Legion of Superheroes #6 has finally come out and given us some insight into the mysterious new Gold Lantern that writer Brian Michael Bendis has created for this incarnation of the Legion’s future…and going into this issue, we knew basically nothing at all. The Gold Lantern first appeared at the end of Legion of Superheroes: Millennium #2, in late 2019. Once the Legion ongoing series started, he would pop up a very small number of times over the first five issues, always in group shots, never having anything significant to say, and never using his powers. It wasn’t until issue six that we started to get a little bit of insight into who this character is and what he can do…and I stress “little bit”, his presence in the issue amounts to about two pages during a chaotic fight scene, but we do get some dialogue that can be used to infer a few things.
He introduces himself as “the Gold Lantern of this Galactic”, a Galactic being the term people in the Legion’s future use to refer to a planet or planetary system, meaning that he’s calling himself the Gold Lantern of Earth which implies there are more Gold Lanterns out in space, an idea that’s propped up by the villain’s reaction when he shouts “the Lantern is coming!”, showing that he knows what a Gold Lantern is what one can do, which is significant because a big part of this story is the fact that the Legion is still new and has never engaged in a battle like this before, meaning this villain’s experiences with Gold Lanterns had to have come from somewhere else. All of this to say, it’s a pretty safe bet that there is a Gold Lantern Corps in the Legion’s future…which I know is something a lot of us were just assuming anyway, but understand that this is one of the very few times ANY Lanterns have been present in a Legion future at all…it’s always the case that all the present day heroes we’re familiar with are long gone by the time we get to the Legion’s future, with the only exception being the few surviving stories that’re mostly about Superboy. So it was never automatically a given that there was going to be more than one Gold Lantern.
As far as his powers go, we don’t learn much, but the things we do get are interesting and unexpected. The bag guy is shooting out all the water of Earth’s oceans as a projectile…don’t ask…and when the Gold Lantern’s construct intercepts it, he states that what he’s trying to do is “transmute the attack”…and that’s a very interesting choice of words, because transmutation implies alchemy, the process most famously associated with turning lead into gold. Brainiac 5 asks the Gold Lantern if he can “teleport or even transmute” the bad guy away from Earth. So it would seem the power of the Gold Lantern centers around transmutation, changing the state of matter from one thing into another, and possibly getting creative enough with that process to achieve some pretty wild effects like teleportation. I couldn’t begin to guess how, you have now seen literally everything that currently exists explaining the Gold Lantern’s powers, it’s just too soon to arrive at anything definitive. I also don’t know how this works out when you’ve already got an alchemic character on the team, in the form of Element Lad. It does make me wonder if the Gold Lanterns are tied to the Emotional Spectrum, or any spectrum at all for that matter, or if the rings are just future technology built to emulate the heroes of the 21st century, just like the Legion as a group is. He does wear both a Gold Lantern ring and a Legion Flight ring, but that shouldn’t really be taken into account when talking about his powers…the Legion ring is basically just a membership badge. Sure, it does things like let you fly, survive in space, act as a communicator, and so on…but it’s standard issue for everyone in the Legion, even characters with literal wings growing out of their backs wear a flight ring, it doesn’t mean they use all of its functions. Hell, Superboy is wearing one, and he’s definitely still just using his own powers for everything.
It’s also worth noting that both the fight scene and the issue’s cover show his power manifesting in highly detailed ornate patterns, though again it’s too soon to know what that means. The only other thing to mention is that the Gold Lantern can move fast enough to impress Superboy, so take that for what you will.
The last thing I’ll note on Legion #6 is that, in classic Bendis fashion, he teases us with the promise of “an amazing backstory” that he likely won’t tell us for a good long while.
Creating the Gold Lantern for the Legion isn’t the only Green Lantern stuff Bendis has been doing. He also created Keli Quintela, the Teen Lantern, for his Young Justice series, as well as introducing a new version of the White Lantern ring over in Batman Universe. I discussed it in my White Lantern video, but this white ring is positioned to be an ancient prototype ring that came before the Guardians created the Green Lantern Corps, suggesting that Bendis could be revising some messy Green Lantern history, while also redefining Green Lantern’s future over in Legion of Superheroes with the Gold Lantern.
It’s Legion of Superheroes in particular that interests me, because so much of Bendis’ work since coming to DC has been emphasizing the importance of the Legion. Not only did he relaunch that book with a new take on the Legion and their future, but most of his work with Superman has been in service of Legion world building. Bendis’ entire Superman run…starting with a six issue Man of Steel miniseries and then the first fifteen issues of the ongoing Superman series…had all been leading up to the present-day establishment of the United Planets, the galactic governing body of the Legion’s future, and the repercussions of the United Planets formation continues to be a heavy influence in the present day as his Superman run continues. His Legion book was immediately preceded by a two issue miniseries called Legion of Superheroes: Millenium, which takes every single alternate future timeline DC’s ever had and organizes them all into a single cohesive timeline, culminating with the Legion’s future. Between using two years of Superman issues to build up an aspect of the Legion, reorganizing DC’s future timelines into something that positions the Legion as the culmination of a millennium of progress, the launch of a new Legion book, and the introduction of a new kind of Lantern in the Legion’s future…all written by Bendis…it makes me feel like Legion of Superheroes is going to be the book to watch if you’re interested in Bendis’ long term plans. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m just overthinking it, but I have a feeling about that book.
At the very least, I think it’s significant that Bendis has already expanded the mythology of Green Lantern by introducing three new elements, all shrouded in mystery. Gold Lantern, Teen Lantern, and that white ring…there are so many questions about their origins and what they can do, again all of it coming from Bendis…I really do believe he has a Green Lantern story he’s looking to tell, and what we’re seeing now might be the early seeds being planted.
There’s also the Arisia rumors. Back in November of 2018 Bendis said on twitter that the name Arisia Rrab made it into his spell check, implying that he’s been writing that name enough for spell check to recognize, leading many to speculate that he has a story in the works involving her. I wouldn’t put too much stock in this one though…I haven’t been able to find anything else suggesting there are any plans for the character, whether it be related to any of his other projects or not, and it could very easily just be Bendis making a joke. Either way, the only upcoming appearance of Arisia we know about for sure is her role in the second volume of Green Lantern Earth 1 by Gabriel Hardman and Corinna Bechko, which wouldn’t have anything to do with the mainline books or Bendis.
So there ya go, you now know everything about the Gold Lantern, and what Brian Michael Bendis has been doing around the edges of Green Lantern. It’ll probably be a while before we know more than this, but I’m curious what you think, and I hope you’ll tell me in the comments below your thought on the Gold Lantern, the Legion, and anything that Bendis is doing at DC right now.
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