less said about Hal as the Spectre, the better. |
I basically bought the comic to hate it — I had come of age during the Kyle Rayner-era, and so was bummed out that (as I thought) his era was coming to an end. Well, not only was I wrong about Rayner’s tenure as a Lantern, but I was wrong about the comic as well. I flat-out loved it. And so, I kept collecting Green Lantern in trades and keeping an eye on the intarwebs for basic info on where the series was going. But what got me collecting week in, week out again was the Sinestro Corps War, and the promise of more Lantern Corps.
However, if you had told me that four years later, the Multi-Colored Lanterns were still the focus on the GL-books, I would think you’re high. I would similarly be in disbelief if you had told me that there would now be nine types of Lanterns encountered – Red, Orange, Sinestro (Yellow), Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, Black and White. But, that is where we stand. There are four “Green Lantern Family” books — Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: New Guardians, and Red Lanterns. Of those four books, GL:NG (basically a Multi-Colored Lanterns team book) and Red Lanterns are directly related to the MCLs (as they shall be known throughout this article), and Green Lantern proper has Sinestro a Green Lantern once again, and his resurgence as a character has been in no small part to having his own Corps (not to mention the next arc in the book is about the Indigo Tribe). Only GLC really tackles stories that don’t involve other colored Lanterns, at least for now.
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I’m also skipping over two of the biggest events that DC has put out in the last three years: Blackest Night and Brightest Day. The former dealt with Black Lanterns (basically zombies) rising from the dead (their “emotion” was death), and the latter dealt with White Lanterns (their “emotion” is life), and the resurrection of some key DC players because of them. The whole idea of the MCLs now transcends the GL books into the entire DC Universe, and we have seen everyone from Superman to Mera wearing a ring of some color. Now, with the DCnU in full swing, the frequency in which non-Lanterns are wearing a ring has trended downward, which is good for everyone.
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| It also resurrected some JV DCers |
In some ways, the MCLs are exactly what Green Lantern, as a character, needed. Sure, there’s Hector Hammond and Black Hand, but Sinestro was always the guy — the big bad for Hal. And now, because of the MCLs, the Lantern books have easily identifiable villains (and allies), and we may not have to get the overuse of Mongul or a return of Major Force in the next decade. Or, this could get even staler than it already has (seriously, have you read Red Lanterns? Ugh), and lead to another time in the desert for Hal and his ilk.
