Batman’s had a very long, contentious relationship with the Green Lanterns of Earth. His emphasis on fear and darkness is the exact opposite of their core values, and he tends not to get along with them. But despite that, we’ve seen numerous examples of Batman wielding a Lantern ring himself, and not just Green Lantern rings…the Emotional Spectrum is filled with different kinds of rings that’ll only work for you if you have a particularly high affinity for a specific emotion, which begs the question: out of all the Lantern rings in the Emotional Spectrum, which one is the best fit for Batman?
There are two rings that people usually go to first as the answer to this question. They either say it’ll be a Green Lantern ring powered by will, or a Sinestro Corps ring powered by fear. And both of those seem to make sense, because not only has Batman worn green and yellow rings before, it’s easy to make a connection to the willpower needed to mold himself into Gotham’s protector, or the fear he strikes in the hearts of criminals, traits that would seem to qualify him for either ring. The problem is that while he has worn these rings, he’s never really been able to use them.
During the Geoff Johns run, in Green Lantern #9, Hal Jordan handed his ring to Batman in an attempt to help Bruce learn to finally deal with the death of his parents in a healthy way. A Green Lantern ring responds to your ability to deal with your own fear…if you can overcome it, live with it, own your fear instead of letting it own you, then you can properly use a Green Lantern ring. But Bruce couldn’t do it. Everything that is Batman was built on a foundation of him never properly dealing with the death of his parents. The fear he felt that night became the basis of his entire adult life, and he’s nowhere near ready or able to let that go. So can Batman wear a Green Lantern ring? Sure, he just can’t use it, not unless he learns to accept his parents death and move on.
So then what about a yellow ring? If the thing that keeps him from using a Green Lantern ring is his propensity for fear, then it makes sense he’d be well-suited to use a fear-based ring, right? You would think so, except that he’s tried twice, and neither time went well. The first time a yellow ring came to Batman was in Green Lantern #17, and it quickly realized it made a mistake and just left him behind. The second time came in Forever Evil #4, and Bruce struggled to make one construct before being completely overwhelmed until Sinestro showed up to save him. The conversation the two of them had afterward is important…Sinestro says that Batman has the potential to become a powerful Yellow Lantern, but Bruce is resisting it, refusing to totally give in to the power of fear. Because remember, Bruce’s greatest fear is tied to the unresolved trauma of losing his parents. He saw his greatest fear happen right in front of him when he was a kid, and has devoted his entire life to making sure it never happens again. Bruce has an adversarial relationship with his own fear, meaning he can’t embrace it as a source of power. So the potential is there, but just like the Green Lantern ring, Batman could only properly wield a Sinestro Corps ring if he reached a major turning point in the way he thinks and feels about the death of his parents.
…so now that we’ve eliminated the two most obvious candidates, where do we go from here? Realistically, you cold make an argument that most of the remaining rings make sense, even if their compatibility with Batman is kind of general and surface level. You could say his drive for vengeance would make him a candidate for a Red Lantern ring powered by rage, you could say his desire to fight endlessly for his city is perfect for the blue ring of hope or the indigo ring of compassion, or hell, since he’s a billionaire, maybe he’d be able to use an Orange ring powered by greed. But all joking aside, there is one ring that’s uniquely perfect for Bruce Wayne, because the power it represents cuts right to the heart of not only the tragic deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne, but also everything that Bruce has fought to achieve after becoming Batman. Bruce Wayne would be a Star Sapphire, and wield a violet ring powered by love.
I’ve been referencing Batman’s origin story a lot so far, now let me tell you about the origin of a Star Sapphire named Miri Riam, as seen in Green Lantern Corps #29. She and her husband were on their honeymoon when suddenly their ship was attacked. Someone they’d never seen before appeared out of nowhere, robbed them, killed Miri’s husband, and then vanished into the dark. And Miri was just left there, sitting in the ruins of her happy life, having lost the person she loved most in the world. Then the ring found her, detecting the void left in her heart by having her loved one ripped away. The ring even outright says it, she’s at a crossroads where she can either fall into darkness or embrace the light, allowing the Star Sapphire to fill the hole in her broken heart. Think about what I’ve been saying about Bruce this entire time, about why we know he couldn’t use Hal’s Green Lantern ring. Bruce suffered a loss just like the one Miri did. The biggest difference between them is that she was an emotionally mature adult when it happened, and was able to accept the offer to step out of the darkness and deal with her emotions. But despite Bruce taking the long way around, he still arrived in a place where his every action is driven by love.
I would argue that the most important thing Bruce did after becoming Batman was take in Dick Grayson after Dick saw his own parents die, because choosing to be there for this child who had no-one was the first step on Bruce’s own journey out of the darkness. Over the years, Bruce would gather more and more young people who he saw something of himself in, and give them the support they needed to not sink into despair, to not end up like him. And by spending so much time helping them, teaching them, just being there for them…without even trying, he built a new family.
Even though Bruce could never actually succeed in ridding Gotham of crime, whenever I see Nightwing saving people with a smile on his face, I can’t help but feel like everything Batman did was worth it. Because Batman’s legacy isn’t going to be the prosperity of Gotham City, it’s going to be the people who’s lives he touched in the most meaningful ways. It’s his family. His childhood was defined by losing his old one, and his adulthood has been defined by building a new one.
Now, I predict that there will be two big questions that come to people’s minds, so let’s try to deal with those right now. Star Sapphires are usually driven by romantic love, and even Miri’s origin revolved around the love of her husband. So if the love that defines Bruce is wrapped up in the family he lost and the new one he wants to build, would that even work with a Sapphire ring? The answer is a very big yes. In the first issue of Green Lantern New Guardians, a family traveling in a small space ship are under attack by pirates, and a Star Sapphire shows up to defend them. As the pirates attack, the A.I. voice of the Sapphire ring says “Alert: Familial Love Under Threat”…so we know for a fact that these rings can detect and recognize different kinds of love, and we are specifically shown one reacting to the love a family feels for each other.
The real elephant in the room here is that if you’ve ever seen this particular Lantern Corps before, you’ve probably noticed that the Star Sapphires are always shown to be an army of women, not unlike the Amazons, so wouldn’t Bruce be disqualified by default since he’s a man? The answer is no, the gender and biological sex of who gets chosen to be a Star Sapphire actually has nothing to do with the rings or the power they use, but rather it’s a conscious decision made by the leaders of the Star Sapphire Corps. The reason that the Star Sapphire Corps is usually made up entirely of women is because the aliens who founded the Corps, the group of female Oans calling themselves the Zamarons, chose to gather their own power in direct response to the male Oans declaring themselves the Guardians of the Universe and rejecting the power of emotion. So the only reason Star Sapphire rings are almost exclusively given to women is because the Star Sapphire Corps is run by women acting on the resentment they have for the men of their own species, letting those feelings dictate the way the Star Sapphire Corps as a whole operates. Whenever a man has been presented with the opportunity to use a Sapphire ring, it’s always worked, provided they’ve been able to be honest about their feelings. John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, and Guy Gardner have all been able to use Sapphire rings before, and there’s been at least one allusion to other males joining the Corps, so Bruce being male is not an issue.
…but the detail that seals it for me is that, once Miri accepts the ring, she undergoes an initiation process that leaves her feeling whole, and at peace, ready to go off into the universe and protect the love of others whenever its in danger…much like Bruce’s mission, actually. And this hi lights a major difference between the Star Sapphires and the other rings we’ve talked about today. All those other rings require you to deal with your emotional issues before they’ll work for you, but everything about becoming a Star Sapphire is designed to help you down that path, as long as you’re willing to take the first step yourself.
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