# Was Green Lantern too "Comic Booky" for general audiences? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 5, 2011, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866 "2011-07-05T01:12:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2012, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/121 "2012-06-07T07:11:01Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > Currently, GL rings will allow the use of lethal force against members of the Sinestro Corps, and _only_ members of the Sinestro Corps. And for that to happen, the Guardians (the big bosses/creators of the GL Corps) had to specifically pass a law to allow it and then program the rings to allow lethal force against those specific targets. How does that work though, does the ring know that the GL intends to kill with the construct that’s being created and refuse to make it…or what? ---
**Author:** ![Lightray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightray/32/391_2.png) [@Lightray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightray)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2012, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/122 "2012-06-07T12:53:18Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > Currently, GL rings will allow the use of lethal force against members of the Sinestro Corps, and _only_ members of the Sinestro Corps. And for that to happen, the Guardians (the big bosses/creators of the GL Corps) had to specifically pass a law to allow it and then program the rings to allow lethal force against those specific targets. Actually, after the Guardians made the “Lethal force authorized against the Sinestro Corps” new rule, they made a “Lethal force authorized against _any_ enemy of the GLC” rule. They were on a kick of making 10 new rules, and you 'd think that those two just sort of waste one of the ten slots… but that storyline seems to have petered out in favor of the other myriad variants of the Guardians-are-jerks storyline. **Disposable Hero** , the GL ring has an onboard AI which recognizes when a kill shot isn’t authorized, and the gun-construct (or whatever) simply fails to fire the kill shot. So the construct is still around, it just doesn’t work for that instance. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2012, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/123 "2012-06-07T18:13:58Z")
> [@Lightray](#): > > Actually, after the Guardians made the “Lethal force authorized against the Sinestro Corps” new rule, they made a “Lethal force authorized against _any_ enemy of the GLC” rule. You’re right, I’d forgotten about the latest rule :smack: ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2012, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/124 "2012-06-07T19:08:14Z")
I read the GL comics as a kid. To me, he wasn’t in the same class as Superman or Batman-GL was a sort of “low rent” crimefighter. The “Power Ring” and “Lamp” were kinda hokey-and the costume was stupid looking. Plus the mantra he was always mouthing “In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil can escape my sight”-really an ersatz Superman. Anyway-how did GL handle the changing (from street clothes into costume)? Superman used phone booths, Batman had the batcave-did GL strip down in public? ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2012, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/125 "2012-06-07T20:06:38Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Anyway-how did GL handle the changing (from street clothes into costume)? Superman used phone booths, Batman had the batcave-did GL strip down in public? The ring basically transforms his clothing into his uniform. Or _replaces_ his clothing with the uniform. Not exactly sure which. Either way, it’s basically instantaneous. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2012, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/126 "2012-06-07T21:33:33Z")
> [@Lightray](#): > > **Disposable Hero** , the GL ring has an onboard AI which recognizes when a kill shot isn’t authorized, and the gun-construct (or whatever) simply fails to fire the kill shot. So the construct is still around, it just doesn’t work for that instance. Ah, I see, I imagined the way it would work is the ring would read the _intent_ of the GL behind the creation of the construct. If it was something simple like a sword it wouldn’t allow it to be created at all. At least that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it… 😉 btw that was something I did wonder about the training scenes in the movie, they didn’t seem to be messing around and at least in Jordan VS Sinestro appeared to be genuinely trying to hurt or kill the other, you don’t create a working gatling gun if you’re just trying to make a point. How do you train realistically with a weapon like that _(the ring)_ without hurting your opponent? ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/127 "2012-06-08T00:34:38Z")
If the movie had done better, would the Green Lantern still be in the closet? ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/128 "2012-06-08T01:18:42Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > If the movie had done better, would the Green Lantern still be in the closet? Considering that it’s not the movie Green Lantern (or even the movie WORLD’S Green Lantern) that they made gay, it’s kind of moot. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/129 "2012-06-08T02:50:09Z")
Um, the gay Green Lantern is now the WORLD’S Green Lantern outside of comic book circles. All Normals know about the Green Lantern, as shown by the unpopularity of the movie with them, is what they have heard about him on TV and it’s that he’s gay. Even the next guy to don the ring will have to keep saying, “No, I’m straight. You’re thinking about the last guy,” in every issue. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Lightray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightray/32/391_2.png) [@Lightray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightray)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/130 "2012-06-08T12:21:36Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Um, the gay Green Lantern is now the WORLD’S Green Lantern outside of comic book circles. All Normals know about the Green Lantern, as shown by the unpopularity of the movie with them, is what they have heard about him on TV and it’s that he’s gay. Even the next guy to don the ring will have to keep saying, “No, I’m straight. You’re thinking about the last guy,” in every issue. 😉 Um, there are at least _three_ Green Lantern comic books in the stores now (Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, New Guardians). Alan Scott – the newly gay Green Lantern who has nothing to do with any of those – isn’t going to be in any of those and (at this point) isn’t going to have his own comic title. If the “Normals” or the WORLD are going to try to find anything on Green Lantern, it isn’t going to be gay Alan Scott they’ll find. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/131 "2012-06-08T15:53:54Z")
> [@](#): > > If the “Normals” or the WORLD are going to try to find anything on Green Lantern, it isn’t going to be gay Alan Scott they’ll find. Actually, it will be. A Google search for “Green Lantern” has as its first two hits news stories about Alan Scott being gay. Then we’ve got the Wikipedia page, which is about _all_ of the Green Lanterns, then IMDb for the recent movie, then Yahoo Answers for “Do you care that Alan Scott is gay?”. So out of the first five hits, three are all about Scott’s orientation, and one of the others is partly about that. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/132 "2012-06-08T19:38:56Z")
There’s more than one Green Lantern? [/most people] ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2012, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/133 "2012-06-08T20:23:32Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > There’s more than one Green Lantern? [/most people] “Why would they EVER make more than one Green Lantern?” [/most people who’ve seen the movie] ---
**Author:** ![xnylder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/bbce88/32.png) [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2012, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/134 "2012-06-09T01:31:16Z")
Wow, thanks for the detailed explanation, **Mister Rik**. I had no idea the writers had removed the yellow vulnerability. I don’t really see how the new one, fear, makes the rings any more limitless though. Can’t the corps just recruit meatheaded teenagers to wear the rings? They’re fearless enough by themselves, and given a powerful ring I can’t imagine they’d be any more sensible. I don’t know what would happen if multiple lunkheads faced off against each other though; maybe a black (green?) hole? As for the “ring as visualization tool” concept, well, I’m not sure I see why that limits it either. Say I have such a ring, and I want to destroy a mountain. (It’s blocking my view, OK?) I firmly believe my ring can do that, and protect me and innocent bystanders from the blast to boot. I visualize a big pile of dynamite - maybe even a nuclear bomb - and unleash the power. If the ring is just generating a force, and only stops working if I feel fear (or, as your and other posts mentioned, I’m trying to kill someone inappropriate), why shouldn’t that mountain go kaboom? Maybe I should rephrase my objection: I’m not annoyed that the ring’s power does or doesn’t take particular forms, but I find it’s a weak plot point that it has near-infinite power in terms of effects. It seems to me that anyone with sufficient will and imagination could defeat anything, therefore eliminating risk and drama. PS Am I the only person who noticed that “being yellow” is slang for being afraid? Nope? Alright then… ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2012, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/135 "2012-06-09T01:53:26Z")
> [@xnylder](#): > > Can’t the corps just recruit meatheaded teenagers to wear the rings? They’re fearless enough by themselves If you want to reduce them to quivering bundles of self-doubt, just say that green suit makes them look gay. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2012, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/136 "2012-06-09T01:55:56Z")
Only on Thursdays. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2012, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/137 "2012-06-09T03:04:27Z")
There’s a possibility that the selection process the Guardians go through filters out people whose grasp on power is a little too much in the “blow up that mountain because I can” direction. Then again, there are multiple defectors from the Corps that turned bad (Sinestro being only one), so their process can’t be THAT good. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2012, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/138 "2012-06-09T03:18:54Z")
> [@xnylder](#): > > Can’t the corps just recruit meatheaded teenagers to wear the rings? They’re fearless enough by themselves, and given a powerful ring I can’t imagine they’d be any more sensible. Well, being a GL requires a certain amount of discipline, responsibility, and ability to follow orders. There’s been at least one teenage GL, a girl named Arisia. I can’t recall what planet she’s from, but she was 13 years old when she got her ring. Then she developed a big crush on Hal Jordan. When he rebuffed her advances because she was “just a kid”, she somehow used her ring to artificially mature her body into “full-grown woman” form (I don’t think she got the point). However, that was one of those silly storylines from the '60s or '70s, and I don’t think that’s something the writers would allow the ring to do now. > [@](#): > > Maybe I should rephrase my objection: I’m not annoyed that the ring’s power does or doesn’t take particular forms, but I find it’s a weak plot point that it has near-infinite power in terms of effects. It seems to me that anyone with sufficient will and imagination could defeat anything, therefore eliminating risk and drama. Ultimately, it comes down to writer discretion. “Modern” comic writers understand that unlimited power effectively eliminates dramatic tension, and they’re pretty good these days about avoiding “power inflation”. They may not explicitly define the limitations of a characters power, but they avoid making those powers into an automatic “I WIN” button. The Green Lantern Corps has thousands of members, and they face plenty of threats that require multiple GLs to handle - sometimes the entire Corps. Power inflation was one of the main reasons behind the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” back in the 1980s. Superman, in particular, had gotten completely out of control as far as how powerful he was. Different writers over the years kept giving him new powers, and making the powers he already had even more powerful, culminating in one story where he actually flew into space and _blew out a star_ with his “super-breath”. So the folks at DC said, “Okay, let’s start over”. > [@](#): > > PS Am I the only person who noticed that “being yellow” is slang for being afraid? Nope? Alright then… Oh, that was quite a deliberate thing on the part of the writers when they came up with the “yellow impurity” (and later, Sinestro and his Corps. More recently, they’ve expanded the “Emotional Spectrum”: **Red** = Rage (The Red Lanterns) **Orange** - Avarice (There’s only _one_ these guys. Because the orange lantern and ring are _his_. Don’t touch his stuff! It’s not yours!) **Yellow** = Fear (Sinestro Corps) **Green** = Willpower (Green Lantern Corps) **Blue** = Hope (The Blue Lanterns) **Indigo** = Compassion (The Indigo Tribe) **Violet** = Love (The Star Sapphires, an all-female corps) There are also Black Lanterns (Death) and White Lanterns (Life). ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2012, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/139 "2012-06-09T03:30:43Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > There are also Black Lanterns (Death) and White Lanterns (Life). Black Lanterns being (literally) zombies, or at least demon-inhabited corpses… ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2012, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866/140 "2012-06-09T03:32:41Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > There’s a possibility that the selection process the Guardians go through filters out people whose grasp on power is a little too much in the “blow up that mountain because I can” direction. Then again, there are multiple defectors from the Corps that turned bad (Sinestro being only one), so their process can’t be THAT good. Candidates are selected by the ring’s AI when its previous bearer dies, but then the ring _does_ rather forcibly haul the candidate back to Oa (the GL base planet) for basic training, where actual, living GL members and the Guardians can evaluate them and weed out those who are unsuitable (or where the candidate can say, “no thank you”). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-green-lantern-too-comic-booky-for-general-audiences/587866.md?page=8)