Sunday Special: The Colors That Never Run

Up-front warning: this post is so geeked out that it probably raises the overall average per-post-geekiness of the entire blog by a good five points. No cute toddler anecdotes or slice-of-life philosophy here, folks. If you are not remotely curious about the depths of geek esoterica of which I am capable, you might just want to come back tomorrow. It pains me, sometimes, this compulsion, but it would pain me more to fight it.

Right now there's this meme floating around the comic-book-y blogosphere which involves giving Green Lantern-style power rings to characters from different properties not normally associated with power rings. I like this meme, and my response to it is the basis for this post, but let me explain how we got here first.

So, Green Lantern is kind of my joint. He's a sci-fi superhero, an Air Force test pilot (Hal Jordan) who received a power ring from a dying alien in order to carry on the fight against evil. As his adventures unfolded he found out the alien was part of a universe-wide police force all armed with identical rings, created by ancient, wise, order-obsessed entities called Guardians. As the alien's selected successor, Green Lantern (of Earth) was now part of this Green Lantern Corps consisting of thousands of aliens.

The power rings work by focusing the owner's willpower. This gets translated into green light which can form solid objects, or basically do anything the owner can imagine. Again, as adventures unfolded, it was revealed that the rings had a certain amount of artificial intelligence, worked as translators/databases, could scan for successors in the event of a Green Lantern death, etc. The criteria for becoming a Green Lantern are honesty and fearlessness. The inherent vulnerability of the power rings is an inability to affect anything yellow, attributed (originally) to a "necessary weakness" in their design. (Presumably the Guardians in their infinite wisdom included a glaring defect so their agents would not become all-powerful and inevitably corrupt.)

Green Lantern's arch-nemesis is a former Green Lantern called Sinestro. Yes, that was his real name, even when he was a Green Lantern. Sinestro is an alien of the variety that looks almost exactly like a human except for one variation (magenta skin in this case). When Sinestro was kicked out of the Corps and became a villain, he acquired a new power ring that created yellow objects, which exploits his former allies' weakness.


Thus was the (needlessly complicated except that's the way geeks like it) status quo for decades.

A few years ago a comic writer named Geoff Johns decided to recontextualize the whole Green Lantern cosmology. If there are many Green Lanterns, why not many opposites like Sinestro, a corps of Yellow Lanterns? And if two colors are represented, why not all seven? (This despite the fact that seven includes "indigo", which is pretty much a made-up color which makes the ROY G BIV mnemonic more pronounceable and the proper color wheel only has six - but seven makes more narrative sense, see below.) This would allow for a gigantic space-opera War of the Lanterns, which is a big huge component of the Blackest Night storyline which I have made reference to before as it is currently not only the main focus of the Green Lantern comic books but is also touching pretty much every other title DC is putting out. The "Blackest" part comes from an eighth group of power ring wielders, the Black Lanterns, powered by death. (In fact, in many cases they are dead. Zombies are big with the kids these days.)

So the spectrum of power rings attaches each color to a different emotion (more or less) and they break down like this: Red Lanterns are powered by rage; Orange Lanterns by greed; Yellow Lanterns by fear (technically the ability to inspire it, because while a corps of cowards would be interesting, it still has to conform to Sinestro's character as a worthy foe for Green Lantern); Green Lanterns by willpower (technically not an emotion, yes, but again, Johns is retrofitting his idea onto a forty-year-old mythos as best he can); Blue Lanterns by hope; Indigo Lanterns by compassion; Violet Lanterns by love.

You may have noticed that the Red-Orange-Yellow Lanterns are all associated with essentially negative emotions. These are the bad guys of the piece, as you might imagine. Willpower is somewhat neutral, because when all is said and done the War of Lanterns will pass but the ongoing Green Lantern title needs to keep going in interesting directions and interpretations, so it doesn't come down on one side or the other. Again, this is why a seven-color spectrum is preferable, because it allows the focus character to be the fulcrum point, with three on one side and three on the other. Blue-Indigo-Violet are positive, although Johns keeps things interesting here too by making Violet a little more ambiguous and tying it into old Green Lantern history. The Blue and Indigo Lanterns are all brand-new characters invented by Johns but the Star Sapphires take the Violet slot, Star Sapphire being a female nemesis of Green Lantern's who always simultaneously wanted to both defeat Hal and jump in the sack with him. (Yes, sexual politics in super hero comics are often ugly caricatures that do women no favors, given, granted, but that is a debate for another day.) So the Sapphires represent love but always with the potential for psycho Fatal Attraction manifestations.

You may also have noticed that each Lantern (except Green) has an almost exact opposite (in classical ring structure, no pun intended ... or is it???). Red's rage can also be understood as hate, which is the antithesis of Violet's love. Indigo's compassion is a generosity of spirit which contrasts with Orange's selfish avarice. Blue's inspirational hope opposes Yellow's terror. I just think that's another good indication that Johns's idea is well-constructed and possibly connects with something primal, the much sought-after Idea That Was Just Waiting To Happen.

Another good indicator that you've stumbled on a valuable mythopoeic archetype is when you can easily map it to another mythology. The father-judge and nurturer-mother and warrior and trickster and knowledge-seeker are useful for describing not just one pantheon, but most of them, from disparate cultures through history. Some shoehorning and squinting is inevitable, but the easier the fit, the better.

Which brings us (FINALLY) to the meme. This is a time-honored geek game, by the by, comparing and contrasting different stories that take place in different worlds. (If the Enterprise crashed on Eternia and the crew were killed, but the ship could still be taken into space, how would the Masters of the Universe fill out the bridge? OK, He-Man's the captain, Stratos can be the helmsman, Teela's communications, Man-at-Arms should probably be down in engineering even though his name makes him sound like chief of security ...) What other sets of characters could embody the rainbow of archetypes Johns has laid out?

The first place my brain went was the G.I. Joe cartoon and I was damn near gob-smacked at how easily it all fell into place. Thus, I present:

Joe Lanterns

RED (rage) = Cobra Commander. So the first three colors have to be bad guys and Cobra Commander takes the first slot as a no-brainer. Granted, on the cartoon he mostly embodies "impotent, shrieking rage" but that's close enough. There's certainly no denying that he hates the Joes. Bonus points for the fact that the very symbol of COBRA is traditionally done in red.

ORANGE (greed) = Zartan. Zartan is a gun-for-hire who is, as they say, all about the Benjamins. (Note: nobody says this anymore.) Really, that's enough to justify his position here, but ... um ... as master of disguise he assumes other people's identities, taking on their very appearance for his own use. Avarice, acquisition, etc. To be honest, I really wanted to put Major Bludd in this slot because I have a soft spot for the character; his was one of the very first Joe action figures I remember owning, and his packaging states his role as "MERCENARY" which, again, feeds directly into the payday vibe I was looking for. But in the cartoons he was portrayed pretty much as a COBRA lifer, a mercenary working for salary (possibly with benefits, insert Dr. Mindbender HMO joke here), whereas Zartan actually whined about gold and such. Zartan is also a more central character, my own personal pet favoritism aside.

YELLOW (fear) = Destro. Of all the bad guys from G.I. Joe, he is unquestionably the scariest MFer. The censors wouldn't let anybody get killed on the show but you just know Destro would cold pop a cap without flinching. Good enough, but wait, there's more. Sinestro/Destro = COME ON WITH THE RHYMING. Plus, Sinestro often allies himself with a group of warmongers called the Weaponers of Qward. Destro's official title? Weapons supplier. This is just some freakish synchronicity right here.

GREEN (will) = Gung Ho. There aren't a lot of neutral characters in the Joe universe, and to be honest, Green Lantern is complicated but he's clearly one of the good guys. As is Gung Ho, who again is just a personal fave, which I allowed to come into play here because really, all of the Joes have strong wills (they never give up! they stay til the fight's won!) and could fill this role admirably. I also like the fact that Gung Ho's very name implies will ... or willingness, but, you know, close enough.


BLUE (hope) = Duke. Obviously I'm going for the inspirational angle of hope here, which is why the leader of the Joes (blah blah blah General Hawk blah blah Flint shut up, it's always Duke) isn't in the central green slot. Duke rallies the troops and kicks ass.

INDIGO (compassion) = Lifeline. Here's another personal fave, the medic who also happens to be a conscientious objector. Which is really as close as you're going to get to finding a living embodiment of compassion in an elite paramilitary unit. (I love the inner conflict of Lifeline's character, I really do, but even as a kid I remember thinking "You can't get drafted into G.I.Joe, can you? Why would he join up if he's a CO?" But lucky for the purposes of this exercise, the writers just embraced the crazy and ran with it. It was a cartoon for kids, so I'm totally OK with that.)

VIOLET (love) = Scarlett. This brushes up against the stupidly obvious, but maybe that's the point. I'm just playing by the rules of the spectrum and this does seem to be the token girl slot. Believe me, I thought the longest about this one. Other possibilities: the Baroness, to mirror Star Sapphire's villain-on-the-hero-side aspect; Covergirl, an underrated female Joe if there ever was one, and supposedly the hottest one of all (and in comics, to embody "love" you have to be super-hot). And then of course there's Shipwreck, if I wanted to be non-cliche and avoid putting a female in the role altogether. Shipwreck always struck me as one of the more romantic Joes, and then he had those great couple of episodes focused on his tragically doomed relationship with the girl Mara who was genetically modified to breathe underwater. But, I settled on Scarlett and I'm standing by that, since it just feels right.

Then there's the question of the Black Lantern role, which you might think wouldn't graft very well onto G.I. Joe because of the sad dearth of reanimated corpses in the series. Except, wait, what's this ...?

BLACK (death) = Serpentor. Obviously we are back to evil dudes, single-mindedly evil dudes at that, and Serpentor clearly fits the bill there. And he was created in a mad experiment which combined the DNA of a bunch of military geniuses and conquerors ... who all happened to be dead. That's a really hard connection to deny. (Yeah, I know, he also had some Sergeant Slaughter DNA in the mix, and Sarge wasn't dead. But his career was. Hiyo!)

I would just like to take a moment here to congratulate myself on completing the exercise without utilizing either Snake Eyes or Stormshadow, which I think is the equivalent of making a super-hero dream team Wolverine-free.

So there you have it, an internet meme which I've used to combine an 80's toy-cartoon franchise with the current moment's big comic book crossover event, with gratuitous references to Star Trek, Masters of the Universe and X-Men (and ancient epic poetry) thrown in. I'm out before I end up crushed by the super-dense mass of weapons-grade enriched geekonium.