I’m sure that as comics fans, you’re bursting with anticipation to find out just what Geoff Johns has planned for the DC Universe after the “War of Light”. After all, those nine Corps didn’t go anywhere, and there’s plenty more potential stories out there! Well, you need wait no longer. I was recently invited to view a top-secret document that unveils the future of the emotional spectrum in the DC Universe after the “Brightest Day” ends next year!
As it turns out, plot-master extraordinaire Geoff Johns has already planted the clues in the existing books. You know how there are nine colors in the “emotional spectrum”, right? (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, Black, and White.) These correspond to the spectrum produced when you break up pure white light into a prism–the classic ROY G BIV effect. But modern scientists don’t recognize indigo as a distinct color within that spectrum! Everyone thought that was just an indulgence on Johns’ part, like continuing to list Pluto as a planet for aesthetic reasons, but the truth is far more shocking. The Green Lanterns (led by Hal Jordan, who is the smartest, fastest, strongest, and best-endowed of the entire Corps, according to the document) discover that there are actually dozens more “secondary colors” to the emotional spectrum, just like indigo! Each one corresponds to an emotion that is more specific than the primary spectrum, and has a very specific shade associated with it! (Thank goodness for modern comics coloring techniques. Back in the day, they just didn’t have the technology to render this stuff accurately.)
Some of the upcoming ring corps waiting to be discovered, according to Johns (there are actually going to be over two hundred new colors in the emotional spectrum, but I can’t list…or without the original document at hand, even remember all of them):
The Pink Lantern Corps: Pink corresponds to “joy” or “happiness” in the emotional spectrum, something sorely missing from the previous crossover. One of the big stories to come out of “The Greater Spectrum” will be an explanation of just how this emotion has been sealed away from the DC Universe over the last decade, and how DC reacts to it being freed.
Their oath: “In brightest day, in brightest night, let joy spread over all in sight; things aren’t that bad, they’re really great, so let’s go out and celebrate!”
The Brown Lantern Corps: This color represents “shame”, or “embarrassment”. Apparently, one of the big twists involved in the discovery of this Corps comes when Carol Ferris gets a look at herself in the mirror and sees just what she looks like wearing her Star Sapphire costume. “Oh my god!” she says. “Why didn’t anyone tell me I was dressed like this? I look like I should be dancing around a pole or serving drinks at ‘Hooters’! Oh, this is so humiliating.” It’s then that the Brown Lanterns make her an offer she can’t refuse…
Their oath: “In blushing day, concealing night, I wish I could escape all sight; the earth should open up a hole and then close up and eat me whole!”
The Aquamarine Lantern Corps: This color represents “intense competitiveness in what was supposed to be a friendly game”. In a shocking twist, it turns out that Guy Gardner’s been a member of this corps for years.
Their Oath: “That ball was out, I saw it land; that point was mine, this I demand! We’re keeping score, oh yes we are; and loser pays when at the bar!”
The Lavender Lantern Corps: This color represents “that feeling you get when you’re around someone that you’ve been friends with for years, but you’re not quite sure if it’s actually more than friendship or if it’s just your imagination, and you don’t want to ruin the friendship by asking, but you remember that time the two of you got drunk and made out, so maybe you should at least try for ‘friends with benefits’, but…it’s complicated, you know?”
Their Oath: “Um…yeah, that’s nice. Looks good on you. Say, do you know what we should do? Just hang out Sunday, just us two, and see what happens…or not, too!”
The Fuchsia Lantern Corps: Representing the emotion of “confusion over exactly how to spell ‘fuchsia'”, this corps is dedicated to making sure that everyone in the universe gets a helping hand from those who have been helped in the past!
Their Oath: “It’s F-U-S, no that’s not right, the S goes somewhere, is that right? That looks all wrong, this ain’t no breeze, I just can’t spell it, help me please!”
The Persimmon Lantern Corps: Secretly, the persimmon emotional color is one of the strongest forces in the universe; it represents “the last little surge of appetite you get when you think you’re full, but they wheel out the dessert cart and there’s one of your favorites out there”. Let’s just say that Hal’s going to have a hard time fitting back into that spandex after a fight with a Persimmon Lantern!
Their Oath: “Oh, no, I couldn’t, I’m too full; just half a slice then, almost null–is that a brownie that I spy? I’ll try that then, with pecan pie!”
The Taupe Lantern Corps: In a word, “pretension”. When an entire audience of a new avant-garde piece of performance art is empowered by the Taupe Lantern, Hal must endure endless lectures about where they are, as artists, and defeat them in their coffee-house lairs!
Their Oath: “It’s brilliant, love, so avant-garde; you’re brave and noble, it’s so hard/ to truly find someone who sees/ expressionistic forms in cheese!”
The Ivory Lantern Corps: Ivory, as it turns out, represents “the frustration you have when you can never quite get it to look the way it does in commercials or on the picture on the box or even the way it did when you bought the damned thing, no matter how many cleaning products you use”. It turns out to have a lot of untapped power for the citizens of Earth.
Their Oath: “I’ve scrubbed and scrubbed, all day and night, but perfect shine escapes my sight; let those who sold me OxyClean/ beware my anger, sharp and keen!”
The Cyan Lantern Corps: Cyan’s power, though brief, is quite strong; it’s “that vague feeling of uncertainty and trepidation you get after you order from the drive-in but before you actually start eating, when you don’t know if they made your order right or whether this is the day that the guy making it decides to spit on your burger”. (I’m not at liberty to divulge the story involved with this color, but let’s just say it involves Jon Stewart and an irate Wendy’s employee.)
Their Oath: “Did I say ‘plain’? Did I say ‘diet’? The only way to know is try it; I hope this time, they got it right; I’ve come back through three times tonight!”
The Beige Lantern Guys: Ironically, this color represents “apathy”, and as a result, there is no Corps as such. Getting them to participate in the final battle of the crossover could be Hal Jordan’s greatest challenge!
Their Oath: “In brightest day, in…you know what? Fuck it. Let’s just watch TV.”
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That is pretty funny. Kind of sums up the problem with emotion based powers, because no one feels that one way all the time.
That’s way most of those corps indoctrinates their members first!
Why am I reminded of the Rodney Dangerfield joke about how his wife’s mood ring showed plaid?
…
I think we need to keep Geoff away from the Crayola box before he gets any more bright ideas.
hole/whole?
two/too?
Well, I guess technically homophones do rhyme. What color is the pedantic corps?
What are the colors for Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Precision, and Perception?
I mean, if Willpower is an emotion, surely all the other stats from In Nomine are too, right?
@highlyverbal: The Pedantic corps is grey/gray because then they can argue over spelling…
(I’m not at liberty to divulge the story involved with this color, but let’s just say it involves Jon Stewart and an irate Wendy’s employee.)
They issued Jon Stewart a power ring? Fucking finally. What color does Colbert get?
Murc: The blue one. Does SC Jr. get one, as well?
“They issued Jon Stewart a power ring? Fucking finally. What color does Colbert get?”
Colbert has Captain America’s shield.
Colbert gets a Peach Lantern ring, due to his connection to the emotional color of “smugness”.
nice racism there, you skinhead
Well, I think MGK gave this little PSA about the whole Stewart thing.
http://mightygodking.com/index.php/2009/03/16/public-service-announcement/
So I’m hoping it was ironic.
Re: Beige Lantern
http://comiccritics.com/2009/03/27/oath-of-indifference/
Comic Critics did it first!
Nice, and not a gay joke in there.
How about a Chinese Red Lantern, where red is a positive thing associated with marriage?
I just love how all DC aliens are Eurocentric and make the same dumb assumptions about things a white guy from the U.S. who can’t even be bothered to use Wikipedia would.
Red and yellow have positive connotations in several other cultures, which Johns might have noticed if he ever read anything beside old Roy Thomas comics. Also, white sometimes represents death.
For that matter, why is violet one of the colors? Scientists don’t really want to recognize that one either. And why do the violet lanterns look more pink than purple?
@johnny B: Care to back that up with an explanation, or should I just assume you’re speaking on behalf of your aquamarine-skinned brethren?
How about a Plaid Lantern for that feeling you get when you are impersonating a Scottish/Irish accent while completely blitzed.
Was the Turquoise a reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_League_of_America_(TV_movie) and how Guy appeared in that?
Hal has no idea why the Lavender Corps keep trying to recruit him. Maybe he’ll see what Ollie thinks of it, the next time they hang out, just the two of them having some guy time, you know, without Dinah. Or with Dinah, that’d be cool, too. …Actually, that’d be really great. Uh, if she’d be into that.
@Brian, I assume Violet is one of the colors so Green could be the “neutral” willpower color in the middle of the spectrum with three emotional colors to either side. But that’s just a guess.
Differing cultural interpretations of the Light Corps? That’d be a huge mess. Why not non-visible colors? Where is the Ultravilot or Infrared Corps? That’s so human-centric!
I also nominate the shame-based lantern corps to be the ‘Umber Lantern Corps.’ When fully charged, and smoldering with shame, they would (of course) be a slightly lighter shade of burnt umber.
I’m just saying there’s no good reason for red to be anger and yellow to be fear. That has always seemed really lazy and poorly thought out to me.
3 “negative” emotions on one end (rage, greed, fear) neutral green in the middle and 3 “positive” emotions on the other end (hope, compassion, love). It’s anthropomorphizing the visible spectrum a bit, sure, but it does have a sort of internal consistency (working with what was already in place. I think Anger-fear-greed makes more sense than anger-greed-fear, but whatever). And it sort of makes sense given the nature of the DC universe.
There are other vectors to attack the relative strengths or weaknesses of the story (I’d pick Hal Jordan as a weak central character, but that’s just my opinion) than some half-assed euro-centric cultural critique.
I thought it was fear-anger-hate-suffering?
Come to think of it, Yoda *is* green…
Good to hear the Apathy corps have remobilized after the White Lanterns stole their color. I heard they were going to get it registered but they just never got around to it or something came up or something. I don’t remember.
The pink lanterns are great. The DCU having to face their greatest nemesis–joy?!
Hal Jordan’s jaw might just break from the strain of resisting the urge to unclench.
So the Lanterns are Pokemon now? (Caught ’em all? Good! Here’s sixty more we somehow didn’t know about before!)
This whole Green Lanterns as Care Bears thing has always made me scratch my head: “I’m Brave Lantern and there’s my pal Hopeful Lantern. And that’s Grumpy Lantern. Don’t be a Greedy Lantern. Oh Noes! Here comes Kissy Lantern!”
why are brown people shameful?
Johnny, you know the Green Lanterns aren’t actually green, right? They just wear green costumes.
You don’t notice the fact that every colour that could represent a race is negative? While white is pure? yellow = evil, red = evil, black = evil, and now brown is shameful
I can’t speak for Geoff Johns, but I picked all the colors at random off of Wikipedia and assigned emotions to them at random. There was absolutely no thought of associating them with human skin colors, any more than I thought about associating them with baseball team colors or shades of lipstick. You are jumping to a lot of conclusions about me based on very little evidence, which is a good way to look like an asshole.
Next time, start with “It seems like a lot of the colors with racial associations have negative ones,” instead of skipping straight to calling people skinheads. It makes for an actual conversation, instead of people just writing you off as a troll.
Hahaha, brilliant article! I’m still cracking up over some of them… especially the Beige Lantern Corps. LOL.
@Brian, I seem to recall an interview where Geoff Johns where he said something to the effect that none of the colors/emotions are inherently evil, but the ones furthest from the center (red and violet) are the most overpowering on their user. The Green Lanterns are LITERALLY the center of attention.
It seems pretty obvious that the choice of colors reflects the familiar ‘ROYGBIV’ that most of us learned growing up. It might not be ‘scientifically accurate,’ but everyone knows it. It’s just a frame of reference. Not to mention that you’ve got three ‘negative’ emotions, and three ‘positive’ emotions.
As for the cultural, and especially racial, connotations… well, that seems rather subjective to me. I think you might be reading a bit too much into it. Especially since I’m not sure about some of them… Nothing in Western culture really associates orange with avarice, for example. In fact GREEN is usually associated with greed! And while ‘cool’ colors are considered calming, its a big leap to associate them with ‘Hope’ or ‘Compassion’.
I could find just as many similarities (or differences) from around the world. One hadith claims the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) disliked the color yellow, but the color green has positive associations in the Islamic world (including on the flags of Libya, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan). Turkish mythology associates the colors with directions. Black is north, white is west, red is south, blue is east, and green is center. The ancient Slavs viewed white as ‘good’ (embodied by Bylebog) and black as ‘evil’ (embodied by Chernobog, whom you may know from the ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ part of Fantasia). The ancient Egyptians, meanwhile associated red with the chaotic god Set, while green and black were given positive connotations because of their association with Osiris. The Yoruba of Nigeria say their primary God Obatala is dressed in pure white…
I could go on, but there’s no reason to say that these associations are purely Western constructs, let alone racist or imperialist in some way.
I don’t think they’re racist. I just think they’re really lazy and dumb.