I’m happy to say that after four months, my video claiming to contain EVERYTHING we know about the Gold Lantern is finally outdated. We just got a whole lot of new information to chew on in the pages of Legion of Super-Heroes number ten, and a little bit in number nine, and it may not seem like much, but our understanding of who and what the Gold Lantern is has actually increased dramatically since the last time I did a video on it.
The first bit comes in Legion of Super-Heroes number nine, where we find out that they’re not called the Gold Lantern Corps, they’re the Lantern Order of the Gold, and the way the Gold Lantern talks to the leader of the United Planets makes it sound like the two organizations have some sort of understanding that lets them both operate without getting in each other’s way.
Then in Legion number ten we go to Oa, and there’s a lot going on here. So the Gold Lantern explains that he’s come to Oa to deliver the villain of the previous arc, and he presents the bad guy to the Elders of Oa. These are very clearly future analogs of the Guardians, but we don’t know what that means yet. Are they a new generation of Guardians? Are they the same Guardians we have in the present day, since the Guardians are basically immortal? Did the Guardians go through some sort of evolution? We don’t know yet, but the Green Lantern symbols on the wall behind them suggest a link to the past, so I’m inclined to think these may be the same Guardians from the present day comics. Regardless, they come off as pretty calm and understanding, almost friendly…especially when it comes to our Gold Lantern, who’s name we learn is Kala Lour.
He was a teacher until the Elders chose him to become a Gold Lantern, and seems to be a pretty humble guy. He’s genuinely concerned about his own ability to live up to everything that’s expected of him, despite the Elders reassurance that they made the right choice selecting him to wear the ring.
Now if you zoom in on the image of his old teaching days, you’ll see something curious. Kala Lour is speaking to his students with a large pink diamond-like object over his head, which reminds me a lot of what Star Sapphires use to affect the minds of others. We saw this most often in Green Lantern New Guardians, when Kyle wore one himself to try and work through some hurtful memories, and later as the White Lantern Kyle puts some of these crystals on Syrian soldiers to get them to stop attacking a town. If that’s what this is, then it’s possible that the legacy of the Star Sapphires is the ability to influence the hearts of others…which would mean that Kala Lour is either an incredibly kind, helpful person, or a deceptively dangerous and manipulative one. It’s easy to read that classroom scene as someone talking to their followers. But it could also be nothing! Maybe that pink diamond is just some standard future school hologram thing and I’m reading way too much into it. But I tend not to think so, because there is something sinister about the Elders.
This whole scene makes it pretty clear that, while the Elders will be the nicest guys in the world to you, they’re never going to tell you more than they think you need to know, and that makes me think that their bright shiny image is hiding a much darker and more manipulative agenda. It’s said a few times that prisoners brought to Oa receive “ultimate justice” and “eternal justice”, which sounds a lot like they’re being put to death. We do see it happen to someone, and I’m not entirely sure WHAT it is…did he die? Is he in a prison? Is it like the Phantom Zone? It’s unclear, but the implication is that this is the standard response to injustice. Also, they’re so obsessed with talking about justice that part of me wonders if the Gold Lantern energy is somehow the literal power of “justice”…that would be pretty different from what we’re used to from the Emotional Spectrum, but at the same time, not all that far off.
Not only is the Lantern Order of the Gold not a typical Lantern Corps, it’s cosmic on a whole other level. The Elders refer to Kala Lour as both “the chosen Gold Lantern” and “the Gold Lantern of this dimension”…meaning that Kala Lour may be the one and only Gold Lantern in the main DC Universe, which would also suggest that every other dimension also has a single Gold Lantern of their own. And I really hope this is what they’re saying, because it could take advantage of a pretty obscure detail that usually gets forgotten: the fact that in all of the multiverse, there is only one planet Oa. So if you’re on Earth 3, or Earth 17, or Earth 51, and you travel to Oa, you’re traveling to the exact same physical planet that exists in every universe simultaneously. No story has ever really played with that, or even dug into what that could mean, but it’s the perfect setup for the Lantern Order of the Gold to be a Corps patrolling all of existence, with members assigned to entire universe and dimensions instead of space sectors, using Oa as a central hub to watch over all of it. Why would the Elders spread their forces so thin? Maybe because it makes the Gold Lanterns easy to control. If every Gold Lantern is kept isolated from the rest, they can’t talk to each other, they can’t compare notes, they can’t grow suspicious of the Elders and organize an uprising. Guardians have fallen at the hands of their own Lanterns enough times before that I absolutely believe they’d try to structure things to make that impossible. It would explain one of the biggest question I’ve had about the Gold Lantern for a couple months now: why his mask has no eye holes. Yes, it could just be that the character is blind, and maybe he is…but given how much the Elders talk about Justice, and how they separate and placate their Lanterns, I think it comes down to the idea that Justice is blind, and they’ve cultivated an army who’ll follow them blindly.
…and on top of everything else, the Elders of Oa give us one more big tease, saying that “the difference between the original Lanterns and Oa of today is the discovery that the spectrum has greater purpose…and that purpose could bring the balance this galaxy has been long in need of”. So the reason we have Gold Lanterns is that, at some point between the present day and the 31st Century, the Guardians believe they discover what the Emotional Spectrum is actually for, and it changes everything. Now this isn’t the first time someone has tried to tell that kind of story, go see the Green Lantern story arc “Lights Out” for the most recent attempt to explain the true importance of the spectrum to the overall universe…but I’m especially interested in seeing what Bendis came up with, not only because I’m clearly heavily invested in the developing mythology of the Gold Lantern, but also because by setting it so far in the future there’s extra narrative weight put on it…the idea that whatever this is, it actually IS the answer, and has been for generations. I know that’s not realistic, but I find it pretty easy to get swept up in the excitement of these details taking shape.
The whole thing has me wondering if Bendis is basing any of this on Scott Snyder’s work on Justice League leading into Death Metal, since not only did that series travel to other dimensions, but it explored the fundamental forces that make up the DC Universe and, among other things, expanded the scope of what we believed the Emotional Spectrum to be, all while putting a tremendous emphasis on the need for Justice to win over Doom. For all we know, the future status of Oa could be what we get when the Guardians decide to do whatever it takes to make sure Doom never overtakes Justice again, using vibrant imagery and cheerful attitudes to deflect attention from just how extreme their methods actually are, and quell any potential resistance before it can ever have the chance to begin.
But that’s just where my brain goes when I read this issue. I think it’s funny that Brainiac did the exact same thing I did. He saw the Gold Lantern stuff in Legion number ten and then immediately started going over Green Lantern history to try and figure out what it all means. We do get two more panels of Kala Lour…the first is presumably when he was recruited to become the Gold Lantern, and a second panel that’s kept purposely vague. He’s fighting someone, I don’t know if that means he’s resisting the Elders, or what’s going on.
It is worth noting that we get this one panel from the Legion’s historical records on the modern age of heroes featuring John Stewart, Guy Gardner, and Soranik Natu that could be a reference to the series “Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps”, or it could be foreshadowing something that hasn’t happened yet. Either way, someone who admits to not knowing much of anything about Old Earth history is still able to look at that picture and recognize it as “the great John Stewart…the best Lantern ever”. It’s a nice touch, considering DC is about to start pushing John pretty hard for at least the next three months, with both Endless Winter and Future State featuring him prominently.
And that’s where they leave it this time around. The solicitation for issue eleven promises to delve into the mystery of the Gold Lantern, in a way that makes it sound like we’ll keep getting clues and breadcrumbs in the coming months before anything big happens. And I’m here for it, because thinking about this stuff is a lot of fun for me. And I’m particularly interested in what Bendis said about how it’s been so long since there was a Legion book, and how so much has happened to the Lanterns and the DC Universe in that time that could shape the Legion’s future. There hasn’t been a Legion book since the middle of 2013, and the DC Universe has changed a lot since then. Rebirth, Doomsday Clock, Dark Nights Metal, Dark Nights Death Metal, any of it could be playing a part for all we know. And then there’s Justice League showing us that the Emotional Spectrum is actually broader than we ever knew, while Far Sector shows us that staple emotions like Willpower actually have more nuanced layers than we thought.
There are so many ways they could go with this, I can’t wait to see what they pick. And as soon as they do, you know I’ll be back to talk your ear off about it.
Comments
Post a Comment