John Stewart is an incredibly complex and nuanced character, and it would take me an entire video series to explain why…which I will get around to doing at some point, but for now I want to focus on one of the most well known things about the character that comes up all the time, but is almost never treated with the weight and importance it deserves. I’m talking about the fact that John Stewart is responsible for the destruction of the planet Xanshi.
The fact of Xanshi’s destruction has followed John Stewart for more than three decades now. A version of it even made made its way onto the Justice League cartoon, as their first ever Green Lantern spotlight episode. Any writer who spends a significant amount of time with this character inevitably calls back to this one event, and every single one of them offers their own take on John coming to terms with it and learning to move forward. But the odd thing about all of this is the fact that so much time is spent focusing on John being able to move on from Xanshi that the impact of the event has been all but lost. We only care about it in terms of how it makes a character we like feel, we’re completely disconnected from the tragedy it actually was…and I think that lessens the impact of anything these writers try to do with John, whenever they attempt to use the destruction of Xanshi as a way to delve deeper into his character…especially when that initial story did a much better job of exploring John’s guilt and trauma than most stories trying to retread that ground later. But why don’t I just show you what I’m talking about. Let’s take a look at the storyline that started it all, the four-issue 1989 miniseries “Cosmic Odyssey” by Jim Starlin and Mike Mignola.
The gist of the story is that someone figured out there are a number of key planets throughout the galaxy, and if you destroy at least two of them, it’ll unlock the Anti-Life Equation. So a whole bunch of heroes split up into teams, and go to each world to find and disarm the gigantic anti-matter bomb hidden there before it can go off and destroy the planet. John Stewart and Martian Manhunter are sent to the planet Xanshi.
The force seeking to destroy Xanshi and unleash the Anti-Life Equation put all sorts of disastrous obstacles in their path…a deadly virus, volcanic explosions, even manipulating the weather to send hurricanes and targeted lightning strikes right at them. But each time, John was able to use his ring to find a quick and easy answer, acting as though there was never any way he could’ve failed. John was confidant to the point of arrogance. He truly believed there was nothing he couldn’t do, that the ring was all-powerful…and, if anything, Martian Manhunter was just slowing him down. So John trapped Martian Manhunter in a protective bubble and left him behind, promising to come pick him up once it was all over.
John finally reached the bomb, alone, only to find out that this bomb had been painted the color yellow. At the time, all Green Lantern rings had an impurity that made them completely powerless against anything yellow…something that wouldn’t have been a problem if Martian Manhunter was there with him. Martian Manhunter could’ve used his powers to disable the bomb safely in the hand full of seconds left on the timer. But Martian Manhunter wasn’t there. John made sure of that. And all John Stewart had time for, as the timer ticked down to zero, was to realize what he’d done.
This is the point in the story where we’re forced to recognize just what it means for a planet to die. The explosion spreads across the world like tidal waves of fire, making its way through cities, instantly incinerating those lucky enough to be outside when the blast hit. Anyone inside, protected by a structure, slowly burned alive from the inside out as they struggled to breath air that had all but been replaced by fire, as the blast continued to spread farther and farther across the planet, boiling the oceans as it travels. By the time it’s finished spreading, the explosion had engulfed half the planet. It only took ten seconds.
…but it wasn’t over. Because remember, this was an anti-matter bomb. With the planet’s core now exposed to anti-matter, a massive secondary explosion erupted, this time engulfing what was left of the planet, pushing Xanshi out of its orbit and into the sun like an anti-matter bullet, causing a chain reaction and destroying the sun. Not only did the millions of people living on Xanshi die, but an entire solar system has been snuffed out. And the only ones left standing were the two people sent to ensure that everything would be fine. John Stewart, the Green Lantern, the man who could do anything. And J’onn Jones, the Martian Manhunter, who had no forgiveness to give.
John had reached the lowest point in his life, a place darker than he’d ever imagined could be real. His mind could barely comprehend the scope of what he’d done, a tragedy on that scale shouldn’t be possible, not because of one person, not because of one mistake. And he can’t handle it. He can’t live with it. John takes off his ring, and orders it to travel twenty light years away, and to go to Hal Jordan if John doesn’t summon it back to him within the hour. He did that because the rings are programmed to automatically protect the life of the user, so he’d need to be out of range to go through with it. As he watched the ring leave, John picked up a gun and just sat there, waiting for the nerve to pull the trigger, embracing the quick and easy answer one more time.
That’s when Martian Manhunter shows up, telling John that he may as well do it, if this is all there really is to the great John Stewart, the Green Lantern, the man who could do anything. That if all that bluster was a hollow lie, he may as well commit one last act of supreme arrogance and kill himself instead of admitting that he hasn’t yet grown into the capable person he believed himself to be. Pulling that trigger would be admitting that he was incapable of overcoming who he is right now, and a coward like that was never fit to wear the ring. John’s arrogance wouldn’t let that stand. He put down the gun, summoned the ring, and walked away. Maybe it was because Martian Manhunter’s words got through, or maybe it was just to spite him…but either way, John Stewart would never be the same person again.
After that, John would spend decades being passed around from writer to writer, constantly revisiting the fall of Xanshi, and always failing to remind readers of the scale of the disaster, while never allowing John to make any significant, lasting progress toward his ability to live with the consequences of his mistake. John will get a very stoic, pensive scene where he acknowledges the terrible thing he’s done, before ultimately leaving the whole thing on a general note about how all we can do is move forward, and that’s it until the next writer comes along and takes their turn. It always feels hollow, like writers are just going down their John Stewart checklist…at least, until 2018 gave us something different.
2018’s Justice League written by Scott Snyder, with art by Jim Cheung and Jorge Jimenez, gives us a unique spin on this story: what if we take the groundwork for the Emotional Spectrum laid by Geoff Johns during his run on Green Lantern, and use that as a way to take every bad feeling John Stewart has about himself and about Xanshi and turn it into an all-consuming force that John has to confront directly?
Enter the Ultra Violet Lantern, wielding a light powered by unseen emotions…regret, hatred, self-loathing, anything that you spend your life pushing down, desperate to ignore. Sinestro brings the Ultraviolet light to John’s doorstep just as John is refusing to join the Justice League. Agreeing to join would mean working with Martian Manhunter again, and even if Martian Manhunter has forgiven him, John hasn’t forgiven himself. And as John gazes at a flower native to Xanshi, one of the only remaining traces of that entire world, he decides that it would be best for him to remain alone in space.
John has always been an architect, and it wasn’t until the Justice League cartoon introduced the idea of him being a former Marine that his military career was folded into the comics. And as soon as that happened, everybody seemed to forget about him being an architect, and just focused on what a soldier could do with a Green Lantern ring. This story addresses that directly, explaining that John himself made the choice to lean into his military side, because the part of him that’s an architect, the part who believes he can always build something better, is the same overambitious part that went unchecked and allowed Xanshi to die. So he chose to ignore that part of himself, to push it down deep with all of his unresolved feelings, running from what was too painful to live with. But then the Ultraviolet light took hold, and brought everything up to the surface. Repressing these feelings, refusing to learn how to deal with them, only gives them more power over you, making them harder to handle when they do come out. The ring of the Ultraviolet Lantern is not a physical object, it’s a mark tattooed on your finger…because this is not a power that’s given to you, it’s a piece of you that’s been festering and growing and waiting to be expressed. It emanates out from your core, saturating every cell in your body with Ultraviolet light, turning you into a walking power battery filled with every bad thought you were ever afraid to let define you.
John’s rampage tore through the Justice League, until Cyborg managed to knock him out and briefly snap him out of it, allowing John to become his normal self again, allowing him a brief window to apologize to everyone, and explain how his failure to save Xanshi lead him down this dark, self-destructive path. But before long, Sinestro returned, looking to renew John’s connection to the Ultraviolet light, destroying John’s Green Lantern ring in the process, symbolically shattering John’s ability to fight back. John’s ring was gone and his willpower was clearly not enough to overcome everything that he’d let fester all these years, and the only thing keeping John from succumbing to his darkest impulses was Cyborg shielding him from the effects of the Ultraviolet light. Only…Cyborg wasn’t shielding him. Cyborg had his hands full dealing with another aspect to this crisis, John was controlling himself.
This is when John realized where the true power of the Ultraviolet Lantern comes from. The feelings that make up this light gain power over you when you run from them, when you hide them away and ignore them. Refusing to acknowledge them weakens your ability to deal with them. Now that John had begun to open up to his friends about his regrets and his pain, the Ultraviolet light saturating his cells began to weaken. By facing these feelings, by accepting them, he took control of his life back, and began to use them as motivation to push forward.
But the last piece fell into place when Sinestro challenged John one final time, saying that John threw away the opportunity to be something special in the universe, instead of just a soldier. And John simply reminds Sinestro…that he’s also an architect. As he speaks those words, something amazing happens. The Ultraviolet light throughout John’s body had diminished, but its framework was still there…his body was still set to produce and store negative emotions, and focus them through the ring tattoo on his finger. And in this final act of defiance against Sinestro, John flooded that framework with willpower. John willed himself to be a Green Lantern again. He overwrote the Ultraviolet’s hold over him, and filled the void with green. His ring tattoo changed into a tattoo of a Green Lantern symbol, and is the focal point for the willpower generated by and stored within his body.
And believe it or not, this is still the state of John Stewart today, tattoo ring and all. You may not have realized it because it happened as a subplot in Justice League, which lead directly into Dark Nights: Death Metal, both of which are series concerned with storytelling on a massive scale including hundreds of characters. Remember, all of this happened in 2018, and John hasn’t had a solo adventure or a meaningful appearance in a Lantern book since then. So if you aren’t reading Justice League or Death Metal, you wouldn’t know this change even happened…and honestly, so much has been happening in those books over the last two years, you might’ve forgotten even if you are reading them. But DC hasn’t forgotten…well, not all the time. There are moments where artists will still draw John wearing a physical ring, either out of habit or because they genuinely don’t know not to, but the fact that his ring is a tattoo does still come up, both in dialogue and artwork…so until something changes, this is where John Stewart is at right now. And honestly? I’m really happy about it. Not only because the state of his ring is a super interesting concept to explore, but because this has been the healthiest use of the character I’ve seen in decades, and the story told in the first volume of Scott Snyder’s Justice League is the only John Stewart story I’ve ever read that I’d hold up as a worthy successor to Cosmic Odyssey. It took almost 30 years to get here, but I’m glad it finally arrived.
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