One of the most important and defining traits of a Green Lantern is their ability to recognize and deal with fear. Usually that means something internal and personal, like Hal Jordan overcoming the experience of watching his father die, or Jessica Cruz learning to live a more functional life with her agoraphobia and anxiety. But what happens when the fear you must overcome stems from the fact that everyone around you is irrationally afraid of you?
Enter Simon Baz, a Lebanese American Muslim living in Dearborn Michigan. From the moment he arrived on the scene, Simon and his family showed readers a sampling of the kind of discrimination aimed at anyone of Muslim descent, even a decade after the events of 9/11. Fear and misplaced anger causing good people to have to live with both subtle and extremely overt racism, impeding their ability to do something as simple as go to work and live peacefully in the community they’ve spent their lives a part of.
Simon’s origin story showed us the character’s life as it was hitting rock bottom. Having lost his job, Simon resorted to stealing cars as a source of income. One night, he stole a van only to realize too late that there was a bomb in the back (placed there by a White man planning to derail a passing train). Though Simon disposed of the bomb relatively safely, he was still arrested under suspicion of being a terrorist, and detained in Guantanamo Bay.
Simon is a character built to explore some very heavy concepts in some very direct ways, and any conversation about the effectiveness or validity of the character needs to have the context of why Simon Baz exists in the first place. In a 2013 interview with Collider, Simon’s creator Geoff Johns laid it all out clear as day:
“My dad is Lebanese. Detroit has the biggest Lebanese community outside of Lebanon. I really wanted to talk about cultural fear. The best thing about Green Lantern – and this is for anyone who ever writes the character – is that fear is never going to be out of date. Batman’s parents can die 70 years ago or tomorrow, and he’s still relevant. Superman can land here 70 years ago or today, and he’s still relevant. As long as Green Lantern is still dealing with fear, it’s going to be relevant. Rebirth really grew out of 9/11. 9/11 happened, and then two years later, I was writing about fear. It was obviously connected. That affected everybody, in so many ways, and Simon was the next step to that. It had been so long since 9/11. I’m half Lebanese, but a lot of my family, on my dad’s side, is full Arabic and they’ve had to deal with a lot of things, in the way of 9/11. Just getting on a plane is a pain in the ass. So, I wanted to write something about cultural fear, and Simon grew out of that. I knew I was going to get some flack for it, from certain groups, and some racist reactions, but it’s a very personal character for me. I wanted to develop somebody like Simon and explore the idea of cultural fear. It’s just a different kind of fear.”
Simon’s Green Lantern ring came to him for the first time while incarcerated, breaking him out of Guantanamo Bay and making him a fugitive. By the time the ring found him, most of its energy had already been expended, leading directly to the other half of Simon’s conflict: an internal struggle with his own fears of not being good enough. Within hours of becoming a Green Lantern, Simon’s ring ran out of power in a critical moment, and he almost died because of it. The United States government was hunting him down, the actual terrorist responsible for the bomb in the van was trying to murder him, and the ring…the only resource Simon had at his disposal, the only thing that could protect him or carry him away from immediate danger…failed him. One of the first lessons Simon learned as a Green Lantern was not to trust his own power. And as he learned more about the ring, and the way its power is directly linked to the strength of his own will, all that did was make Simon believe that he couldn’t trust himself…that he would never be good enough or strong enough…leading him to try and find strength elsewhere.
For a long time, a standard part of Simon’s Green Lantern uniform was the handgun he kept strapped to his leg. Many are quick to point out how silly it is for someone to carry a gun while also wearing a power ring, one of the most powerful weapons in the universe, a weapon we’ve seen is capable of literally destroying planets and containing super novas…but what all the jokes and jabs at the character always miss is the fact that, yes, it’s impractical to think a standard Earth handgun could in any way make up for the perceived shortcomings of a Green Lantern ring, but this was never about being rational. It’s about fear. It was always about fear, Simon carries the gun because he’s afraid. He knows half the world is out to get him, he knows the other half is afraid of him, and he knows that the ring’s power is an extension of himself…and he’s afraid he isn’t strong enough. The gun isn’t there to be a practical combat option, the gun is there to be an emotional safety net…to make him feel like he could still survive if the ring fails again. It’s emblematic of Simon relying on something as a crutch instead of working on himself and facing his fears.
So with all those challenges in place, what kind of Lantern did Simon become? His story continued to be a messy one as he stumbled along, trying to find his way with the guidance of both his family and newly assigned partner Green Lantern Jessica Cruz. Jessica in particular was the catalyst for a lot of personal growth for Simon, as interacting with her and helping her learn to deal with the intense fear and anxiety that constantly threatens to bring her life to a screeching halt forced Simon to stop and rethink the way he treats people, and reconsider the image of himself he tries to project.
And while Jessica helped Simon come to terms with himself as a person, it was the rest of his social circle that was vital to his ability to function as a Lantern. As much as he distrusted the ring, he knew it could give him the tools to become someone his mother could be proud of. He knew it was his only chance at bringing his best friend Nazir out of a coma. Bolsters by these personal victories, he began to see the ring as something genuinely useful, a way for him to make a real difference in the lives of others.
He faced the Red Lanterns, beings overcome with rage, ripping apart everything in sight with hateful vitriol…and decided the best way to fight them was to help them. Through sheer force of will, he cured Bleeze, healing her heart of the anger that dominated it. He tried doing the same to Atrocitus, but was nowhere near powerful enough to take the anger away from the greatest of the red rage Lanterns. While his efforts to help the Red Lanterns were ultimately undone, it didn’t stop Simon from believing in the potential of his ring, and by extension his own potential. He had seen with his own eyes what he can do if he tries hard enough, if he believes in himself…and somewhere along the way, Simon’s ring stopped being a way to escape his problems. He stopped viewing it as a literal get-out-of-jail-free card, and stopped being afraid that it would fail him. He even stopped carrying the gun. He understood that the ring’s power was a reflection of him, and for once Simon Baz had begun to believe in himself.
From there, Simon became everything you’d expect from a Green Lantern. He was arrogant and overconfident, fiercely loyal to his loved ones, while still having much to learn. He would push himself as far as he could, even to the point of facing down the likes of Volthoom the First Lantern with no backup and no ring….not because he expected to win, as Volthoom is one of the most powerful and dangerous villains in Green Lantern history…but because the person Simon had become wouldn’t allow him to stand aside and do nothing.
A staple of Simon’s early career as a Lantern is his ability to make the ring do things that’ve never been done before. He can use his light to heal people, and even glimpse visions of the future through something called “Emerald Sight”. The fact that the ring even has a name for it suggests that all Green Lantern rings may be capable of it, but Simon is the first Lantern we know of who’s been able to access that function. The logical question to then ask is why Simon, of all people, is able to make the ring do these things. Why didn’t these abilities ever manifest in other Lanterns before him? What makes Simon so special? And the answer may be something very simple…a Green Lantern’s ability to use their ring depends almost entirely on their ability to overcome fear, and few other Green Lanterns have had to deal with the kind of fear Simon has. Simon has spent most of his life being hated and feared by the entire world, being hunted by his own government, being a disappointment to his family, all while not being able to believe in himself at all…and he was able to fight his way back from all of it. In a world where anyone with enough willpower can be a Green Lantern, and the ability to use the ring’s power is directly related to your ability to deal with fear, it stands to reason that the larger the issues you have to work through, the more capable you’ll be with the ring when you come out on the other side. Simon isn’t even the only example of this happening…this is the same era of Green Lantern stories that saw Hal Jordan’s very soul infested by a being of sentient fear, only to fight his way back and become someone capable of pushing his ring so far beyond its limits that he managed to kill a Guardian, a being that by all accounts is nearly immortal. It was an impressive feat by an incredible Lantern, just like the impossible things Simon is able to do.
The story of Simon Baz is a messy one. It deals with classic ideas in uncomfortable ways, bringing in much more reality than what we’re used to seeing from mainstream superhero fiction. More than any other Green Lantern protagonist, Simon Baz requires the reader to look past the surface level facts of his character, and really think about why these decisions were made. The gun doesn’t matter, why he has the gun matters. Why he stole cars matters. Why he was imprisoned matters. All of these questions have the same answer, and it’s why the ring came to him in the first place. The story of Simon Baz is messy and uncomfortable…and one of the most honest, grounded expressions of how we deal with fear in our every day lives ever to be presented through a Green Lantern protagonist. Dealing with fear isn’t just a part of his character, it permeates every detail of who he is, which lets his light shine brighter than most others.
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