So if solicitations are anything to go by, it looks like Jade and Obsidian are going to play a large role in DC’s next big event Infinite Frontier. And it’s been a long time since these two characters have been in the spotlight, so who are they? The easy answer is they’re the kids of Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern…and beyond that, people generally know that Jade has powers like a Green Lantern and dated Kyle Rayner for a while, and that Obsidian has shadow powers and is gay. But that’s usually where people’s knowledge about these characters stops. And since everything in DC history is fair game again in a post-Death Metal world, knowing the histories of these characters may make their return to prominence in Infinite Frontier carry more weight.
So what I’m going to do today is give you an abridged rundown of the lives of Jade and Obsidian, and hopefully make you interested in seeing what’s next for them as new stories begin to be told. And just so you know, I will be going much more in-depth on a lot of this in the future, this right here is just a primer to help you get to know what these characters are all about. So let’s start at the beginning.
Billions of years ago, when the Guardians of the Universe first decided to start guarding the universe, they attempted to make everything more orderly by removing as much of the random chaos magic from the universe as they could, sealing it in a container called the Starheart. A small piece of the Starheart broke off and fell to Earth, where it became the lantern that would empower Alan Scott, making him Green Lantern.
Alan got married to a woman named Rose Canton, who suffered from a duel personality and would occasionally switch into the persona of Thorn, a supervillain with control over plants. Rose was afraid of the constant danger Thorn presented to Alan, so she left him during their honeymoon, making him believe that she died in a fire. What neither of them knew at the time was that Rose was already pregnant with twins, who she would give up for adoption to save them from Thorn. The twins were split up, and would become known as Jenny-Lynn Hayden and Todd Rice…but since they were both adopted and raised by families living in Milwaukee Wisconsin, they were able to find each other by the time they were teenagers.
By this point, both Jenny and Todd had developed super powers. Todd could manipulate shadows, and even turn his body into a living shadow. Unlike her brother, Jenny inherited the powers of their parents. She has her mother’s ability to control plants…which, by the way, is the reason her skin is green, there’s chlorophyll in there, the same reason Poison Ivy is green. But the big thing is that Jenny also developed powers identical to that of Green Lantern, which was all the proof they needed to go pay the Justice Society a visit.
Jenny and Todd came up with the costumed identities of Jade and Obsidian, and got together with a bunch of other teen heroes who have direct ties to members of the JSA, and all of them just kind of showed up at Justice Society headquarters one day and demanded membership. They didn’t get in, because of course they wouldn’t, but Alan Scott met his children for the first time, which was huge considering he didn’t even know they existed before that moment. Jade, Obsidian, and the other teen heroes decided make their own team, calling it Infinity Inc. If the Justice Society is basically that generation’s Justice League, think of Infinity Inc as their Teen Titans.
Eventually Jenny and Todd would both leave Infinity Inc to pursue bigger and better things. Obsidian joined the Justice League when the team re-formed after Zero Hour, and stayed for about two years, right up until Grant Morrison’s Big Seven took over in JLA #1. Jenny decided to focus on her career…she had already been working as a model, but moved to New York to become a photographer. She met the new Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner, who Alan had been mentoring, and the two of them would start to date. Todd took a while to warm up to the idea.
Eventually the Starheart came to life, evolved into a Human-like form, and wanted to reclaim all of its lost pieces. That means Alan’s power, his battery…and his kids. The reason Jenny and Todd developed powers at all was because of the Starheart’s magic, and now it wanted to use them to help spread chaos throughout the universe, just like the Guardians feared. Jade ultimately defeated the Starheart by exploiting her connection to its magic, opening the flood gates and becoming powerful enough to fight the Starheart as an equal. Jade survived, but doing that burned out her powers.
She wouldn’t be powerless for very long, though. Kyle Rayner came into possession of a power ring from the old Green Lantern Corps, and unlike Kyle’s ring, this one could make permanent copies of itself. So Kyle made a copy of the ring for Jenny, and took the other one out into space to start a recruitment drive. Just like that, Jenny was now the Green Lantern of Earth, and the first official member of a new generation of the Green Lantern Corps. Neither of those concepts would last very long, and about six months later Kyle’s new Corps had fallen apart, and Jade lost her ring in the ocean during a fight with the bounty hunter Fatality. She’d get it back a couple years later, after Kyle finds it and then tries using it to propose marriage, which is pretty much the best way to guarantee she says no, but hey now Jade’s a Green Lantern again. And she stays that way for about a year, until Kyle can use his new abilities as ion to restore her old powers (see my video on ion for more details). After that, Jenny starts to move away from the rest of the Green Lantern franchise and go off in her own direction. She joins a new team of Outsiders put together by Nightwing, stays on for about three years, and spends half that time as the team’s leader.
While all of that’s going on, Obsidian is having a pretty tough time. Todd has shown signs that he’s inherited schizophrenia from his mother Thorn, and all the supernatural things in his life only make it worse. Todd’s powers connect him to a realm of pure darkness called the Shadowlands…every day he looks into a cold, infinite abyss, which would mess with anyone. He’s also being targeted by a villain named Ian Karkull, who also has shadow-based powers, and wants to gain control over the Shadowlands by corrupting Obsidian. Todd gets pushed to a breaking point, lashing out at the world, and in particular the father who was never there for him growing up. Todd spends about four years sinking deeper and deeper into the darkness, trying multiple times to destroy the JSA, until Alan finally manages to get through to him, helping his son regain control of his life. Todd took this opportunity to take break from being a superhero and just work on himself. This is when he’d finally come to terms with the fact that he’s gay, and come out to his family and friends, who were all pretty supportive. All in all, things were starting to go pretty good. And then Infinite Crisis happened.
A massive cosmic threat was emerging in deep space, and every super hero who could make the trip went out there to help deal with it. This included Jade, Alan, and Kyle. Things got pretty intense out there, and Jade died (again, see my ion video). Alan and Todd were devastated by this, but Todd really lost his cool during the year-long series “52” when a young woman named Nicki Jones showed up declaring herself the new Jade, even wearing a slightly altered version of Jenny’s old costume. Todd went ballistic and attacked Nicki and her teammates, turning everyone’s shadows against them as he focused his anger on her. Thankfully Alan was there to calm things down. And while they both grieved the loss of Jade, Todd’s bond with his father would grow stronger. Obsidian would be one of a few Infinity Inc members to finally make good on their desire from years ago and join the Justice Society, standing proudly beside their parents and mentors, turning the team into a heroic legacy spanning generations.
Jade would return as a Black Lantern during Blackest Night, tormenting Kyle Rayner with images of everyone in his life that he failed to save. She came back to life for real at the end of Blackest Night, when the Life Entity resurrected a big group of heroes and villains, each with a specific task to accomplish if they wanted their resurrection to stick. Jade’s task was to restore the balance being upset by the Starheart, who had already corrupted Obsidian and Alan Scott, and was in the process of overwhelming both the Justice League and the Justice Society. Jenny and Todd ended up fusing together into one being who was under the control of the Starheart, but then the Life Entity gave her a jolt of White Lantern energy that split them apart again, and…look, the whole thing is really, really strange, and I promise we’ll talk in-depth about it someday, but for now all you need to know is that Jade subdued the Starheart again, and everything went more or less back to normal. The only catch is that she and Todd couldn’t be near each other anymore, because if they got too close, they’d fuse into that evil being again. After that, Jade joins the Justice League, and is soon captured by Eclipso during his mad plan to kill God…again, this book is bizarre, but all that really matters is that the end result is a complete reset of her family’s powers. Jade and Obsidian don’t have to worry about merging anymore, and Alan regains complete control of the Starheart.
…and that’s just about it. Jade’s time with the Justice League ended right before the New 52 reboot erased her and her brother from continuity back in 2011. There wasn’t a Jade in the New 52, but there was an Obsidian and Alan Scott, but they weren’t related to each other and only had superficial things in common with the originals. Jenny and Todd didn’t appear again until they returned along with a whole lot of other characters at the very end of 2019’s “Doomsday Clock” storyline. They’ve had one or two appearances since then, in anthologies where they support their dad who’s finally comfortable coming out of the closet. And that takes us right up to today, where Infinite Frontier looks like it’s about to shine a much-deserved spotlight on these two characters for the first time in a very long time.
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